Listening to the bamboo whispers

MANILA, Philippines — The Hanunuo Mangyans of Mindoro teach their children how to engage with people in the community and handle life’s troubles indirectly, by using metaphors. Young men court women or a relative bids a final farewell with the help of an ambahan, a rhythmic poetic expression of seven syllables per line, in three rows or more.

This is inscribed with a pointed knife in Surat Mangyan, a centuries-old pre-Spanish script, on living bamboo plants along a path, and on cut bamboo tubes or slats. “It is the Philippine equivalent of Japanese haiku which has 5-7-5 syllables per line,” says Lolita Delgado Fansler, president of the Mangyan Heritage Center (MHC). 

“From the more than a dozen scripts documented by Padre Chirino, SJ in 1603, we have three remaining scripts being used today. But like the 19th century Ilocanos, Tagalogs and Visayans who had given up their respective scripts in favor of the Roman alphabet, the young Mangyans today would rather text,” she laments.

Just as others are advocating to increase the number of tamaraws, endemic to the island of Mindoro, the MHC is dedicated to ensuring the continued survival of the script and ambahan.

To promote these Mangyan treasures during Indigenous Peoples Month in October, the MHC collaborated with Filipinas Heritage Library, Carl Jung Circle Center and Galeria Paloma to exhibit at the Ayala Museum old bamboo with minute Mangyan script, vintage and recent photographs, Mangyan weaves and baskets. Visual artists selected the ambahan that inspired or touched them, and expressed their emotions as an ikebana arrangement, a rocking chair from the wood of a demolished movie house, a hospital respirator, a canoe, glass painting; as well as in oils, acrylic, charcoal and watercolor.

One of the most eye-catching art pieces was “Resurrection Gallery” by Arlene Barbaza and Binggoy de Ocampo. The artists used a discarded respirator machine with an old bamboo with surat Mangyan attached to the intravenous (IV) stand. Inspired by Ambahan 235, this symbol of death is transformed into a symbol of life; a metaphor for poetry as food for the soul.

The MHC launched, also at the Ayala Museum, Bamboo Whispers, a book with the best 100 Mangyan ambahans in two scripts – Mangyan and the Roman alphabet – and in four languages – Mangyan, with translations by poets in Filipino, English and Spanish.

Sol Laviña, the poet wife of former Spanish ambassador to the Philippines Luis Arias, fell in love with the ambahans in Antoon Postma’s Mangyan Treasures, and voluteered to translate them all into Spanish. Her generosity and enthusiasm triggered the idea of producing this special collection of an indigenous people’s poetry in the three languages once considered official in the Philippines until Spanish was removed in by the 1987 Constitution.

The late Dutch anthropologist Antoon Postma – who was married to a Mangyan – spent over 50 years studying the ancient Mangyan script. On his 80th birthday in 2009, Postma was appointed Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, “for his valuable contributions to society.”

Postma and his Mangyan researchers were the first to document in audio over 20,000 ambahans chanted by Mangyans, transcribing and translating the formal ambahan terms into the colloquial language, all the while creating a massive ambahan and Mangyan vocabulary. The Mangyan Heritage Center has given a digitized audio copy of all these ambahans to the Library of Congress in Washington.

Ambahans are unique because of their communal authorship, with no individual Mangyan laying claim to provenance of this shared legacy. This is why Postma enumerated the ambahans he translated into English, because the poets never signed their names. Likewise, Bamboo Whispers, because of the kindhearted people who offered their services for the psychic income they would receive, has also become a collective product of many Filipinos and foreigners.

Any profits from selling Bamboo Whispers and the artwork exhibited at the Ayala Museum will go to the MHC’s program that trains and supports teachers to teach Mangyan script and poetry in schools.

This book and the exhibit prove that mountain-based Mangyans living a life different from mainstream Filipinos have been able to express themselves in ambahans that people from all walks of life and ages can relate to, be touched and inspired by, and learn from, even to this day.

In school year 2012-2013, the Surat Mangyan script was taught in five Hanunuo-Mangyan schools through the financial support from the Ala-Ala Foundation and the US embassy in Manila.

The project covered additional five schools in school year 2013-2014, through a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts under its School of Living Traditions program.   

Through a grant from the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines, the Surat Mangyan and Ambahan were taught in 11 Hanunuo Mangyan Schools not covered by the previous project in school year 2014-2015. 

“The Hanunuo-Mangyan has a chance of living, that’s why we’re trying to promote. So any money we get from selling these paintings and books will go to a program that teaches teachers who teach Mangyan script and poetry,” Fansler says.

Bamboo Whispers is available at Bookmark, Ayala Museum Shop, Fully Booked, Mt. Cloud (Baguio City) and the office of the Mangyan Heritage Center in Calapan, Mindoro. Message MHC at https://www.facebook.com/MHCOfficial/ or email [email protected] or [email protected]