Life in the Philippines, particularly Ifugao, is night and day different than life in San Jose, California. This post highlights just a few of the differences I began to recognize at the beginning of my stay. Luckily I was able to adapt quickly. Kiangan gave me a renewed sense of my surroundings. The town taught me so much about myself and the things in my life I take for granted.
June 06, 2013
Early Morning 5:20 AM
Pot Dimensions:
Diameter- 14 Cm
Height- 6 Cm
I wish I could write you at night, but there is always too much happening by 9. I want to sleep for days. The beginning of work yesterday was awesome! I dug up a (possible) Placenta Pot! A FULL ONE TOO #Beginner'sluck. The interesting this is that we don't know why the pot is where it is- we can't figure it out why it is alone or why it is placed where it is. Usually when the team finds a pot like that it denotes a baby burial. Beneath the top pot is usually another with a baby skeleton. They've found two at our site- one last year and one early yesterday during test probes! But beneath my pot was just more rock. Pretty amazing that something 35 Cm below ground surface could still be intact.
Right now my trench is roughly 50 Cm below ground, so juts over a foot deep. We are still in the Agricultural layer. The Agro layer is basically whatever is either covered or dug up during the rice cultivation. So after Agro layer (which my trench is still in) we hit Cultural layer. Which will hopefully be what I shall name "Archaeological Find Pay-dirt". I really hope we dig up this village.
After two days I already I have a huge attachment to our site. Yesterday I got to play with my first Plumbob. Great name, right? We mapped, which at first I f***ing hated, but even by the third day I am starting to fall in love with this routine. Wake up, get coffee, write you, plug my phone in, change, eat, jeepney, write in journal, dig, map, lunch, dig or screen, clean up, jeepney, home, either shower or potwash or accession, SITMO to text you, more post-field work, dinner, a beer, sleep. Wake up at 5 AM- repeat.
So far every one is pretty cool. I don't think we guessed field work was going to be so hard. Field school isn't easy, especially in the Philippines where bugs are f***ing massive and scary and we have no running water. Going abroad is never easy, but Kiangan is its own brand of difficult. Life here is very different. Slow. I already can't wait to take a hot shower or use a toilet that has a proper seat.
But the plus sides of this place: The people are beautiful and hospitable. They love to wave at us. It makes me happy. I already love it here, even with all the cockroaches. I will be interested to see how the group dynamic progresses.
Last night there were kids practicing a dance out in the courtyard of our hostel. June 17th is Ifugao day and the ten surrounding provinces meet and have a parade and dance competition with their regional dances. I was amazing watching the kids, but I made them nervous. I could tell. While I watched I became jealous and sad; I was envious of having a culture with traditional dancing. I realized how vanilla my upbringing was and yearned for a rich cultural history like the people of Kiangan. In that moment, I realized that the dancing kids and I were probably thinking the same things- except on the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Out to the field, I miss you to the moon-
<3 Cooper
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