Face of Death Changes in Benguet Upland Town

KIBUNGAN, Benguet – His village mates expected him to be given his last respects and buried the traditional way. That meant his corpse, donning only a red turban and a g-string, would be fastened into a makeshift chair surrounded by bonfires within a seven or nine-day wake. And his corpse would be entombed beside a boulder or at the mouth of a cave.

Such practice was specially accorded to someone who, during his lifetime, had hosted a series of pedit or traditional feasts during which several pigs besides cattle were offered to the gods and spirits. Under the old tradition of this Kankanaey upland town, the more pedit a person hosted, the higher status he attains in the community.

But many town mates were surprised when Teodoro Bolislis Sr., more known as Lakay (elder) Paguli, died in 2001 at age 91. Instead of a red turban and a brightly-colored dominantly red g-string, the elder’s corpse was made to wear a coat and tie. And he was not made to sit on a chair surrounded by bonfires.

Shortly after the elder died, the son drove to Baguio City to get the services of an embalmer. And the corpse was laid in state inside a pine wood coffin, which was fastened not with nails but with bamboo sticks drilled into the pine lumber. (It is taboo to use metal in a coffin as the corpse is not also allowed to wear any metallic object such as jewelries.)

Embalming was first introduced in this town of 16,000 when Atayoc Bay-an, another elder and Bolislis’ brother-in-law, died in 2000.

“Mayat kayman met baw ay doy guwapo yan doy kaman wat nanaek (Oh, he looks handsome and looks he’s just sleeping),” somebody commented then during the wake of Bolislis.

Bolislis’ three children decided on embalming and on letting their father wear coat and tie because, they said, he was a former municipal mayor.

Religion was another factor. A few years before the elder died, two of his children had just converted to “born-again” Christianity, which seeks to do away with various facets of tradition such as customary burial rites.

But even fundamentalist Christianity cannot totally wipe out old tradition. During Bolislis’ wake, the bereaved family still had to slaughter pigs whose bile and livers some elders “read” for any sign of good or bad omen. After the meat was cooked, somebody prayed the Christian way, but an elder also prayed the traditional way, offering the meat to the gods and ancestral spirits.

Also during the wake, “Amazing Grace” and other church hymns were interspersed with traditional eya-ey chants.

At early dawn during the day of the entombment of Bolislis, elders performed the traditional pabaon during which some rice and meat plus a glass of wine were offered to the spirit of the dead. The food and wine were believed to be the dead person’s packed food as he travels into the spirit world.

But at 8 a.m. a woman pastor led a necrological service for Bolislis before his remains were finally kept in a concrete tomb not far from the backyard of the family’s home.

The next day, the Bolislis family performed the traditional lawit, the last rite during which the family had to procure another pig. Through a traditional priest, the family thanked the gods and spirits and invoked them to help sustain and keep watch over the surviving family members so they could also live long, stay healthy, prosper and be at peace.

When Bolislis’ wife, Ganaya, died in 2005 she was accorded a similar mix of traditional and some Christianity-influenced burial rites. Ganaya’s remains were also kept in a concrete tomb just beside that of her husband’s tomb.

Despite the inroads of Christianity, first by the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant churches and lately by fundamentalist charismatic and evangelical groups, traditional burial rites and age-old spiritual worldviews remain strong in this alpine town 67 kms. north of Baguio City.

One is the belief that the condition of the dead at his tomb or gravesite has something to do with the health condition of the living.

Recently, for example, the coffin of the late Juanito Mayamay, who died a few years ago, had to be repaired after his surviving wife, Payag, got ill. This was the advice of a traditional seer whom the children of Payag consulted.

The coffin of Mayamay, it turned out, was being eaten by termites so his children and relatives had to build a new one. This entailed another ritual during which the family had to procure some pigs to appease not only Mayamay’s spirit but also the gods and other spirits.

As elsewhere in the Cordilleras and other indigenous communities, Kibungan is one community where people still believe that the dead commune and communicate with the living and that life after death is very much part of the life here and now, and not separate.