By: Jeremy M. Gawongna
Mayoyao, Ifugao - While the provincial government of Ifugao through the Ifugao Cultural Heritage Office now exerts effort to repair the damaged portions of the rice terraces, other historical and cultural masterpieces here now face eventual extinction.
Among these cultural masterpieces are the apfo’or burial tombs erected in the early period of Mayoyao purposely as a family or clan grave. It is a rounded stone-walled enclosure where to put in the sitting dead person and constructed to keep away rodents and other animals from ravaging the body.
Elders here narrated that only the well-to-do in those times made use of apfo’or to hold their dead. The construction, according to them, was done through bare hands and crude implements such as hard wood and sharp stones.
Sadly, the domes of the two of these burial tombs collapsed after the passage of years. Besides, weeds and other plants grew over it.
One of these tombs is that of Inchimag, a wealthy yet childless woman in olden times who had her apfo’or built in full exposure to the sun at the edge of the mountain range of Ottong which could be accessed in just a five-minute walk from the recently constructed Mayoyao hostel.
This serves as a memorial grave since accounts from oral tradition reveal that Inchimag wanted to be remembered by the generations after her in spite of being childless.
The locals recounted further that the stones used for the construction were carried up by hands from quite a distant Pinuwo’ river and the clay (oklet) to cement or seal the stones together were carried down from a distant elevated area called Tanaw.
The other apfo’or now starting to collapse is that of Uhupfan, a fierce yet childless chieftain in the early period of Mayoyao. Elders unveiled that he was mocked by the people in his community because despite his fierceness, his body will be eaten by dogs when he dies because he has no children to take care of his burial.
“Challenged by the ridicules and with a wish to be buried respectably and honourably befitting his status, he planned to build his apfo’or on the hill called Tomo’,” the locals said. “He had a hundred bundles of palay pounded on the site and 20 pigs butchered to feed the people,” they added.
Gloria Likiyan, one of the indigenous knowledge holders, said she feels bad that the collapse and eventual extinction of the apfo’or burial tombs are manifestations that they are losing their cultural heritage.
“These cultural masterpieces tell something about our past and someone must initiate to find ways to preserve and improve it,” Likiyan said.
Some conservationists say that losing such cultural masterpiece would mean the eventual loss of this town’s distinctiveness to other places or to other cultures.
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