Stitching Generations: The story of Conchita Gilbaliga
She is a source of inspiration to the community as she tells stories about their ancestors and forefathers. Her memory is as excellent as a 13-year-old girl when she was once kept in the crudeness of the outside world
Conchita Gilbaliga.
Born while the nation was recovering from the wounds of the Spanish era and succumbing to the wings of the Americans, this turn of history made a little impact in the mountains of Panay where she lived.
'Binukot'
She didn't know that the sun is round. She only feel its warmth when streaks of rays enter from the small cracks of the bamboo walls of her little cage elevated 10 feet above the ground.
Her black wavy hair covers her frail body like a veil, she has skin as soft as the flesh of the "kapok" fruit, has limbs untouched and smooth as a candle stick and a face that is innocent, fragile and sweet. Her feet are like that of a porcelain doll which remain clean and forbidden to touch the ground.
Conchita Gilbaliga, named as "Ariring" was the most sought "Binukot" in the mountains of Tapaz and Calinog.
In her seclusion, she got to practice her mind memorizing the long tales of the Suguidanon, imagining the love story of Humadapnon and Mali . Dancing the Binanog was the only form of exercise and she was quite contented playing the tulali (bamboo flute) and the tikumbu (bamboo drums). She satisfied her longings for the outside world by embroidering things she could not touch.
Lola Conching and her grandchildren.
To be a "Binukot" is a privilege. Lola Conching is always happy to share her pride of being one. She said she was pampered and groomed to perfection. Her mother never failed to comb and oil her hair. Her nails were kept clean and colored. She was never allowed to work or do household chores.
Like other tribes, women with tattoos are considered beautiful, and Lola Conching has them in different parts of her body. She has a pattern of stars on her ankles, a plane on her right arm or a stick person with a spear and a shield on her left leg done by her mother who was once a Binukot adorned with tattoos. The process was painful as they wound the skin with big needles or blade and stucked with charcoal powder until they are healed.
Lola Conching with another Binukot.
By the time she reached the age of 13, she's become an expert of the limited things she was exposed to. And on the 6th moon, when she woke up with a smudge of blood in her patadyong (hand woven hip wrap) she cried, while her mother welcomed her to the world.
Apprentice
Having understood womanhood, she became an apprentice to her aunt who was a respected traditional midwife or "paltera" in the community and the neighboring barangays. After a year of assisting her aunt, at the age of 15 she had her first experience in helping a woman give birth. She said it was scary, but since then she went from barangay to barangay helping women give birth. She had experienced complicated births like breech, cord coil, and pre-mature labor. It was only last April that she was asked to help remove the placenta from a woman who just gave birth, and she succeeded. Now, she's already 84, and the children she helped deliver are now in their sixties and seventies, most of them already died while Lola Conching lived to tell the tales of three generations of childbirth.
Papel De Hapon
Friendship shared.
The Japanese invasion in 1942 played a very important part in the life of Lola Conching. When others were terrorized by the killing frenzy of the Japanese soldiers, women raped and children slaughtered. Amid this desperate time, she met an officer and a gentleman who sought refuge in Barangay Tabon, Tapaz. The Sergeant fell in love with her beauty. Her family was lavished with supplies of food and money as dowry in exchange of her hand for marriage. She was 19 then when she married Sgt. Joaquin Jito from Calinog. After three months, Jito left the mountains to another assignment somewhere in Luzon and visited her once in a while until he died in an ambush. Seven years after, she married again as a fourth wife to Manuel Gilbaliga alyas "Rankuhan" from the adjacent barangay Nayawan. They had two sons - the eldest was named after his father but died of illness when he was just seven years old. Their youngest "Gustohan" rather had a more tragic story.
Encounter With The Hukbalahap
After the Japanese, the mountain dwellers feared the Huk - they were rebels who once resisted the Japanese but became notorious, raped girls and women and stole crops and livestock of families.
"I've just given birth to my youngest son. He was just five years old when a group of Huk went to our house. They tied my husband and father-in-law on a bamboo post, then they attempted to rape me but I told them that I'll prepare food for them first. They butchered our fattest boar. As they ate and drank tuba, I escaped to the deep forest. That night they searched for me until the next morning. I was trembling with fear, and I was bleeding from child birth. My husband searched for me after the Huk" left but it was too late. My son died from starvation, I couldn't cry anymore.'
Needling The Path Of The Panay-Bukidnon
"Panubok", the traditional way of women to adorn their clothes through embroidery, originated in Barangay Tabon, Tapaz - the birthplace of Lola Conching. Tabon women, they say, are lazy; they don't work in the fields nor cared to breed farm animals. They just stayed in their house and stitched while the sun is up. This laziness, though, gave birth to the distinct art of Panubok and an alternative livelihood. In the past, women from other mountains in Panay walked for days just to have their upper garment embroidered by Tabon women. Later, other women tried doing it themselves and Panubok became widespread.
Lola Conching, now at her prime age, is the last woman from Tabon who continues to practice the art of Panubok. She is a recognized master of the craft, embroidered hundreds of koton and saipang (traditional upper garments), each piece is unique from the other.
Her eyes are giving away to her age, hands are trembling from decades of stitching, lungs weak to take in air but her eyes glow with enthusiasm, her hands longed for expression, and mind still full of memories like that of mermaids she saw in the Pan-ay river, deer running to the open fields, hawks courting in the air . . . her saipang becomes an album of those 84 years of experience isolated as a girl, a midwife in her teens, married two times, a mother who lost her sons in a tragedy and a living witness to the brutality of war and the turnover of Philippine history. She survived with a needle in her fingers and a kacha capturing the goodness and beauty of life as the nation struggled for independence, stitching generations fiber by fiber into an intricate needlework as she outlives her descendants.
Lola Conching now lives with her niece in Barangay Garangan, Calinog. Her husband died a year ago. She is a source of inspiration to the community as she tells stories about their ancestors and forefathers. Her memory is as excellent as a 13-year-old girl when she was once kept in the crudeness of the outside world, pampered like a princess, resting in a nest like a female Banog bird.