Latest news with #Ifugao
The Star
4 days ago
- The Star
The Ifugao mountain folk and their Unesco World Heritage Site rice terraces
For Joy Poligon, life is simple, if harsh. 'If I don't go to our rice field every day, we will have nothing to eat.' It takes her an hour for a return trip to Batad, traversing rough terrain to reach the village that is inaccessible by road. Poligon is a rice farmer, mother of two, and an Ifugao, an Indigenous mountain people that live in the Philippines in the north of Luzon island. Almost 400sq km of rice terraces, which they have been cultivating for 2,000 years, are spread across the historic landscape. Unesco declared it a World Heritage Site in 1995, calling it an expression of 'the harmony between people and their environment'. The small town of Banaue is the starting point for organised multi-day hiking tours. The income these raise directly benefits guides, tuk-tuk drivers for transfers and the hosts who take guests into their homes. Plus a tiny extra levy is used to maintain the landscape. Ifugao guide Michael Codimo starts the three-day trip at the market in Banaue, where he buys betel nuts and dried tobacco leaves as gifts to distribute along the way. The 61-year-old chews betel nut himself and occasionally spits out a torrent of red juice. We start our backpack tour after a bus transfer a few kilometres above the village of Cambulo. On the way, we pass a waterfall, tree ferns covering the slopes, and huts made of wood and corrugated iron clamped onto ledges. Life is very simple here. Then for the first time we see the rice terraces spread out on the slopes in all their glory. The only access to the village is via a steep staircase. Heavy loads such as building materials for houses are transported down motorised cable systems. Otherwise, every pair of shoes, every roll of toilet paper, every beer has to be carried. A small bus driving through the mountains, where people usually take a tuk tuk. A homestay offers a room in the host's house, a bed, a toilet, electricity and hot water in the shower. The real luxury is the silence as there's no traffic noise. There's also no television, but you can access the Internet thanks to WiFi, a recent arrival. Codimo shows us around the village, pointing out the primary school, which teaches up to the sixth grade, the Catholic church and the meeting place. 'This is where people gather, chaired by the village chief, to discuss and solve problems,' he says. Animals roam around freely. Smoke billows from a house. The sound of the river can be heard in the distance. In the late afternoon people return from their fields by crossing a suspension bridge. 'For many, self-sufficiency doesn't provide for the whole year, so they have to buy rice,' says Codimo. Rice forms part of every meal. The homestay is run by Jordan Tundagui and his wife Jenelyn Tundagui, who is also a primary school teacher. Jordan says he appreciates a life '... without noise and air pollution. We have no crime and are surrounded by nature.' Their five children are growing up carefree, but Jordan does not see their future at the World Heritage Site. 'We don't have a high school here, and they will have find work elsewhere.' Jordan addresses a controversial topic, and says sadly that 'the rice farmers are becoming fewer'. However he does not believe that this will endanger the world heritage of the rice terraces. 'There is less manpower, but more machines. Besides, no one sells their rice terraces to non-Ifugao – it would be against our culture.' That evening, Jenelyn has arranged a singing and dancing show by schoolchildren in return for a donation. The school curriculum includes not only dances and music but also building stone walls for rice terraces and how to slaughter a chicken. In the morning clouds drift over the mountains. The upcoming hike of several hours to Batad becomes a feat of endurance. Every step over the stone walls of the terraces and the soggy paths requires caution. You probably need to be fit for a hike among remote mountain villages in the Philippines like Cambulo and Batad. The reward is the panorama around Batad, which takes your breath away. The terraces nestle against the steep slopes like cascades, high up until the landscape merges into dense forests. The ancient Ifugao built everything by hand, including the stone retaining walls of the fields and irrigation channels. The almost vertical stairs in between, which we also take, are dizzying. The simple homestay with Joy Poligon in Batad represents a return to the essence of travelling, allowing visitors to get to know foreign countries and people as authentically as possible. The next day, the path winds up again to the next road. Sweat pours down my face under the weight of my backpack. The arranged transport arrives on time, and we are back in bustling Banaue. – ANDREAS DROUVE/dpa
New York Times
22-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
This Filipino Chicken Soup Heals and Restores
