Kalinga - Part VII - Community Unity

There is no shortage of community unity in Buscalan. 

Tending their fields, raising their children, preparing their food, celebrating their rites of passage... most of these village activities are family and community affairs.

Dried tobacco leaves

Taddok dance

Boiled pork shared with whole village

Listen to the beat of the gangsa gongs as the women gracefully make the simple steps of the taddok dance. This video was taken by our travel mate Bruce.

This is the seventh of my Kalinga series from my recent visit into the Butbut tribal village of Buscalan, high up in the terraced mountains in the north of the Philippines. You'll find more about these former headhunters and their amazing tattoos in my earlier posts.

I link with Our World and ABC Wednesday, where the letter of the week is U for Unity.

Kalinga - Part V - Children

This is Part V of my Kalinga series. The posts have been consecutive, so it's easy for you to find Parts I to IV, which contain more information about the province - its landscape, its people, and its history.

In this post I will simply share some of the adorable children I saw in the poor mountain village of Buscalan.

Our group came with presents for the children, useful things like toothbrushes and multivitamins, as well as some candies, a rare treat. These were handed out in small bags, one-by-one, so the children were asked to line up in neat lines.

Minutes later, it started to rain, so all the kids ran for cover and the lines were no more.

Buscalan, Kalinga, 2012

 Wonder where we were? Here's the map.

Today I link with Mosaic Monday and Our World Tuesday.

There will be a Part VI soon.

Markers in the Wilderness

Today's post for Taphophile Tragics and Our World Tuesday is short.

While we were out appreciating the vastness that is the aimag of Hovd...

Mongolia, 2007

... I hardly expected to find this: 

 

No living humans around for miles and miles. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

V is for Vandalism

Vandalism can be simply defined as "willful or malicious destruction of public or private property." Few would argue that smashing windows or burning cars is criminal behavior, no less than trespassing or burglary, subject to prosecution and punishment.

Yet when it comes to graffiti - writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place - a debate has raged for centuries.

Bucharest, 2011

On one end of the spectrum are those who argue that graffiti can be an artful expression of rebellion, an acceptable form of individual, political or social commentary by the powerless and marginalized.

Hardliners on the other end firmly believe that graffiti, totally unlike commissioned or requested wall/public art (like yesterday's post), is an unwelcome sign of anarchy, a loathsome act of disrespect for property, a crime, and certainly never to be called art.

What do you think? Can we discuss artistic or social merit when looking at the graffiti in these photos I took in Bucharest earlier this year? Is there a middle-of-the-spectrum position? Or is it all merely vandalism, period?

Of course graffiti filled spaces are nothing unique to Bucharest. Still I see more of it throughout Europe than in North America, and even less in Asia.

What role does culture play in the acceptance or tolerance of graffiti? I don't know; I'm asking.

(Ne Travaillez Jamais = Never Work)

Municipalities and businesses bear significant costs to clean up graffiti (when they can afford to do so at all). So I wonder whether it would do any good to provide clean and accessible walls for people to come and express themselves (sort of like the ill-fated Democracy Wall in Beijing in 1978)? Or is the illicitness of the vandalism an intrinsic part of the message? Again, just asking.

(La Vie Est Ailleurs = Life Is Elsewhere)

I'm linking with the blogging communities at Our World Tuesday and ABC Wednesday with the letter V.

U is for Uuld

Before I went to Mongolia, I held the unmindful notion that Mongolians were all one ethnic people. I couldn't have been more wrong. 

There are as many as 20 different nationalities and ethnicities, and the aimag (province) of Hovd, where we spent most of our time, is home to as many as 17. Historically, each group speaks a distinct language or dialect and has its own traditional dwelling and settlement pattern, dress and other cultural features such as literary, artistic, and musical traditions.

Today for Our World Tuesday and ABC Wednesday - where the letter of the week is U - I introduce to you a warm and hospitable family of the minority group Uuld (also spelled Ööld). 

The family compound with a traditional ger (tent) and a converted 20-foot container is in the provincial capital of Hovd. 

