The Ayta

The incredibly cool thing about my new job is that I'm starting to get invitations from my co-workers to take trips to some pretty amazing places. Like the trip to Tuguegarao that I took last week, I had another cool trip that fell into my lap this week.

I got an email on Thursday from a guy named Roger that read something like, "Hey Dan, I know we don't each other too well, but my wife and I are going back to our former allocation to see the Ayta people. Do you want to come?"

I texted Ellen about it (texting via cell phone is the cheapest and fastest way to communicate), and she said she was cool with it--she was going to be at Faith Academy all day anyway.

So, I jumped in their van at about 5am, and we head off up into the mountains. Roger has a wealth of knowledge about the Ayta people and the surrounding area, and it was fascinating to hear him talk about it.

He explained about how this allocation is very close to Mt. Pinatubo, a volcano that erupted back in 1991. It was one of the biggest natural disasters for that year, and it's eruption closed down the nearby US military base. Surprisingly, it wasn't the lava flow that caused all of the destruction. In fact, there was very little lava at all. Some of the initial destruction came from the dust/sand mixture, or lahar, that rained down, but then all of that turned to mudslides when a typhoon hit 18 hours later.

Anyway, after taking their van down some dirt roads and doing one of those cool river crossings you only see in movies, we arrived in the allocation. I was initially shocked, because these people didn't look like Filipinos at all! Instead of straight hair, theirs was very curly, and their skin was much darker.

Roger told me that some anthropologists think that the Ayta might have emigrated to the Philippines from Africa a looooong time ago, yet there is nothing in these peoples history about boat-making, and their linguistical patterns do not match that of other known African languages. So, basically, nobody knows what's up. What we do know is that they were probably the first people to come to the islands, so if anything, I should be claiming that Filipinos don't look like them.

Roger and his wife Joanne work alongside a group of Ayta translators, and they had some meetings to talk about translation stuff. Since translation isn't really my field of work (although I highly respect those who do), I took advantage of the meeting and explored around some.

I happened upon a young boy who was using a bamboo pole to pull a kind of bean/nut/fruit thing out of a tree, and so I asked him in best Tagalog, "Ano iyon?" ("What is that?") No response. Maybe my Tagalog is not that great, or maybe he hadn't learned much Tagalog yet, or maybe he was just quiet. It's hard to tell in these situations. So I just stood there until he pulled one of these things out of the tree, and then he picked it up and gave it to me.

"Now what?", I thought.

I waited until he pulled another one down, and then he removed the outside husk and started eating it. I did the same and smiled. He walked into his house...I guess he was bored with me. I followed him, but then I came upon a woman who was breast-feeding, and I felt a little uncomfortable. Serves me right, I guess. I shouldn't be sneaking around peoples' houses in any culture.

Some of the Ayta kids gather for a picture.

Roger and Joanne (far left), meeting with some of the Ayta translators (far right).

Note: Currently, the Ayta people only have half of the book of Luke in their own language.