And I'm back. Lazy day in Manila today; I woke up at NOON. It would appear that I am back to my normal sleeping habits here on the other side of the planet; this is bad because our days start at like 8 but not ALL bad because it might make my jet lag less horrendous when I go back. Speaking of, I hardly had any jetlag (other than waking up at 5 for a while, which in Bato, seemed almost normal) on the way here. Does this mean it will hit me double when I'm stateside? PLEASE NO.

The Story of the DKK, and Other Things

So Baguio is an unspeakably neat place. I have determined this. After getting back from Itogon (THAT'S the name of the mining barangay whose name I brain-farted on earlier), we went straight to Baguio's version of an urban poor community. Basically, this means indigenous people whose land has been encroached upon by the ever-expanding city of Baguio, not to mention the many and varied, uh, "interests" of the national government, who seem to be at the nerve center of EVERY POSSIBLE THING that is wrong with this country. But anyways. These people are weavers - they do some subsistence farming, but to get by, they buy thread from local corporations, and make parts of things like bags, table runners, jackets, etc...then sell the parts wholesale back to the corporation, who puts them together and then sells them at a markup.  They do this because there seems to be no way for them to get enough startup capital to do anything that would even approximate eliminating these (rather exploitative) middlemen. Thus they're stuck making about $3 for 9 hours worth of manual work at a loom that looks as if it has been time-warped there from approximately 1756.

At least they're not living on a mountain of garbage? I dunno. Slanty-face.

On another note, most of the mining companies that have a stake in demolishing stuff up here are from the UK and the US - apparently we use THIS gold to back up OUR currency, while the peso slides because the national government sits on its butt. Crazy but true - the motto of the Philippine socioeconomic situation. Or "horrible but true." Or "unspeakably evil but true." Or "fucked the shit up."

So after our visit to the weaver community, we were whisked off to lunch. Lunch was uneventful, but I do realize that I've been skimping on my culinary blogging. So here are some interesting Cordillera food-factoids for you, some of which are gross:

1) The local delicacy around here is known as pica-pica, or as the locals winkingly call it, "killing me softly." What is it: a chicken that has been BEATEN TO DEATH, then cooked. This results in, basically, rubbery chicken. I have no idea why it's considered so good. I just felt guilty for eating a chicken whose last moments consisted of every inch of its body being bruised. I HAS A SAD

2) They also do the above to dogs. Dog is very common up here. I didn't eat any because I didn't have the chance; I might have, but then again, I might not have.

Hm. Those two do seem to be the biggies of the area. I'll list more if I can think of them.

For Real This Time

The DKK - otherwise known as Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera - I had to look up the D word, because it is in Ilocano I think and also I have no idea what it means (the whole thing means "Cultural Center of the Cordillera"). This is where we went after lunch, and stayed until the wee hours of the morning. It was, in other words, a REALLY LONG STRETCH OF BEING AWAKE. Turned out to be more than worth it, though.

The DKK is a group of musicians and artists that are committed to preserving the (extraordinarily) rich cultural heritage of the indigenous people of this country. This is not an easy feat, as nearly every province has a tapestry of different art forms. So it's a multi-chaptered group of people that do everything from make documentaries to record cds to stage protests and spontaneous mural-ings. They took us in for the afternoon to teach us how to play the more common indigenous instruments, most of which are made out of bamboo and fall into the percussion category. So we thunked things on the ground for a while, and hit things with mallets, and blew over the tops of some things to make noise. We made a lot of noise.

Then we took the noise outside, where we hit GONGS (the handles of which, back in the day, were made from HUMAN JAWBONES) with mallets and generally made a racket while dancing. Yes, DANCING. This is another hilarious/embarassing gringa moment, because here I am, Kermit-the-Frog-esque body waving around and shuffling my feet to indigenous festival and funeral tunes. The courtship dance is particularly hilarious; you basically get shoved into the middle of a circle with a member of the opposite sex and you have to dance such that you look as much like a chicken as possible. As if that weren't enough, as the female, you have to watch the male dance like a chicken and THEN, if he comes anywhere near you, you have to do your best coy-chicken impersonation and run away from him. It is great, and by great I do really mean great but also embarrassing and pee-your-pants hilarious.

So I learned how to whack indigenous instruments and to badly approximate indigenous dance. It was super fun, until they told us that we would have to perform for them after dinner. WTF. So we spent a lot of time being nervous and planning things badly, until we agreed to let Philippe recite something over us demonstrating just how well we had learned to whack indigenous instruments. I should have realized that letting Philippe do his poetry thing would have been disastrous - as much as I told him to KEEP the motherfucking VOLUME down, he started, predictably, yelling things about spirituality and other nonsense concepts in the middle of our performance. I tried shushing him, but it didn't work. He's an idiot. But my rhythm remained intact, and they seemed to like it, so that was a thing. At least a puppy didn't poo in the middle of our recital like it did for some of the ALAY kids (San-Fran based Fil-Am youth org) who were interrupted in the middle of their hip-hop performance by said pooing.

After our ridiculous recital, the DKK members treated us to a bit of a jam session.

I am not sure how to approximate what happened then in words, because it's not one of those things that translates into words very well at all.  I think it might have epitomized how very musical the Filipino people are - honestly, for being some of the most downtrodden, poverty-stricken people on earth, they sing as if they had every reason to keep living. And even though I didn't understand a word of any of the songs, sung as they were in regional dialects (not that I would have understood them in Filipino, but you know), it didn't really matter - you know, transcendent properties of musical beauty and all that. HAR HAR. I think what was most moving was when three of the members started singing a particular song, and then when they hit the chorus, suddenly EVERYONE (that's about 20-odd DKK members that came out for this shindig) joined in. So it's dark, and we're sitting outside in a circle, and suddenly this chorus of voices crescendoes out of nowhere in PERFECT harmony...so many chills. Not to get emo, but it moved me to tears, it was that unspeakably beautiful.

Blah blah life changing moment blah blah blah

You know, you try to write these things down and you fail. I am going to stop failing now, and sign off, but suffice it to say that it was probably one of the single most emotionally-jam-packed moments of my life. I felt full to the brim with it, my proverbial cup running over. These people are amazing, and their culture is amazing, and I am amazed.