Whang Od and Her Village
On Whang Od, the oldest living tribal tattooist in the Philippines, and her village
She sighed.
She was crouching on the floor, shifting some leaves with her frail-looking wrinkled hands. She then slit the middle of one elongated leaf, which looked like pandan, and inserted the base of another. She repeated the process until she made a beautiful mandala of leaves. She then pushed the heart of the foliage into the sooty bottomed casserole and then poured rice grains in it.
“It is her own way to avoid the rice getting scorched,” Tommy, Whang Od’s frequent visitor, explained. She cut the pinewood into splinters and fed them in the hearth. The fire illuminated her tattooed arms.
“You were lucky to see that,” Tommy looked as amused as I did. He was there with Ruel, another photographer from Baguio. I saw their black-and-white works on villages and tribes adorning the walls of Yoghurt House at Sagada. They were at Buscalan once again to document and oversee the whole process of disassembling a traditional Ifugao house Ruel bought from a local family for about P60, 000.
Again, Whang Od sighed.
