Raised in Bauko

Nixon Sarol

I was born and raised in Bauko, Mountain Province, in the foothills of the Cordillera mountain ranges, where in the North you can see the Inudey falls, in the South, the Payangapang falls, and in the East resides Mount Polis, where the sun casts a shadow upon the village before the sunlight comes in full view. It’s an agricultural community where rice fields were carved at the side of the mountains by my people 200 years ago, and its bright green fields shift to a brown color over the summer. This is where my grandmother, grandfather, and parents were born and raised.

Bauko seen from a distance taken during my last vacation in 2023. Photo by Nixon Sarol.

Growing up, the population of our village was less than 400 people, which created a close-knit community where we all knew each other. During our summer vacation, when most of us kids were off from school, we participated in OG-OG-BO or Binnadang, where we got together as a group or a team and worked on one person’s fields first, and the next day we worked on another person's field until all of us had finished working on our fields. This community effort made things easier and faster for us and is generally helpful, during both good and bad times. Even now, as time has changed things, this practice still remains. In 2023, when my mother died, this is where I truly felt the love from this practice. My children, who grew up in the States, were surprised by the number of people coming in and out of the house to help with the funeral preparations. Some people went out to cut down mature trees to construct her coffin, while others filled the yard to chop wood for cooking. Each house in the community contributed two cups of rice to help feed the visitors who came to mourn with us. The house was filled to the brim with family and friends. This practice allowed me to see how the community showed love and respect to those who have passed away, since my family was able to mourn without having to worry about anything else.

Volunteers chopping wood during my mother's wake. Photo by Nixon Sarol.

Being able to understand different dialects was very important to learn in order to communicate with other people. The Kankanaey dialect was used to speak amongst each other in our village, I used Ilocano to communicate with different tribes in our area, I spoke Tagalog to communicate with the rest of the country, and since basic English was taught to us in school, it helped me to communicate with others in California when I moved to the US.

I’m the youngest of seven siblings, and was born as a menopausal baby. So when I was younger, my siblings went off to work in different cities or were studying in college. Growing up, I spent most of my time with my mom since she worked locally. My parents both worked as teachers, but my dad worked in different villages, where he had to walk 5 miles in the morning to go to work, and 5 miles to come home. As he kept getting promoted, he began having to work and move from different municipalities. Due to a lack of transportation and road conditions in the ‘80s, I was only able to see him once a month until he retired in 1993. I would always look forward to those days so that we could bond since he’d tell me stories about his adventures or how different life was where he worked. This work ethic made me aspire to be like my father; to strive hard and do better in life.

Visiting the Burke Museum, I was elated to see a spear belonging to the Bontoc tribe, who participated in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. This artifact reminded me of my grandfather since, in my childhood home in the Philippines, we had two spears mounted on our wall. One was old and worn, while the other had a rusted tip and a refurbished handle. Those spears had been on our wall ever since I could remember. I didn’t come to know about the story behind the spears until I asked my mother, who said that they’d belonged to my grandfather, who was a well-known hunter in the village. When I asked about the different quality of the spears, she told me that during World War II, when the Japanese were losing, they got pushed towards the Cordillera Mountain Ranges and conducted guerrilla warfare. My mom and her parents were forced to go deeper into the mountains. One day, my grandfather told my mom that he had to leave to check the corral, where he took his spear along with his favorite dog. That would be the last time they saw him. After the war, when my mom’s family finally moved back to the village, my grandmother sent her nephews to look for my grandfather. But they never found him or his remains. All that they found was his spear, worn by nature. Two days later, his dog came home, which my grandmother took as a sign that my grandfather had passed away.

In the distance is Mount Polis taken in 2021. Photo by Nixon Sarol.

These stories and traditions are very important for me to share with my children to ensure they understand where they come from and where their roots lie. After all, these are unique customs and traditions that have been preserved for centuries, and I don’t plan to end them now in today’s epidemic of cultural extinction. I hope that even beyond this wall of text, to those who read this and those who don’t, we can continue to preserve our history and our culture, and we can continue to watch as it evolves into something greater in the future.

I plan to return to Bauko in my later years. To where I was born. To where I was raised. And in full circle, where life will end.

My name is Nixon Sarol, and I was born and raised in Bauko Poblacion, Mountain Province. I am a member of the Kankanaey tribe, and I moved to the United States when I was 18 years old. There, I eventually joined the Army and served for 23 years before retiring in 2019. I am currently the President of the BIBAK of the Pacific Northwest, and a loving husband and father to my wife and four children.