HONORING THE DEAD AND SPIRITS OF ANCESTORS IN TABAWAN

First of two parts

Every year, residents of Tabawan Island gather for one of their important celebrations, the Pagkamboan. Those living or working in other places but who trace their roots to the island return home to be with families and friends for a tradition of honoring and remembering the dead and the spirits of ancestors, practiced even before the arrival of Islam in Tawi-Tawi.

Tawi-Tawi, a cluster of islands between the Sulu and Celebes Seas, is the southernmost province of the Philippines, predominantly populated by the Sama, the seafaring people of Maritime Southeast whose traditional home range also includes parts of Malaysia and Indonesia. The Philippine Sama is generally grouped into the land-dwelling Sama Diliya and the mostly sea-dwelling Sama Dilaut, who are known for their houses built over the water and standing on stilts. The Sama also identify themselves by their home islands/communities, such as Sama Sibutu, Sama Laminusa, and Sama Tabawan.

I have been coming to Tawi-Tawi for several times, fascinated with the Sama ways of life and traditional cultures. It started in 2018 to observe and document the igal or traditional Sama dance with its master dancer Sakinur-ain Mugong Delasas, who became our motherly figure as we explore the islands and its people, in Bongao and Simunul islands, and boat-building traditions in Sibutu Island. We made an excursion to Sitangkay, the southernmost town, a community connected by narrow walkways and waterways. This time, we were going to Tabawan Island upon the invitation of Omarjan Ibrahim Jahuran, writer, cultural worker and Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative of the municipality of South Ubian.

After about two hours on a speedboat from Bongao, the capital of Tawi-Tawi, that sliced through the Celebes Sea, we arrived in Tabawan Island, the main island of South Ubian, in the northeast part of the province, a day before the Pagkamboan, which fell on 5 March this 2024. Pagkamboan is celebrated three to five days before the start of Ramadan, a time for fasting in Islam, in the Islamic lunar month of Nisfu.

The Sama Tabawan live in about four residential clusters, in houses built on stilts over the water, on the shores of the island, leaving most of the land area uninhabited. The Sama are afraid of ghosts which haunt the land but cannot cross the water, joked Jahuran, who has been advocating for the safeguarding of the heritage and traditions of his home island including the Pagkamboan.

The old traditional structures are concentrated in the barangay of Tang-ngah in the island’s largest community at the southwest shore, where there are old communal houses and the langgal, a traditional structure that serves as the community’s masjid, connected by a communal area or walkway, called letehan, made of planks of wood. This area can be considered the heritage heart of Tabawan Island where a few examples of the luma maheya or big house, the luma pagkamboan or house of the ancestors, and there luma pangatas or commissioned longhouse still stand. They were built in the vernacular Sama architecture with layang-layang embellishments, standing on wooden stilts above the water like the rest of the settlement and used for different communal purposes including gathering and resting. The langgal, a meeting hall for rituals, prayers and other religious activities of the community, said to be built in the early 20th century, remains to be the most important structure in the community. This cluster is surrounded by homes and a jetty port.

Inside a luma maheya, Jahuran introduced us to the village elders or traditional leaders to pay our respects and to ask permission to observe, participate in and document the Pagkamboan the following day, bearing a gift (money is preferred).

While the Pagkamboan is still practiced in some communities in Tawi-Tawi, Tabawan’s celebration is most likely the biggest and most vibrant, and the Pagkamboan is one of the most compelling manifestation of the ancient practice of ancestor veneration that survives until today among the Sama people.

Ancestor worship or veneration was common in the precolonial belief systems of many ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. It was almost wiped out with the arrivals of Islam and Christianity, both frowning upon or disallowing the beliefs and their practices.

Many believe that Islam was brought to Tawi-Tawi by Sheikh Karim’ul Makhdum, said to be an Arab missionary from Syria, who arrived in 1380 in Simunul Island (Some say in Sibutu Island).

However, ancestor veneration still survives in some form or way, mostly syncretized with the prevalent religion, especially among the Sama Tabawan. It is in our way of life, said Jahuran. And this can be observed in everyday life, not just during pagkamboan.

While at the house of the grandmother of Almunshar Alpha Astarani, one of our guides, we noticed an empty room, reserved for the spirits of the family’s ancestors, should they decide to stay or rest for a while. While it is not forbidden to stay or sleep in the room, no one uses the room. The big houses for the ancestors, the luma pagkamboan, have similar purposes.

An important part of Pagkamboan is visiting the grave site, which is located on Bumbun at the northwest tip of Tabawan. Yearly, Tabawan residents make a pilgrimage to the grave site to take care of the graves of their dead and perform rituals. Even the day before Pagkamboan, some residents visited the site to avoid the crowd.

While most of Bumbun is dedicated to the Muslim dead, there is an area for the Catholic dead. The town has a very small population of Catholics and even Chinese-Filipino. Some residents tell stories about a creature that prowls Bumbun Island. The kangkang laut, which looks like a large monitor lizard or even a dinosaur, is said to emerge at midnight to dig up fresh graves and devour the newly buried dead.

The day before the Pagkamboan, residents were already preparing, particularly cooking the two foods that are always present during the special occasions — the panyam and the jah — both made of rice flour.

We met sixty-one-year-old Jannatun Jahuran, who has finished making trays of panyam.

“This is the panyam to be included in the dulang (food tray) for the prayer to our ancestors tomorrow that we call kamboan, during the month of Sha’aban. Panyam and jah should always be present for the prayer ritual during kambo’an especially here in our community, in the barangay of Tang-ngah. We should offer these rice cakes for our dead ancestors,” she explained in her native Tabawan dialect of the Central Sama or Sinama language.

Also called panyalam, panyam is also prepared and consumed by the Malays and Bajaus of Malaysia and Indonesia, who call it penyaram or pinjalam, as well as by several Philippine Muslim ethnic groups such as the Tausug and the Maguindanao, especially during celebrations.

In a nearby house, we observed another woman cook the cake. Rice flour, brown sugar and coconut milk were mixed to form the batter, which was then fried in oil. Using a wooded stick, she made dents on the edges of the cake to make it look like a flower.

At another house, we met twenty-eight-year-old Marhaini Asande, making the jah. She said she learned how to cook jah from her neighbor.

“The rice flour batter is poured inside the hulayan (suspended coconut shell container with holes). The wooden handle of the hulayan is struck several times so that the batter drops to the boiling cooking oil inside the frying pan evenly,” she explained in Central Sama. “Once it is cooked, it is folded and formed into a roll with the use of gagayu (wooden spatula).”

Also called lokot-lokot, tinagtag and jaa, jah is also prepared by the Tausug, Meranaw, Maguindanao, Iranun, and other ethnic groups. Called kuih jala or roti jala, which literally means “net cake” or “net bread” in Malay, it is a popular snack in Malaysia.

With the panyam and the jah already prepared and the sun slowly setting in a blinding blaze over the water with rays piercing through cracks and slits of the langgal and the luma maheya, residents readied themselves for more cooking and the trip to the grave site tomorrow.

(To be continued)