Fresh fruits

Fresh fruit stands. These are locally produced in the Philippines except for the apples and oranges which are imported from China.

More banigs

These banigs are made from buri grass. It's made everywhere in Leyte and Samar. These are less expensive than the tikog banig (a specialty of Basey, Samar) which I posted yesterday. The buri banigs are used to sleep on and it's not really folded because it breaks the mat and make it more susceptible to tearing. To keep, it's rolled and put in the corner of the house. The old ones are used to dry rice (palay).

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty is relative

A family of 8 lives here.



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Pottery Series 8: End

This ends my pottery series. Above photo: A family of potters posing for the camera.

(The photos from this series come from my friend's (JT) camera, but since I was assigned to take photos from her digital camera which she sometimes borrowed from me, I can't anymore tell who took which photos. That was my disclaimer:)

Pottery Series 7

You're probably tired of looking at pots and clay by now. (Wait till I come up with a longer series!) So, a word of advice to claypot buyers. Ask around where Brgy Canramos (Tanauan) is located. It's just a few blocks from the market. It's where these clay pots are made and where you will see stands like the one in the picture above. You have a variety of pots to choose from, they're cheaper and you can buy wholesale, you can bargain, and the stands are right next to each other lining the street.

Pottery Series 6

Sunday is Tanauan's tabo (market day). That's when the market becomes busy, and when you will see claypots being sold at the market. Oftentimes, you won't see any as they're only sold at the barangay where the pots are made. The man here looks bored. No one is buying because everyone knows where the pots can be bought at a cheaper price.

Pottery Series 5

After molding and shaping and baking the pots in an underground pit, they are reheated in a fire to cook them just right or to 'season' them (I don't really know the exact English word for it).

Pottery Series 4

(Photo by JT)

This woman is smoothing the banga (jar) with a wet cloth. This jar will be dried, then baked.



Here are the finished ones being dried outside.

Ps. while there, they weren't baking anything in the oven, so I have no photos of those. The oven is a simple hole in the ground (like the ones we have in our backyards for composting). I will have to go there another day to take photos. The sculpting.. hm, no photos either. If you're curious about the cord like design, you just roll a long clay then kind of tie it like a rope-design. Then use use a stick to make the lines. Same thing with the grapes. Like we do with play-doh.. Except here, it's always 'polished' with a wet cloth afterwards to smoothen the clay.

Pottery Series 3

The men are softening the clay before molding them into pots. They laugh and talk while working, sometimes pausing to make jokes. The kids are left alone to play with the clay. This is a Sunday, so the kids have no school. It looks like the whole barangay is there watching the others work, watching us take photos and helping explain to us the mechanics of pottery.



The clay, by the way, is taken (bought) from the mountains at the back of the municipality, but after generations of doing that, the mountains are slowly dwindling so the source of the clay is getting farther and farther away.

Pottery Series 2: Kids learning early

Although kids learn the texture of the clay early on.. I think this is just an excuse to play with mud. Imagine having to work and play at the same time! With mud!

Pottery Series

Starting today, I will be posting more photos of Waray people and their everyday life, and less focus on buildings and landscapes and food. I tend to forget that what defines us is our way of life and our attitude towards our environment and not what we have (or don't have). This week I will be posting a series of photos of pottery-making. It's a major livelihood in Tanauan, about 16 km away from Tacloban. So major, that even kids learn how to make clay pots early in life. In this photo, the kids are in the process of softening the clay.

Rock salt

Rock salt here is sold by kilos at the market. Sometimes, they're sold by volume. The containers in the picture is how the salt is measured. The bigger the container, the more expensive the salt. Except they're cheap really. The green one (about 1 1/2 cups) is P5 ($0.1).

Sundang

Called a 'sundang', or long knife(?). It's a multipurpose knife used to cut down trees, tall grasses, kill an animal, chop the lechon or big-boned animals.. it's also used as a weapon, to kill another person when in a fight. Farmers go around with the sundang tied to their waist, kinda like a sword.



Closer look.