The Vanishing Batak Tribe

“We fill it with five packs of matches and BOOM!” explained one of the Filipino boys.

Dr. Fernandez told me the tribal people also had a new invention called a pig bomb. They cut the heads off of several packs of matches and wrapped them in tape with broken glass. The lethal bundle was then inserted into a piece of fruit and left in the jungle. When an animal bites it, his head explodes.

The village had recently enacted a program of collecting a nominal entrance fee from guests, which we gladly paid. We had also brought several kilos of rice, coffee, and sugar as gifts. Additionally, we had to pay Elicio 300 pesos for the interview. I also paid one old man for sitting for a portrait. As we were leaving Elicio informed me that we were expected to pay 100 pesos per photo we shot in the village. There were four of us with digital cameras, snapping away. I am all in favor of tribes earning money, but this was outrageous. I made a donation of several hundred pesos to the community coffers, and signaled that this was the end of the interview. As we drove back to town, I wondered if the Batak would get any of that money or if Elicio was raiding the cash register.

My second contact with the Batak was more positive. The Tag Balay volunteers set up a make-shift medical aid station, for Dr. La Guardia, another station for gifts, and a third for food. After Lorenzo and I said our hellos, the next person I talked to was Burt, a Tagbanua. He wore a blousy shirt, like a pirate, and loose trousers, with a huge bolo knife on his belt. Burt was noticeably taller than the Batak. In addition to being literate in Tagalog, he spoke excellent English.

“I was born in a tribal village like this one.” He told me, with a kind of nostalgia. The tone of his voice, and the fact that he was hanging around the Batak village, suggested that he missed some aspects of the wild, natural days of his youth. “I had no shirt and no pants until I went to the Catholic school. They taught me to read and write and to wear clothes.”

Now Burt is a farmer, with his own house, in the Tagbanua village, near the highway.  “The Batak still live in the jungle, but the Tagbanua moved to town because we want to live like everyone else.”

Lorenzo and some other old men were doing their war dance, waving their wooden bolos, dancing around the drumming women. As a martial artist, it was interesting to me that the postures and positions of the war dance, done with two large bolos, one in each hand, looked like the Filipino stick-fighting martial art of Arnis (also called Kali or Escrima). What was interesting, however, was that the dance was only ceremonial, and the men would never practice striking with the bolo. In fact, the martial art, if they had ever known it, had been lost long ago, and only this vestige remained.

“Mayor Hagedorn is a good man, he does everything for the people. I am glad Tag Balay comes here to help them.” Said Burt. “Last time I came here they were all passed out on the floor, sick with malaria.”

The farmer’s life was obviously healthier than living in the jungle. Burt looked to be half as old as Lorenzo, but in actuality, they were probably about the same age. He told me he had 14 children by five wives. “They are all grown now. Some live in Manila, and some in Canada. We live exactly like city people now.”

Marifi’s team of volunteers were handing out toys to the Batak children and cookies to everyone. Very interesting was that as soon as they saw the toys, the children knew they were for them. But, coming from a society that had absolutely nothing, the kids had no clue how to play with toys. Action Rangers, cars, baby dolls, yo-yos and balls had no place in the jungle. The children were walking around holding them and looking at them. In most of the lean-tos the entire family was gathered around staring at the new toys, in their decorative packages. There were also rattles and shaking and grasping toys for the infants. But no one knew which ones were for babies and they would just as likely be played with by a middle-aged head of a family. Or more accurately, they would be held and stared at by a middle-aged head of a family.

The bright colors were such a stark contrast to the green and brown of the forest. One boy had a ball but didn’t know to play catch. He just carried it around from family to family, showing it off. One of the Tag Balay college kids took the ball and threw it to the boy. But the boy had no concept of catching. The ball just hit him, bounced off his chest and fell on the ground. A little girl had a baby doll, which she tried to play with, in spite of it still being in the plastic bag. It made crinkling noises when she hugged it. The same was true of the toy cars which were never removed from their packages.

One of the Tag Balay guys told me. “I brought some toys to a village two years ago. When we came back, a year later, the toys were still new. They were still in the original packages and the family just displayed them, like a decoration in their lean-to.”

I took the Power Ranger from one boy and made it fly, making “Woosh! Woosh!” noises. The whole family laughed hysterically and then the boy tried to imitate me. Soon the whole troupe of children were trying it. I decided they thought flying, with “woosh” noises was the only game that could be played with a Power Ranger. Maybe two years later, they would still be doing the “woosh.” Maybe they would call it the Antonio Game. Perhaps it would become a cult, and I could be the leader of a movement…. My imagination tends to run away from me when I am in the jungle for more than ten minutes.

Marifi told me a lesson she learned from the Batak. “In a nomadic society, possessions are a burden.”

On some level, wasn’t this true for all of us? The things you own end up owning you. You become a slave to your car or house, working to make payments. A monk once taught me that possessions were a chain that prevented your soul from reaching the next level.

A lesson I learned from the Batak children was that it didn’t occurred to them to make Power Rangers fight. Dr. Fernandez words rang true. “Violence is just not a part of their ethos.”

While the Tag Balay guys tried to teach the children to play yo-yo, most of the Batak adults lined up to be examined by Dr. LaGuardia.

“The most common problems in communal living situations like these are infectious diseases like TB, and then disease specific to living in the jungle like malaria,” explained Dr. LaGuardia. “Internal and external parasites are also to be expected. They all have skin diseases, but we didn’t receive a donation of skin medicines.” The doctor confided in me, only half jokingly, “I am afraid to leave the Batak with ointments and pills because they may forget my instructions and start eating the ointment.”

All the children had a runny nose and most adults had a cough. “They are vitamin deficient from their poor diet,” diagnosed Dr. LaGuardia. He estimated the average weight of the Batak men to be about 40 kg which was less than all but the smallest Filipina women in our party. It was less than half of my own body weight.

Lorenzo was running a fever and complained of difficulty breathing. Most patients turned out to have lung infections. Dr. LaGuardia said, “It could be from environment. It could be from the smoky fire. Many of these diseases would disappear if they would learn to wash with soap and water.”