BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 8
Oct 27, 2004
by agnesdv
PRACTICAL ANTHROPOLOGY:
Pandemic
Mana
Pili cut a paper stamp from a whole sheet with xeroxed symbols on it. She
said they were anting-anting symbols with oracions written on the sides. I
looked and it was too small and too blurry to read. She said the spirits
know what’s in there and can read them. She put the ¼ x ¼" paper
stamp on her tongue, wetting it with her saliva, then placed it on a
crying child’s forehead. She then held the baby’s head with both her
hands, whispered something on the top of its head, and kept on blowing
prayers on the crown. The baby continued choking and crying. The mother
was worried; she said the baby had been crying for three days now. I asked
why she didn’t bring her to the nearest health center. Mana Pili said it
wasn’t necessary; she had everything under control and besides, the
center being too far to walk (about half a day’s walk from the mountain)
usually didn’t have the medicines to give out. The father of the baby
nodded, he said he’d been there yesterday but they didn’t have
anything for an infant and that they’d have to bring the baby down to
the city.
We talked about health care in the barrio. The father said they didn’t
have money to buy medicine, one time he had to go to the mayor’s house to
beg for medicine, the mayor wrote a note for him to bring to the municipio
and the clerk told him he’d need to talk to the OIC, then the OIC sent
him back to the clerk with a note, then the clerk gave him a note to bring
to a privately-owned pharmacy store, and there, they gave him his free government-funded
medicine. I asked what the medicine was, he said a decongestant for his
5-year-old son who had the flu. He said his son died of pneumonia a week
later. Mana Pili snickered at me and whispered, it’s because they’ve a
dirty house and don’t take good care of their kids.
Mana
Pili went to the kitchen to get a glass of water (from a bucket) which
came from the river where I knew everyone in that place bathe. She cut
another strip of paper stamp, wet it with her saliva, then placed the
paper on the glass of water and let it steep there as we talked more about
health care. She said, that’s why the people resorted to tambalans
(medicine men/women like her) because the patients are given attention and
are taken care of. I asked if they ever use medicinal herbs, if they knew
the uses of the local plants. She said, some. She went to a cabinet and
took out two bottles with some small twigs and oil in it. She proudly said
that it had snake skin in it from a snake that got trapped in her house,
some few leaves, and some other secret plants. I asked, secret? She said
yes, their trade secret.
She
took out a small empty medicine bottle and poured into it the water she
had prepared earlier with the paper stamp and gave it to the mother. She
then instructed her to let the baby drink a few drops from it when he
starts crying. The mother left and I walked with her downstairs, gave her
P50 and told her to go to the nearest town to buy some cough syrup for the
baby. I also told her to get some papaya leaves and boil it in water, and
let the baby drink a few drops every four hours. The infusion from the papaya leaves
is
good for severe colds, coughs and fever. The mother was only 21 years old
and she already had 3 children aside from the boy that had died from
pneumonia.
I
was doing a research on tambalans that time in a barrio that had about a
population of 150. From their last count there were 20 families in the
area. The barrio was located up in the mountains of W. Samar; it had no electricity,
no water. The road going up was concreted because above the barrio was a
military camp because higher up the military camp was a communist guerilla
camp. At nights, we’d hear guns firing and lots of shouting and running.
Below the barrio were a two-hour walk to a small town and a half-day walk
down to the city. The barrio depended on dugout wells for their drinking
water, or the river -- for those who didn’t have wells -- where they
also bathe. Only the house where I stayed in had a toilet bowl. I went
down every other day to the city, to buy my own food and water supplies
and take my shower at the nuns’ house where I rented out a room.
The barrio had 3 tambalans, two old men who were often in the city making
a living, and Mana Pili who was considered the wealthiest because
she
had a daughter working in Japan. The other people in the barrio were
envious of her because she owned some pigs and some chickens and the
biggest house which she bought in that barrio. But they respected and
feared her because she was a tambalan.
I
went to visit the barangay captain’s family and interviewed him and his
wife about the health care problem in his area. He said, the people there
were just too lazy to plant vegetables and sell the extra to the town
below. He said, with the extra money, they would be able to afford
medicine because they can’t always depend on the mayor. And they
wouldn’t be hungry all the time. I asked if they had herbal plants. The
wife said that she had started a program in the school for the kids to plant
herbal plants and to teach them to identify the plants and their uses. So
we went to look at the garden, there were about 5 varieties including suganda (oregano) for coughs. She said she wasn’t a tambalan but she
used herbs to help heal people. She saw me scratching some bites on my
arm, I explained they were probably from a 'german cockroach' bite while I
was sleeping (they itched and hurt at the same time), she said she
didn’t know the cure for that. I asked if they had a kalachuchi tree and I
asked for five leaves. She climbed one at the school and came back to the
gate (where I was standing because there were some pigs and dogs running
around in the school yard) and she saw me apply the leaves’ white sap to
the bite. I told her the sap heals all sorts of skin wounds, bites, and
diseases, and that a lawyer-herbalist taught me that. From all my travels,
this was the best treatment I’ve ever encountered. She took out her
notebook and wrote some notes on how she could infuse the leaves to
treat measles and chicken pox. I said, it’s better than using guava
leaves (which is the common treatment for skin diseases).
