“Pamaltak”
Circumcision ala Ilonggo Style
Back in the days when babies were born at home, boys of the Ilonggo tribe go through a rite of passage at puberty: they are circumcised (ginapaltak sila).
An uncircumcised male is called “putyong”, and lads as they turn into adults must go through this rite to avoid being branded, for lack of a milder word. A “paltak”, on the other hand, is a circumcised member of the tribe and boys would gladly go through the pain and the temporary embarrassment of circumcision than be called a “putyong”.
Pamaltak is a rather primitive procedure. I recall quite clearly the summer when my uncle (Tito Lalong) rounded up my pubescent cousins and my brother and singlehandedly, with the use of a hunting knife and some native poultice for an antiseptic cut them up in their private parts then made them wear skirts, in the aftermath, much to the snickering and teasing of their playmates and adults. The “hampol” or poultice was a leaf of a plant—maritana-- that was pounded until the juice seeped out then applied to the raw, skinned tissue. The hunting knife, of course, was passed through the fire in an effort to kill the “kagaw” or germs. Ice was applied to the area as a local anesthetic before the actual skinning was commenced. The rate of infection was practically nil with this method.
It is the belief,then, that after they are circumcised they will grow taller and bigger in the normal adolescent progression of development. Officially, “napaltak na sila” or they have been circumcised. In this case they owed it to Tito Lalong who they will forever remember as the one who orchestrated this whole rite of their passage from boyhood into full pledged little men.
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