People always say, “Your home will always be the place for which you feel the deepest affection, no matter where you are.” It is no wonder why many who left the place where they grew up, where they’ve made memories during their childhood – would long to be back home. Recently, I visited a relative who has the book of the anthropologist, Harold Conklin titled, The Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao. I asked him if I could read it and he agreed. He showed me the book. It was a large 20×20-inch almost two inches thick book complete with the rice cycle of Ifugao including maps with elevation indications. I am not sure what the other indicators or lines were but I sure was confused looking at the map. I saw names of places that sounded familiar to me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The names were old and original. I describe it as original because as time passed, the names of these places changed. Some were cut short, some were changed, some were new, while some – due to abandonment – were forgotten.
In the book, I saw a black and white photo of Banaue taken in 1903 and it looked ethereal. Being born in Banaue (although I didn’t spend much of my childhood there), I knew it almost like the back of my hand. I know the colors of the mountains, the different hues of green, the shapes even. I know the cold yet soothing feeling when the fog hits your skin and how you shiver. I know the rhythm of the river – the sound it makes when the water hits a rock. I am familiar with the different scents of Banaue all year round. The best is when the rice grains are ripe and ready for harvest. I can close my eyes, imagine the picture and it’s the closest I can get to travelling back in time.
I could go on describing what I know of Banaue, but I also know that there is so much more that I do not know. Since graduating from high school in 2004, I only went back to Banaue just a few times. One of the saddest realities I am facing now is that after years of being away from my home, I can’t make a straight conversation using purely our local language, borrowed words always get mixed.
After scanning through all the pages in awe, warming myself up in amazement at the amount of knowledge I would learn, I returned it really carefully. I held it like it was a newborn baby, so carefully I tried to not make a sound while I slid it onto the shelf.
It was a great day. Though it was supposed to be a day to do school work, something better happened. That feeling of sadness and joy fueled the eagerness in me to learn more and deeper knowledge about the culture that I nearly chose to forget all for a better and stable life. I remember people talking about how life should be, how they should be financially, mentally, psychologically, physically, spiritually, and all the other ‘callys you can think of, to be fit in all those aspects, all yearning for a “better” life which is all good. But just how much of ourselves, of our roots, and of who we are or were do we need to forget to be better?
