One of the Philippines’s most well-known traditions is the bayanihan, which many painters have depicted in canvass in the form of a nipa hut being moved from one place to another, on the shoulders of a group of people working in harmony and unison.
This image of the tradition is what is etched in many Filipinos’—and foreigners’—minds, in addition to that of another kind of bayanihan—the one that’s the name of a Filipino group, the Bayanihan Dancers, famous for their artistic rendition of traditional dances.
Bayanihan has become rare, been lost. Nowadays, nobody relocates their houses anymore, perhaps for lack of relocation sites. Land has become scarce and besides, many houses are already built of concrete.
So, the tradition has died, but the word, or its spirit, has gotten another meaning, which is what remains. Bayanihan has evolved to mean neighborly cooperation, a demonstration of communal unity.
Bayanihan as a tradition of the Tagalogs has a strict purpose: to remove and relocate a house.
To the Asi, the bayanihan’s equivalent—the katipon and its twin, the ayadon—however, meant more than relocating a house. They mean getting the work done gaily and quickly through voluntary cooperation.
The katipon is an old Asi tradition. It involves calling the people to assemble in a certain day of the week, usually a Saturday or Sunday, to work together on a certain project, a building maybe, or a seawall, or a bridge.
Katipon is a noun formed from the prefix ka- which is the equivalent of the English article ‘the’ and the word tipon, interchangeably used in the Asi language as a transitive verb or an adjective. It means ‘gather’. Thus, literally, katipon means ‘the gathering’.
Like in the bayanihan, volunteers in a katipon are not paid, but they are fed. Like in the bayanihan, the atmosphere in a katipon is fiesta-like.
In Sibale, one of the most notable infrastructures built through katipon is the Sibale Academy, a private high school founded in 1964.
Some other landmarks in the island built through this voluntary cooperative tradition have already been destroyed, but those islanders who participated in the katipon when these landmarks were erected recall with a sense of pride and melancholy that the tradition is the highest expression of Sibalenhon unity. I agree.
The ayadon is another cooperative tradition, but smaller in scale. It developed from the philosophy that the Asi hates to be alone and prefers to work in company with others. Through ayadon, getting the work done, such as weeding out the farm, or building a house, could be much easier, quicker and less tedious for in this tradition labor is shared and volunteered.
Thus, in ayadon, an Asi would work in the farm of a neighbor and get paid in return by that neighbor also working in his farm after. It’s a kind of ‘work-for-work’ arrangement that the Sibalenhons have found not only to be efficient and fun, but also rewarding.
Neighborliness, friendships, and camaraderie are the instant benefits derived from these two ancient traditions. In the long term, katipon and ayadon instill cultural pride and reinforce the Sibalenhons’ roots and identity as Asi.
Now, while the bayanihan tradition may have been relegated to memory, katipon and ayadon are seeing a revival—resurgence, if you will—thanks to the effort of Sibale’s mayor, Lemuel Cipriano, to employ these traditions as major tools of development.
Do I see katipon and ayadon incorporated as strategies in the country’s Medium-Term Development Plan? Why not?
Cipriano, who does his work without fanfare but with maximum effect, has been conscious since day one of his election about the positive impact of communal unity and cooperation, and had been at pains on how to harness the Sibalenhons’ talents to push to a higher level their economic situation.
Shortly after Typhoon Frank devastated Sibale in June 2008, Cipriano, realizing the enormity of the challenge to quickly restore lost agricultural productivity and repair damaged infrastructure, did something that many local officials in Romblon hadn’t have the slightest idea of doing. He summoned the Sibalenhons’ communal spirit and rallied them to contribute their share in rebuilding the typhoon-ravaged island through the old tradition of katipon, albeit in a modified form.
“Instead of complaining while waiting for promises of assistance,” he writes, “the people of Sibale, ever resilient and resourceful, took the initiative by themselves in partially rebuilding their houses using available local materials.”
Cipriano’s practical values and serious work ethic led him to successfully implement a Food-for-Work Program. The program involved the distribution of food packs donated by San Miguel Corporation, matched in kind by the local government unit, to the Sibalenhons who volunteered to rehabilitate damaged electricity lines, repair houses, rebuild washed-out roads, clean-up coastal areas, and replant mangroves, fruit trees, coconuts, bananas and other crops.
“For every food pack containing rice, sardines, noodles, cooking oil, and laundry bar, we required the recipient to plant a minimum of ten coconut seedlings and 20 banana tubers in their own land,” he reported to the regional office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
“But most of them planted more than the minimum, and even today, they continue to plant not only coconuts and bananas but other crops as well,” the mayor added.
What caused the Sibalenhons’ sudden, mad-like fascination for planting? I guess it’s because they had been handed a tool to do it. “Empowered,” as the mayor says. Cipriano, early in his term, distributed hundreds of suyot, the Asi word for trowel, to the people. He is Sibale’s Suyot King and this title has a positive connotation. I love it. The Suyot King is over-matched to, say, a Huyot Queen. Any Asi would understand what I mean.
Through the months of July to September, the people, led by their hardworking chief executive, labored to get back Sibale back on its feet. The result was nothing short of a miracle. The Food-for-Work Program saw 7,000 coconuts and 14,000 banana tubers planted, apart from leading to the full rehabilitation of the island.
Mayor Cipriano’s estimates, however, are higher. “I think we have planted 10,000 coconuts and 20,000 bananas all over the island,” he said.
The Egyptians built their pyramids by holding slaves under the control of the whip. The Chinese erected the Great Wall through forced labor; the Aztecs, their Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, through thousands of lives offered to the Aztec gods. The Spaniards sustained the Galleon Trade by building ships through the indentured polo, another form of forced labor.
The Sibalenhons are building their economy through the katipon and ayadon, and they’re having some fun.
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