A traditional practice in town worth emulating today is called tagnawa, the local version of bayanihan, according to old folks. It was a practice predicated on the good nature of one's neighbors, and it translates to voluntary giving or offering of help when needed, be it in lifting an entire house to another location or lending a hand in planting or harvesting crops.
The word has evolved such that the noun tagnawa has become a verb: tagnawaen, mantagnawa.
Up to the '70s, the bayanihan spirit could be commonly observed in many ways. For example, in a given barrio, a bomba or manually operated water pump owned by just one family could be accessed at any reasonable time of the day or night by anyone who knew how to knock on the door, granting the face showing up was among those trusted in the community.
The degree of openness is such that, during town fiestas, anyone who's a friend of a friend of a relative could join the feast uninvited without shame. There was no official "invited guests" list.
The family who owned the only TV in the neighborhood would proudly let his neighbors in (most likely from first-degree up to third-degree relatives anyway, if not next-door neighbor), even entire families that wanted to watch an afternoon TV show or even a series of TV shows.
In the neighborhood, all the men could be relied upon for communal house-moving (or anything communal) if the need arose. It was shameful to be an able-bodied male and not lend a hand, as when somebody's huge garong (an ark-like wooden rice silo of sorts) needed to be moved from one place in his yard to another. It was a spectacle to see how all the muscled men would engineer the whole project with their bare hands, without so much a reward as a light snack.
Everyday, one could freely ask for fronds of fresh malunggay (moringa) or ampalaya (bitter melon) shoots, for example, for the sautéd mung bean dish, or for leftover rice from lunch, must-have kitchen condiments such as garlic, or mangoes and other ripe fruits dangling in profusion in the yard. It is unthinkable, for instance, for a neighbor to harvest her fragrant jackfruit without sharing a slice, especially since everybody could smell how good it was.
If someone just came from abroad, every family around him was sure to receive some token gift, called abet (pasalubong): maybe a can of corned beef, a bar of soap, or a jar of shampoo – all imported, of course, and quite pricey at local stores, in case locally available.
The bayanihan spirit is noticeable in the jeepney, too, thankfully even up to the present day. The way the fare is conveyed to the driver from one palm to another from the farthest ends of the vehicle is pure bayanihan style. There is a sense of oneness, unity, a feeling of community, a people in communion.
Bayanihan, it must be pointed out, can only be made possible with the presumption that people are basically good. Filipinos, at least the old-fashioned ones, must have never thought of their fellow to be capable of paying goodness with evil once entertained with that deservedly world-renowned and generous expression of trust called Filipino hospitality.
Filipinos of a certain time seemed to be so pure-hearted that the poorer they were, the more kind-hearted they became.
The bayanihan spirit is consistent in every ethnic group in the country. We are a culture that apparently grew out of the bayanihan spirit, out of volunteerism in the service of building community and keeping the things that bind it.
A Manila Bulletin article, “National Day to Commemorate and Propagate the Bayanihan Spirit as the Unique Filipino Way of Life of Working Together as a People,” reports that “Presidential Proclamation No. 138 declared May 27 of every year as National Day to Commemorate and Propagate the Bayanihan Spirit as the Unique Filipino Way of Life of Working Together as a People.” The purpose is to “revivify and promote the bayanihan spirit in every Filipino and harness the vast potential of the people for national development.”
It notes that, among the Tagalogs, there was a traditional practice called tugpa, in which a community member “freely took over somebody's responsibilities in case of illness.”
There’s also the pintacasi, which was “meant to help succor someone who was helpless or needy.”
Among peasants, there’s the pasinaya, which was understood to be an offering of “help to cultivate somebody's else's croplands.” Today, pasinaya means "inaugurate."
Then there’s the atag, which was understood to mean that each community member “had a task to perform for the community's well-being.”
Finally, among the Cordillerans, there’s the cañao (or caniao, kanyaw), which was originally aimed at sharing “one's wealth in times of crop failures or hunger by feeding the entire community for days or weeks." The days or weeks of uninterrupted feeding would be like an over-extended fiesta or restaurant operation minus the huge overhead expenses and the even more substantial investment.
The article concludes on a hopeful note: “There is a hero, a bayani, in every Filipino. The bayanihan spirit exists in him. A unified and selfless people creates a strong and powerful nation. Our ancestors did it before. We can do it again for the survival and progress of our nation in today's globalized economy.”
The bayanihan spirit, of course, can be easily misused owing to the high level of trust assumed by every bayani (=hero) participant. But heroes, we trust, instinctively know in their good heart how to tell the difference between genuine bayanihan (=being a hero) -- which is akin to the age-old values that sound similar to it, namely pagkakaisa (unity for a good cause), pagdamay (commiseration), and malasakit (roughly, concern or solicitude) -- and abuse of hospitality (pakikisama even in evil deeds).
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