 Hovd, 2007

We were first invited into the ger. There we met the extended family headed by the patriarch.

Ruth was on a search for unique footwear, but she was only shown modern Mongolian boots. The youngest two generations no longer wear traditional costumes and I wondered (as I often do) whether our globalized world wasn't losing some of its richness.

I asked the mother of the younger boys, "what do you teach your children to make them feel Uuld, as distinct from Mongolian?"

She replied, "We feel both Mongolian and Uuld. We have commonalities with all the ethnic groups, except the Kazakhs, and there is much inter-marriage these days. We may have different accents, but we all now speak dialects of Mongolian."

When we left the ger, she proudly showed us her vegetable garden.

Finally she invited us into the converted metal container. 

Ruth was slightly disappointed not to find her boots, but for all of us meeting this Uuld family gave us a special and unique glimpse into another way of life... yet really, how different is it?

T is for Telephone

These days you rarely walk the length of a town block without seeing a person walking with a cell phone plastered to his or her ear.  Everyone in China – from CEO to driver – is busy.  On the phone.  

Bride & groom, Guangdong, 2006

Face-to-face meetings are blithely interrupted when a cell phone rings, with not the slightest trace of apology.  Your life is in your driver’s hands; all the while his hands are glued to his phone instead of the wheel.  

Even drifting down the little Yulong River on a bamboo raft, our boatman’s burly voice on his phone blasted away our peace and quiet.

Boatman, Guangxi, 2007

It wasn’t always like this.

One morning about 25 years ago, in my early trade consultancy days, my partner and I took the earliest train from Shanghai to Hangzhou to visit a dial caliper factory on behalf of our British client. It was customary in those days for the translator of the factory to greet us at the train station (or airport, as the case would be), but this particular morning, scanning the hustling crowd of bodies in blue Mao suits and black heads all cropped short, we found no familiar face.

There must have been puzzled or searching looks on our faces, because it wasn’t long before a pretty young woman I’d guess to be in her early 20s dressed in the same Mao suit, the same bluntly cut hair as the rest, approached us and asked in hesitant English, “Can I help you?”

We briefly explained the situation and then said, “Perhaps you can help us find a telephone and call the factory?”

“Of course, I will do my best.”

Luck had it that there was a public phone not too far from the station, just across the street. Don’t imagine anything like a telephone booth. In those days this meant an old-style black telephone placed on a tiny wood table outside some commercial establishment, in this case a small filthy private eatery, the kind even I think twice to eat in.

She dialed, found the right person to talk to, spoke a few lines, hung up and turned to us to say, “The factory is only a few minutes from here.  Someone is coming to pick you up.  Please just wait a while.”

We thanked her, with our big western smiles, and then were stunned by her reply. 

“Please don’t thank me.  Today is a very special day for me.  You see, today is the first time I ever use a telephone.  So I must thank you.”

Whew.

Another time, another reality.  But just twenty five years ago.

Every now and then I still wonder what she is doing today.  But whatever it is, I’d bet my last yuan she is carrying a cell phone.

:::

This story joins Our World Tuesday and ABC Wednesday.

S is for Surprise

4:30 am

“It’s going to be a good day,” Baagii says, grinning broadly as she enters our ger (nomadic tent) at the crack of dawn to rouse us. “I have many surprises for you!”

Baagii, our spirited guide in Mongolia, is the star of our fifth day’s adventure in Hovd. It’s a long, entirely true story, necessarily made short(er) for this post. (Words in bold gray are links to directly related posts.)

The first surprise of the day – which Baagii did not plan – is that Magsar, our driver, fails to appear at camp at the appointed time. An inauspicious sign? Yet some hours later arrive he does, hurtling towards us in the dependable old Russian van that’s been delivering us to diverse corners of this remarkable aimag (province), leaving a cloud of dust behind him.

Hovd, 2007

12:00 pm

After some hours on the road taking us southeast from the capital, quite in the middle of nowhere, Magsar stops at the base of an unremarkable rocky mound and Baagii summons us to climb it.