The first time Jill Damatac made adobo, when she was 26, she boiled the meat for two and a half hours, until it was purged of moisture, purpose and soul. The meager pinches of ginger and garlic that went into the pot came desiccated, in jars. What wound up on the plate was 'a salty recollection of sauce,' she writes in her memoir, 'Dirty Kitchen.' She did not know how to make adobo, or any Filipino dish for that matter. She had stopped eating the food of her childhood and of her ancestors — had almost stopped being Filipino, 'as a form of survival,' she writes. She was trying to be wholly American, to hide her secret: that although she had lived in the United States since she was 9, alighting in Newark after a journey of 30 hours and three planes, her family was never able to obtain official papers; that she was undocumented. Like many children of immigrants, she had to find her way back to her heritage, to approach it almost as an outsider. She turned to old cookbooks and trawled the comments section of Panlasang Pinoy, an online trove of Filipino recipes. The more she researched, the more curious she became about older, precolonial traditions, particularly among her father's people, the highland Ifugao of the Cordillera region of Luzon. So often, she told me, these were sensationalized as exotic relics and 'noble savage stuff.' You could call it a chicken soup, but understand that this is a merely literal description. Pinikpikan 'is not primarily cooked for pleasure,' Damatac writes. 'It is eaten as the final part of a holy ceremony, which must appease the gods and offer compensation to a displeased universe.' When a member of the family falls ill, the mumbaki comes. To cook is to cure. If you are tender of heart, you may prefer to skip to the next paragraph. For in this ritual, there is no veil between life and death. The root of 'pinikpikan' is 'pik-pik,' 'to beat,' and historically the people who eat the dish must first stand witness as the chicken, the required sacrifice, is struck with a stick — softly, according to accounts, if that is of any comfort — to make the blood rise under the skin. Damatac writes about this forthrightly. This is who we were, she says: 'We need to be seen throughout all our incarnations in time.' (Today the practice is banned under the country's Animal Welfare Act.) If you cannot find a traditional healer, there is another form of medicine: tinola, a chicken soup that is more earthbound, perhaps, but no less restorative. It rewards patience, as its subtle flavor 'does not bloom, soft and gentle on the tongue, until the second mouthful,' Damatac writes. There are echoes of pinikpikan in its profusion of ginger, bringing a sweet heat; peppery malunggay (moringa) leaves in their mysterious fractals; chayote, kin to squash but as bracing as an apple, for a clean, juicy bite. Patis (fish sauce) stands in for salt. Damatac, who chose to self-deport in 2015 and is now, at age 42, a British citizen, recalls how her lola (grandmother) made tinola, with the whole chicken, in a 'chuck everything in the pot and deal with it' way. In her own version, she uses just thighs and drumsticks, with skin and on the bone, and bronzes them before submerging them in chicken stock and setting to a simmer. (For only 20 minutes: She has learned her lesson.) One part of her heritage that she never lost: her love of chicken skin. She buys extra from the butcher and crisps it, starting the pan cold and letting the heat rise, watching as the fat melts and sputters. She serves it with the tinola, adding it as a topping at the last possible moment, so it won't soften and sink in the broth. She likes the shatter, the dark shards of gold between her teeth. It comes with a touch of déjà vu, as she writes about adobo in her book: 'as if you have had it before, in a past life, when you were loved and well fed.'
South China Morning Post
09-03-2025
- South China Morning Post
Hiking through the remote world of the Ifugao mountain people of the Philippines
For Joy Poligon, life is simple, if harsh. 'If I don't go to our rice field every day, we will have nothing to eat.' Advertisement It takes her an hour for a return trip. Poligon is a rice farmer, mother of two, and an Ifugao, indigenous mountain people that live in the Philippines in the north of Luzon island. Almost 400 square kilometres (154 square miles) of rice terraces, which they have been cultivating for 2,000 years, are spread across the landscape. Unesco declared it a World Heritage site in 1995, calling it an expression of 'the harmony between people and their environment'. The small town of Banaue is the starting point for organised multi-day hiking tours. The income these raise directly benefits guides, tuk-tuk drivers for transfers and the hosts who take guests into their homes. A small levy is used to maintain the landscape. Advertisement Ifugao guide Michael Codimo starts the three-day trip at the market in Banaue, where he buys betel nuts and dried tobacco leaves as gifts to distribute along the way. The 61-year-old chews betel nut himself and occasionally spits out a torrent of red juice.
