Shiyayak Mango

 For lack of time, I am not able to write much about the place where Ibalois are at the moment.

I am just happy to see that the Ibalois are not very much the ‘shiyayak mango’ type that has been misread “Shyak mango’ for quite a time due to the shyness or timidity of the Ibalois.  

Of course, the shiyayak mango phrase is often uttered by the Ibalois who, due to some inferiority complexes, opt to stay in the sidelines when issues are being discussed because they feel inconsequential.  So they say “shiyayak mango” meaning “I will just stay here”.  This is not the exact meaning of the phrase.  I have not yet found the correct English term for it.  But it is akin to the statement of a lowly man who says “I am but a lowly man so I will stay here where I will not be in the way of the gods”.  

Many Ibalois do not like to be in the fore front,  that is why there are not so many Ibalois running for political positions in the City of Baguio.  There were some who tried, and most of them were descendants of Kumicho who was a descendant of Milo and his son (Am)Kidit.  And they were and/or no longer FBI’s or full blooded Ibalois.  One who aspired for mayorship had a lot of Japanese blood in his veins; some who aspired for councillorship had Spanish and Iloko blood in them.

A lot of the old Ibalois   also do not like arguing so much as politicians do.  They preferred to work without talking much.  Hence their distaste of politics.    Some of course are very shy.  The cats seem to ‘get’ their tongues when they try to talk.  So they remain silent.  And they would later say “Piyan ko’n ikuwan ni saman pesing, ngem bimaingak”.  “I wanted to tell how it should be done but I got shy”.

Ayo.  Saman ira i Ibaloi.  Mavabaing.  That’s how Ibalois  are.  They are shy. 

The latter part of the 20th century however has seen some Ibalois  getting to be more forward, and not very shy anymore.   But now, the FBI’s are getting fewer and fewer with a good number of them getting married to men or women from other tribes because they have learned that it is not good for relatives to marry each other.  Some still do of course.  And some prefer to marry fellow Ibalois.  

But a good number have been getting married to men or women who are Ilocanoes, Tagalogs, Pangasinense, Kankanais, Ibontocs, Ikalingas, Ifugaos, and others.  So we have Ibalocs, Ibatags, Ibapangs, Kanibals, Ibabon, Ibafug, and what have you.

Sooner, or later, we will just have Filipinos because it will be difficult to combine the letters of so many tribes from where our parents or the parents of our descendants will come from. If we did that, we might have so many smaller tribes of Kanibaltags like my apo whose father is a Tagalog and whose mother is a Kanibal, or Kankanai-Ibaloi.  The other one is a Visibalkan or Kanibalvis because his father is a Visayan and his mother is a Kanibal.

Some of us say we may be the last generation of FBI’s.  But when somebody says my grandfather was Spanish, my great grandma was dark skinned with a long nose, and that I have Chinese blood in my veins, and I learn that my relatives have Russian blood in their veins, and that one says her grandma may have been a descendant of some small Englishmen of old, etc. etc., I tell myself that we may not be FBI’s anymore.  The last FBI may have been in the distant past, the brave warriors that the Conquistador Quirante was not able to subdue way back in the 1600s.  But then a writer wrote that the Kidit of Quirante’s time was Mandarin-like. And I have been wondering why my late father whose father descended from a Kidit would sometimes look like a Chinese of the Mandarin type.   A Chinese woman once told me also, after seeing my handwriting, pointed at me, and told me that I have Chinese blood.  So much for the last of the FBI’s.  Basta we are ibalois. B.T. Pistola