Ilonggo Character: “Manug-damog”

“Manugdamog”

or

The Food Scrap Collector

Recycling, Ilonggo Style

Back in the days of my childhood  when recycling as we know it now was unheard of,  Ilonggos  were already practicing the concept with nary a thought. 

In the hopes of supplementing the household income, our folks  would cultivate pigs in  their backyards and to feed the pigs, their owners would  collect food scraps (“damog”) from every house in the neighborhood, far as their legs could take them.  This was a symbiotic relationship.  No food was ever wasted, and the “manugdamog” or food scrap collector gets his or her pigs fed.

Every household has its own container for the damog:  be it an old bucket, or a  recycled tin rectangular can opened on top and  holes punched on the sides with a piece of wire hooked into each end for  a handle.  These containers were quite smelly, of course, and they were usually hung outside on a nail by the gate for the easy reach of the “manugdamog” on his or her  daily rounds. Once empty, the container will be rinsed, ready for  the next meal’s  scraps.

Tia Tiling and Jesse Bu-ang

(An Unlikely Model of Resourcefulness and Self-Sufficiency)

Tia Tiling, as I knew her, was one of those “manugdamogs” that came around. She would have two large tin cans, one on each arm, as she waddled along, oblivious, and muttering to herself.  She was an older lady with long grayish hair.  Every time we see her coming we would run and hide for there was a rumor going around among us kids that she was an “aswang”, or witch.  I don’t think there was any truth to that but a child would believe anything if it involves mysterious and secret things.

Tia Tiling never really conversed with any one of us, deepening the mystery of  her whereabouts.  Nobody had ever seen where she lived. I imagined  she was  cloistered  in a wooded lot -- cool, dark , and filled with mosquitoes, among her swine and household beasts..

Tia Tiling had a son who was in his mid to late twenties that everyone knew by the nickname of Jesse Bu-ang or Jesse the Crazy.  Jesse Bu-ang  would roam the streets, asking for money  or food  in exchange, perhaps, for some menial job.  My grandmother would often ask him to clear our open  canal of weeds and muck .  Back then, sewage from our faucets pass through open canals dug outside our gates.

Jesse Bu-ang had a peculiar way of talking.  He would talk in a high pitched, feminine voice one moment and  in a deep, throaty one the next.  It was like two different people talking.  Unlike his mother, he was quite sociable and many times he would indulge us with a song or two.   Everyone teased him and he was such an ingenuous character he rarely got angry.  When he did get upset however,  he would chase after the person involved, much to the sick delight of bystanders.

Young as I was, back then,  I thought it was quite tragic for mother and son to both be afflicted with mental illness.  In our culture, there is a stigma attached to having someone in one’s family “go bu-ang”.

I realize now that no matter how crazy these folks were, however, they had more sense and decency than most people these days.  They did not beg for food; they worked to support themselves, which is more than  could be said for some of us with able bodies and sound minds.

For all our modern wisdom and technology, we have yet to learn from our elders how to  convert our trash into something  that will benefit the giver and the taker --- a model of putting one man’s waste into another man’s treasure --- from  Ilonggos of yesteryears.