Baagii and Sergelen

Turns out this hill is chockfull of ancient pictographs of animals dating back to 3500 BC.  Cool!

Our next stop is to say hello to a family of goat herders. Baagii sits down with the women to milk the goats with complete ease and surprising dexterity.

2:30 pm

A few hours down the road when we break to answer nature’s call in the most charming outhouse, our local guide Sergelen shows us more rock art and takes photos for scientific record. 

Onwards. We have not seen much vegetation or water this day, so this little stream with a few trees delights us. 

As the van crosses the stream, intrepid travel mate Pam squeals, “I love driving through water!” My immediate retort with a laugh, “Better wait till we get out of it” is in vain; the van smoothly glides over to the other side.

That is where we soon find another of Baagii’s surprises: the Khoit Tsenkher Cave… or perhaps I should say first: the climb up to this cave! The parked van is bottom right of this image; the cave top right.

We are enticed by tales that the cave is rich with Stone Age pictorials, pointing to cultured settlements here in prehistoric times. Our party of middle-agers huff and puff to the top. Magsar and Sergelen are the first to reach the entrance, with me and my camera not far behind.

Baagii bravely scours the cave for evidence of the promised 15,000-year-old paintings…

…but in the end all we find is graffiti left by idiots visitors who preceded us.

I learn later that almost all the rock art in this important cave – which made the Tentative List of World Heritage Sites – has been defaced or covered in dust. So the only timeless treasure we see is this magnificent view.

We descend only slightly disappointed. And return to the side of the stream to savor a late picnic lunch and rest.

We continue onwards, not knowing our final destination for the day, open to being surprised. 

6:20 pm

As it happens, we never make it. We reach another stream, but this time we don’t get to the other side. When the van stops dead, our hearts skip a beat. This is my view out the left window.

One by one we climb out of the van and gingerly walk back through the rocky stream, thigh-deep in water, whence we came. Once all our feet are safely back on terra firma, I look at the van and see this.

Well, so now what? Can’t exactly call a taxi. Can’t call anyone; there’s no cellular network out here.

The boys look frazzled and offer no solution. Baagii looks calm and tells us, “Please just wait. I will go get help.” And off she goes, across the river. The rest of us… wait. Several go for a long walk, hoping to meet a herder, anyone, along the way. Others read, or meditate, or perhaps pray.

I watch Baagii in the distance. She vanishes around the mountain.  Exactly one hour after leaving us, I behold her in admiration as she appears on a horse and gallops away to disappear again around another bend.

In the meantime, I see Magsar and Sergelen across the stream when a vehicle approaches them. It stops; there is a discussion, and what? – the jeep drives off without them! Later I hear they were not willing to help, but I’d like to think – being in this über-hospitable land – that I just missed something in the translation.

Never mind, Baagii to the rescue! Again it is an hour later, exactly two hours since the van stopped midstream, when I spot her with the rescue team.

8:45 pm

It is this ragtag team of boys and men with Baagii and yours truly (in red) who manage in about 20 minutes to jiggle and grunt and 1-2-3 push… or make that rock and roll! this baby backwards to shore.

[Photo taken by my dear friend Ruth Lor Malloy]

As Baagii and I stand by the van still in the water, I assure her no one is upset. She is visibly relieved, beams me her dazzling smile and exclaims, “This was my surprise!” We both break out in a roar of laughter.

Back on shore, they decide to give the van time to dry out. We express our appreciation to the rescue team with small gifts we had brought to give along the way.

After dinner is prepared and eaten, the next question is whether this clunker can be made to start. While we hold our breath, Magsar gets behind the wheel, turns the key… and sputter, spurt - water squirts from the exhaust pipe - cough, cough… and vrooooom! Amazing!

The crowd claps with shrieks of glee. I turn to Baaggii and say, “Now no more surprises.”

We leave the stream at 9:40 pm and arrive safely back to camp three hours later.

This watery adventure full of surprises is linked with Our World Tuesday, ABC Wednesday (where the letter is S), Watery Wednesday and Outdoor Wednesday.