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Provincial Amnesia: Language
as a Cure
Nicon
F. Fameronag
In the discussions at
the third RDL-CLEAR’s writers’ workshop held recently at the Cantingas
River Resort in Brgy. Taclobo, San Fernando in the island of Sibuyan,
the fellows came to an understanding that only by engaging the powers of
the imagination in the native language the writer was born into could
culture—the traditional and not the one imposed by modernity—survive,
flourish, and develop.
On the first night, for
example, Ismael Fabicon, who is the leading light of the workshop,
engaged a group of the fellows on the ‘forgotten customs’ of San
Fernando. Such an engagement required Manong Ish and this writer to ask
a lot of probing questions and to dig deeper into the writers’ memory of
their community’s way of life.
This exercise was
productive. The young aspiring writers, who most likely grew up watching
Korean tele-novelas and sending text messages through their
mobile phones instead of reading Francisco Sionil Jose, Ophelia
Dimalanta, or our very own Manuel F. Martinez, had a grand time mining
the recesses of their experiences to remember that Romblon has a rich
language and cultural heritage.
I said that the
Spaniards, through the power of the musket and the cross, might have
subjugated the Romblomanon but not entirely. The Americans might have
introduced us to the theory and practice of modern education and
medicine but there remains in our present way of life old customs and
traditions that are undisturbed by the corrosive effects of
globalization. It is these customs and traditions, spoken in the local
languages, that the writer fellows have the responsibility to write
about.
In healing the sick, for
example, there are still some people of San Fernando who cling to the
pre-Spanish animist ritual of bi-aw, the practice of paying
ransom, usually food or wine, in exchange for the return of the health
of a sick person. Bi-aw arises from the belief that some natural
spirits cause a person to get sick, either because he or she courted the
spirits’ disfavor or he or she failed to ask permission before setting
foot as a new arrival in a new place.
Now, this tradition
resonates in importance because in the Asi culture, bi-aw
has a counterpart, which is bawi. At first glance, the
alliteration of the four-letter world could be intriguing if not for the
fact that bawi in Sibale, Banton and Odiongan involves the same
essence as the bi-aw of San Fernando, that is, paying ransom to
the natural world’s spirits, whoever they are, in return for the good
health of a sick person. It is true still in many places in Romblon for
the elders to warn children or visitors not to offend the spirits
whenever they go to or pass by a new place, or scatter salt in an
unfamiliar territory.
In the Asi
culture, nagahoy or naatupiling is not a phenomenon but an
unexplainable truth. In Sibale, for example, it is widely believed that
some real persons could unintentionally make one’s head throb (naglipong
ka uyo), or one’s stomach sick (naghapros ka suyok-suyok),
particularly if the person with gahoy is perspiring and meets the
victim and looked him directly in the eyes. The cure is not only some
whispered ‘oracion’ but an unhealthy dose of yaway
(literally saliva) wiped on the pusor (navel) or the yupa
(temple). This is the case when the ailment is only atupiling. If
the victim was nagahoy, the cure is buga, a mixture of
Manong Ish’s mam-on consisting of bunga (betel nut),
budo (buyo leaf), and apog (lime). One may ask: Does the sick
gets well? There is no doubt as to their efficacy that even the lowly
barangay health worker and the schooled municipal doctor recommend these
traditional cures.
Today, there are, to be
sure, many other similar customs and traditions that have not been
‘recovered’. This is the operative word, for these customs and
traditions were there in the first place. They were not lost but have
been only forgotten due to non-use and non-practice. The culprit is the
culture foreign to the Romblomanon, the borrowed language of Tagalog and
English that have brought with them practices alien to the Romblomanon
soul, imposed by the brute force of government policy and the pervasive
influence of the commercial mass media, two of the controlling domains
of language. It is no wonder that many Romblomanons today roam the
streets spouting a language and culture not their own. They have without
identity, and with an outlook vastly detached from the yearnings and
longings, the visions and dreams, of their ancestors. It is no wonder
the Romblomanon soul is lost, like a headless chicken unable to figure
out the four corners of the land.
This is not to say that
Romblomanon writers should forsake or abhor using Tagalog or English.
Tagalog is a necessity and English is the global language of commerce.
In Luzon where Tagalog is widely used, it would be awkward, if not
downright foolish, for a Romblomanon to go to the grocery and say:
Mabakay it kinurkor. We write and speak English in the halls of the
United Nations and in reading Francis Fukuyama, Shakespeare, or Emily
Dickinson. But between an alien language and a language where one first
sucked the milk of a mother’s breast, the latter must occupy a primacy
in living one’s limited earth life.
What is the cure for the
provincial amnesia, the intolerable forgetting that has plagued many
Romblomanons today with regard their rich cultural legacy? For the
fellows who attended RDL-CLEAR’s writers’ workshop, the prescription is
language. And it is not English or Tagalog, which do not capture the
essence of the Romblomanon soul. It is Asi, Onhan, and
Ini, the languages of our ancestors that have enabled them to live
under the stars unhindered by the baggage of modern wants and necessity.
These are the tools that have afforded them the luxury of enjoying
nature’s bounty without greed and in rendering their animated life in
full local color. These are the tongues that have enabled them to
express their feelings with the precision of their emotions and
longings. The Asi, Onhan, and Ini are the languages
they used to relate their stories, which we have forgotten but which we
must now recover and remember if we are to repossess our dreams. |
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