By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
There was an affair in a remote part of Kalinga about 10 years ago where all the media were invited. Such are some of the perks of being in this field or business. So everybody was excited especially the ladies. When they got there, however, they found out there were no toilets. What they had were “toilets everywhere”. Most of them did their thing after dark. And the ladies had to go in pairs. One had to on guard at a good enough distance with a stick ready because anytime, a pig would come– huh huh huh– after smelling there was a delicacy around.
The one on guard would then whip the boar away. Immediately after, the boar would come back from the other side. . . huh huh huh…. so the lady trying to push the shit out of her would have to turn around with her butt hanging with some of her clothes, as the guard, with a hanky on her nose, would try to drive again the boar away by whipping it with a stick. The turning around could happen several times before the mission is finally accomplished.
That is what “everywhere toilet” means.
The same thing in an eastern part of Mtn. Province as revealed by a DOH officer. They have to do their thing after dark or before daylight.
Here is one I heard in the UP College of Forestry at Mount Makiling 50 years ago during my first year in college there. They related how a Japanese soldier who passed his stool in a part of the forest. He saw a wide leaf that looked good with smooth hair to serve as toilet paper. Naturally, his butt became so itchy it drove him crazy and made him scream (our Cordillera version)…. “Badarong Piripinos! Pati burong gerirya!”
That leaf was of the “Tukbo” as we call it in my village. In Tagalog, they call it Lipang Kalabaw.
Over in Sagada (as in other Cordilleran towns), as my relative there related, they did it in a more sanitary way. The act of pushing the shit out was done on a hole above the pig pen. The pig would be waiting making all sorts of sounds.. arf arf arf… looking up at your butt excitedly waiting for the ultimate delicacy to fall. Sometimes when it could not wait, it would jump and kiss your butt with its snout as it attempts to bite the shit. As one of our staff writers before related, a guy in Bontoc allegedly got hospitalized because the pig did not get the right timing. It bit the guy’s balls instead. Honest mistake. Sometimes the shit would fall on the pig’s head.
After doing the thing, the people there would wipe their butts with a smooth stone standing ready on the side. Through constant use, it would be so smooth and kind to your butt. Often, the stone is outside and would be washed by the rain or sterilized by sunlight. As related, one Caucasian tourist saw the smooth stone and got enamored with it so he caressed it by admiring it with his hands, how smooth it was.
Nobody ever got sick because of the practice. It is only during “modern” times that so many illnesses on or in our butts came about.
And the practice was ecological or kind to the environment. The pig’s partaking of the organic shit is a good example of maximum utilization.
As the article in one of the pages of this issue on “everywhere toilet” stated, the DOH is doing good in making people have well managed toilets. Their target of 53 perent was achieved. So it means 47 percent of the people here in this region don’t have sanitary toilets?
Such is failure of education and government.
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