Begnas di Yabyab (Written last Nov 2013)

 

Little cutie all dressed up for the Begnas di Yabyab

It was not strange to find the street empty. Thousands of miles above and away from the lowlands where I was raised, the people of Sagada rose before the sun did, and at almost 8am I had already missed them by hours. It was the morning after a storm, and plants that had been too weak against the rain and wind lay helplessly in the mud. The air hung warm with the steam of the wet earth, relief from the cold. Minutes ago, a friend had said brusquely through the phone, to come out by the road and wait. Not knowing what to expect, I drifted into a nearby weaving shop to pace, first out of faith, and then desperation. The storeowner, amused at my unease, later took me aside, asking if I was there to watch the indians, and, confused, I stood with him by the door as he explained what warranted my waiting.

Undas Report: Panag-Apoy Festival 2013

Dusk begins early on November 1, the famous Sagada sunset neglected as locals light pyres for their dead.

 
     "It's hell on Earth," locals like to joke, my host's 12 year old nephew Osong among them. As early as finishing lunch, the Isagada head on to church, submitting the names of their deceased to a list, later to be read aloud before the Panag-apoy (to light a fire). The reading of names take hours, readers replacing one another, a calm, monotonous drone. People stack pinewood atop graves and may choose to light them early. 5pm: stray lines of smoke; 5:15pm: isolated bursts of flame; 5:30pm: the air turns grey, then black; 5:45pm: Inferno.
    "It's a specific kind of Pine," says Blue, a man I met on the bus, and I can't remember if he said Saeng or Saleng, only that the sap catches flame easily. Back at home, we are told, "agtukkeltayo," set up [candles]. Nobody uses candles in Sagada for that, I am told.

    At some point, the padi (priest) comes to bless the graves, after which the people put out the flames and return home for dinner, saying that the dead can join them if they wanted to.

Finding Sagada with a Fork (or spoon. or your fingers.)

It's how enthusiastically the people who go there talk about food that draws others to it: "Big servings, not so pricey!" Back when I still worked in an office, my co-workers showed me food pictures of a recent Sagada outing they had taken. "So cheap," they told me breathlessly as I leafed through shots of big plates heaping with toast and side vegetables. I remembered hours-long road trips with my Aunt in California, past tunnels of redwood and cliffs overlooking the ocean and pit stops with plates filled to the rim with local crops and homemade pancakes. "Just like the States," they giggle. "Just like the States."

Lemongrass Tea at the Yoghurt House. Demeter, who owns a reader's cafe, once told me
 its local name so I could look for it in the Saturday market but I have since then, unfortunately, forgotten.

It's been said that to know a place is to eat it (in the form of what is served locally of course). Pateros is the Balut; Batangas, the lomi. Binondo is Chinese food, with its fried siopao and dumplings that go beyond their stripped down, streetwise distant cousin, siomai (to be completely truthful, I don't know much about food as local identity, but I'll get to the point, I promise!). 

There is nothing of Sagada that you can see in their food, is what I've heard from unimpressed foodies. "It's all just bastardized Western food."

Buscalan Night-life

Mr. Happy, and the latest form of sound system technology to reach Buscalan--the little radio car
photo c/o Ponyo

Because when one goes places, one will almost usually be asked: "How's the nightlife over there?" regardless of said place's proximity to what 'nightlife' usually entails. I don't know where this fascination comes from, perhaps a very human desire to live well into the night, an acquired victory over a time previously spent in darkness and fear. Also a very human need to party and get punch-ass drunk.

How Most Pictures I Have of Sagada Are of People's Backs

Drummer and Hunter walking ahead in Sagada

Sagada had been an accident, in that I had not expected to be there. It had always been that place that former co-workers would bring up enthusiastically and rent vans to whenever they tired of Baguio. "Sagada has great Lemon Pies," they would say, and so Sagada was to me up until that point, That Place with the Great Lemon Pies. And so, having inherited the partiality for lemons and all things sour--having a citrus for a name also somewhat at fault for this need, i think--I put it in my mind that one day I would go to Sagada for their lemon pies.

Until, one day in November, while in Bontoc waiting for a bus back to Manila, Hunter casually grinned and said, "Let's go to Sagada." I shrugged. I trusted him with my life, and I shrugged. One should take note that even the most lighthearted things that people who have lived here their whole lives say, have roots in conviction. It is only best that you--tourist, visitor, transient, passersby--just go along. These mountains are greater than doubt, or fear.