Rebuilding a Stone House on Sabtang Island

The stone houses of Batanes are a symbol of the Ivatan’s strength and resilience. Batanes, the northernmost province in the Philippines, lies in the path of most of the 20 or so tropical cyclones that enter the country every year. While strong winds and typhoons frequently hit the area, damaging crops and infrastructure and leaving locals without power and water, casualties remain at zero.

Part of the Ivatan’s preparedness against disasters is the strength of the structure of their houses. Traditional Ivatan homes are constructed with cobbles and mortar, made out of thick limestone walls and thatched cogon roofs. They have walls as thick as 80 centimeters to one meter. Doors and windows are made of sturdy hardwood planks while roofs are made of thatched cogon.

You can see the best preserved houses in Chavayan, a remote Ivatan village surrounded by cliffs and water on Sabtang Island. Some houses here have stood for over a century. Chavayan Church is the last remaining church in all of Batanes that still has cogon grass roofing.

During my first visit to Sabtang Island on a sightseeing day trip in 2014, I admired the construction of the stone houses. But like most passing tourists in a rush to see all the sights, I saw the houses merely as a unique backdrop for souvenir shots. I got to appreciate the traditional houses and learn more about the Ivatan culture and traditions while covering the 1st Vakul-Kanayi Festival on the island a couple of years ago.

Last month, I got to witness and take part in the rebuilding of a stone house as part of the CSR program of the Tourism Promotions Board (TPB). Along with giving school supplies to school children from remote schools on the island with the Black Pencil Project, the whole experience gave a different dimension to the trip. Instead of the usual sightseeing tours, the Voluntourism trip let us feel the community spirit and warm hospitality from locals and learn more about Ivatan customs and rituals.

Kapayatep and Mayvuvung refer to the re-roofing and re-thatching of traditional Ivatan stone houses. Kapayatep is a unique Ivatan tradition that requires the help of the community as a form of bayanihan (kumavahayan). Select raw materials like cogon and bamboo reeds are gathered during summer time.

This style of house construction was introduced to the island by the Spanish when they arrived in the last half of the 1800s. Roofs are made of thatched cogon (a tall type of grass found throughout southeast Asia). The thatch used for roofs, usually 30 centimeters thick, is protected with fishing nets or bamboo trellis against strong winds during the typhoon season. A full-size house requires at least 60-80 meter bar (chipuhu) of cogon. The roofs can last 25-30 years or even up to 40 years, depending on the thickness and can withstand strong typhoons and extreme hot weather.

If you’ve done a sightseeing day tour in Sabtang, you know how intense the heat is there during summer months. Just standing around trying to take photos and hiking to the view deck at Tinyan viewpoint can really work up a sweat. Now imagine spending the day under the heat of the sun on top of stone houses doing manual labor. Members of the community all pitch in to build the houses together, without any monetary reward.

Their only payment is a communal meal, with food prepared by their neighbors as they work. On the day set to roof the house, relatives, neighbors and friends usually come to help. Those who cannot perform actual construction work normally offer akhad (anything that can be served or cooked as food) or tudung (drinks, usually wine). The meals of the laborers are usually prepared in a house near where the house is being rebuilt.

Partaking of meals is a communal affair and a major cause for celebration, which we saw not just in the house rebuilding, but in other aspects of our trip. The night before the CSR activity, our group actually got invited to crash a wedding of two locals (from Basco and Sabtang). The alley just a few blocks away from our homestay was transformed into a festive wedding venue. Homestays were full to the brim because other locals had also come in from Basco for the event.

A local wedding tradition we were told about is that if you are invited to dance, you can’t refuse. The custom is called Kapaychakuvut and involves the whole community. The old practice is called kapanayay where selected men and women in the community serve as manayay whose duty is getting people to dance. After dancing, guests in turn must offer their gift, usually cash, to the newlyweds. In return, they can are given a glass of native wine (or in our case various shots of alcoholic drinks of our choice) before being invited to the long table spread out with a festive wedding banquet.

I managed to dodge being asked to dance by pretending to be busy taking photos, though my friend Astrid of The Poor Traveler was immediately approached and asked to dance. I still took a shot of alcohol and left a gift before we ate though 🙂

Instead of plates, meals here are served on large kabaya or breadfruit leaves and eaten with bare hands. When dining, it’s polite for guests to consume everything on their plate to avoid food wastage. But if they can’t finish it, they can just wrap the food and save it for later. The traditional preparation, referred to as vunung, ensures trash is minimized trash and makes it easy for people to. Ivatans are very practical about their resources especially food. I noticed that soup was served in Cup Noodle bowls and kept and washed to be reused by other guests and not simply thrown away as mainlanders would probably do.

I find Ivatan cuisine very interesting because dishes evolved because of survival. Dibang or flying fish and dorado are traditionally dried in the summer so that people have food to eat when fishermen can’t go out to sea during the rainy season. Uvud are little balls made of minced banana pith or roots (sometimes the only part of the tree that’s left after a typhoon hits) cooked with fish flakes and pork.

For the house building activity, pork was the main meat they had available. I appreciated how our hosts used the meat to make a variety of dishes for our benefit like lunis, the crispy and dry Ivatan version of adobo, igado, a pork and liver stew and sinigang, a sour soup native to the Philippines. The meat went perfectly with Turmeric rice, another Ivatan specialty that involves mixing rice with turmeric powder and ginger, giving it a signature yellow color. Fresh fruits, soft drinks and beer were passed around too to counter the heat.

The process of rebuilding a traditional stone house can take several months. Our involvement may have been short, but the brief visit was an eye-opening experience on Ivatan culture and customs.

When it’s completely rebuilt, the structure in Sabtang Island will be transformed into a homestay for tourists on the island. According to locals, tourist arrivals on Sabtang Island (and the whole of Batanes) have been steadily increasing since more direct flights are now being offered to the province.

Despite the deep culture behind them, sadly the stone houses are in danger because locals have been demolishing them to make way for modern houses, with air-conditioning and hot and cold showers. While the previously remote island adapts to the flurry of modernization brought about by tourism, I really hope that locals can find a way to preserve their traditional customs and culture, which is the unique draw and charm of the province that entices tourists to visit in the first place.