sagada

It's day one hundred and thirty six. I've taken five hundred and forty two photographs, and I've made almost seventy blog entries. I'm in the midst of making my way around country number five.

I've just been to Sagada, which is six hours north of Baguio, and fifteen hours north of Manila. Sagada sits in a valley in the Cordillera's, at an elevation of one thousand four hundred and seventy seven metres, and has a population of around ten thousand, most of them farmers. It's much colder than the rest of the Philippines, and even more temperate than cool Baguio. While I was there the clouds hung low, and it drizzled on and off.

I went to Sagada to because of the unusual burial rituals practiced by the people there. For almost two thousand years they have put their dead in hanging coffins, nailed to the sides of their valley, or in open burial caves scattered around the village.

Sagadans believe in life after death and that after a family member dies they become a spirit wandering the village, watching over villagers and the local clans. The coffins are hung in the valley, or in open caves, to give the spirits freedom to leave their bodies and roam as they please (burying them under the ground would trap them). Most of the coffins are very small and are carved by the elderly before they die; if they are too ill or weak their son or another close relative will do it for them. Coffins are made by hollowing out tree trunks, and the ritual involves pushing the bodies into the tight spaces, often bodies are folded and bones are cracked and broken as the process is completed.

There's also a conventional graveyard in the village, reflecting that times are beginning to change, but a number of local people are still being laid to rest in the traditional way. My guide, Eddy, showed me the coffin of his Uncle (in my pictures it is the blue coffin) who died only last year.

You may also note, if you look at my pictures, that attached to one of the coffins is a chair. This is a death chair. It used to also be tradition that when the deceased passed away he or she would be placed, sat up, on a chair in their living room, for people to visit and talk to, until the time of the funeral. The dead are not considered dead until the after the funeral (when their spirit is released). The chair in the picture is one of these 'death chairs.' Understandably, for sanitary reasons, this practice has become largely moribund. In fact, I'm not sure it happens anymore at all.

From some angles, Sagada has a ghostly and supernatural feel. The low clouds, and the echoing, windy valley certainly provide an atmosphere in which the local superstitions and spirits seem plausible and can thrive. My guide definitely believed there were spirits wandering around, watching and influencing him. Local lifestyle also reinforces. For example, there is a nine o'clock curfew. On the turn of nine the church bells rings out, the village doors close and lock, the shutters go down, and the villagers turn in to sit by their wood fires. Being in Sagada can feel, in some ways, like being transported into the world of Dracula or Frankenstein.

I stayed overnight and then left in the morning before my athiesm angered the local ghosts. I'm back down in Manila, and will be here for today at least. It's time now to make plans to head south and to move to one of the other islands.

I'm afraid I haven't eaten much Philippino food since I arrived. I've been finding it very difficult to work out what the traditional delicacies are and where you find them. Burger chains, steak houses, and Spanish eateries are all in evidence, but there is very little that is Philippino. The Philippines was a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1898, and then an American colony until 1946. There's a well worn saying that the Philippines spent three hundred and fifty years in a convent and then fifty years in Hollywood. I think this fact goes someway to explaining why the Philippino palate seems so Western, and the cuisine so lacking in local identity. I have at least had some Philippino sausages, and Bangsilog (a kind of fish in vinegar dish). Anyway, I'll keep trying to hunt traditional foods out.

Salamat ho!