The
barangay captain’s wife told me how Mana Pili can’t heal, how the
people, instead of going to the doctor or buying a P5 decongestant tablet
for a simple cold, go to her instead and end up getting worse. She said,
they believe too much in nature spirits and darahug (enchantment) that for
every fever they get they think it’s because they angered a spirit in
the woods. And she laughed at Mana Pili’s saliva/paper medicine. I asked
if she ever uses the oil that these tambalans give out. She said, yes,
sometimes when she gets a stomachache. It’s just lana (coconut oil) with
herbs, but she prefers to use the manzanilla (chrysanthemum oil) she can buy from the
drugstore.
I
told her about the herbal oils in Siquijor that’s made every Holy Week,
and how it’s distributed nationwide (since the tambalans go there to
make their herbal medicines). I said, it’s where the oils in Quiapo come
from, and she replied that in a remote place like theirs a bottle of
herbal medicine from Siquijor would be sought after by the tambalans. I
laughed and told her how the oils there were made.
A group of tambalans would form a circle, each one with a sack or cloth laid down on the ground in front of them. The master herbalist would then stack all sorts of branches in the center, branches of plants and trees he had gathered early that morning. These came from medicinal plants and trees. One person would pick up a branch, chip off some parts with a knife, hand the branch to the person next to him, he’d pick up another branch, and so on. . . . Each branch would pass by a tambalan and be chipped off, until everyone ended up with the same ingredients with the same amount from all the branches. Then they’d proceed to cook the branches into a black powder concentrate. Each tambalan had his own particular oracion (prayer) and intention for the medicine. If it’s for healing, they’ll cook it that Holy Friday or Sunday; if it’s for witchcraft or voodoo (harming another), they cook it on a Black Saturday. From the same ingredients and for all kinds of illnesses known to man.
pictures from Siquijor
Most of these herbal oils work (both as treatments and as poisons).
Does that mean that it’s really the
intention that’s behind the healing and the harming/poisoning? Is it a
placebo effect or product of faith for those who are healed? Is it
the fear of those who are harmed? Or is it all just plain
ignorance and blind faith?
In the foothills of Mt Banahaw are located most of the country’s cults and religious sects, the mountain being considered a holy mountain because of its strong positive energy. One sect, the Ciudad Mystica, with a Suprema presiding over the community and priestesses instead of priests, has a healing session every weekend in their hospital. I watched their healing session one afternoon. At the end of the wide room was an altar and four priestesses chanting. The patients then proceeded to line up and one woman (the healer) would say a prayer and blow on the patients’ foreheads or crown. For those lying on the beds and couldn’t stand up, the healer would do her “rounds” and do the same crown/forehead blowing ritual. She would then make a sign and pronounce them healed. The people had all sorts of illnesses, severe arthritis, skin ulcers and other unexplained skin diseases, diabetes, heart diseases, cancers, or epileptic attacks attributed to demonic possessions... most of these patients had been diagnosed as incurable by the local medical doctors. I wonder if they were “incurable” because the patients were too poor and would not be able to afford the more expensive hospitals with the specialist doctors in the city.
a sect's hospital
The
Philippines is a country that’s most known outside for its
unconventional healing practices: faith healing, psychic surgery, and, for
the poorer and isolated areas, common tambalan rituals which I mentioned
above. Every barrio, every town and city, has its own tambalans and
manghihilot (untrained massage healers) and faith healers and Christian
healers... For the more middle class, new approaches are being embraced
and used in spas, mostly new agey stuff and Eastern practices. We have
Chinese medicine like acupuncture and Chinese herbals (apocathery),
we’ve pranic healing that’s based on the yoga science (chakras and
prana healing), we’ve pray-overs by Christian and Catholic priests after masses, and
medicinal herbal teas from Thailand, Indonesia, or Japan.
And
while these alternative medicines (both harmful and good) are sought after
by the common people, both the educational and health care system insists
on separating the alternative from the medical science. They attribute ignorance and
superstition to the former, and to the latter superiority and the ultimate
cure. No solutions are ever made or proposed to take out the best of the
two worlds, or at the least, to educate the masses about hygiene and how
the lack of it leads to sickness. We follow Western medicine yet allow the people to seek the
more inexpensive and superstitious form of healing. As the government
derides and laughs at the poorer and uneducated majority for being
ignorant, it does not come up with programs to educate them. As thousands
of caregivers and nurses and doctors are sent abroad every year, our own
sick people are left unattended. Doesn’t that make our leaders as
ignorant as the people they think ignorant?
Posted 10/26/04.
“She put the ¼ x
¼ " paper
stamp on her tongue, wetting it with her saliva, then placed it on a
crying child’s forehead.
She then held the baby’s head with both her hands, whispered
something on the top of its head, and kept on blowing prayers on the
crown.
The baby continued choking and crying.”
scenes from Siquijor