The Carabao/Cattle Caravan Merchant Now Employs Garong

The Carabao/Cattle Caravan Merchant Now Employs Garong

Before online shopping sites like Shopee and Lazada, before public markets, department stores, supermarkets, and malls were a thing, there were the roving cattle, carabao, or horse merchants of San Carlos City making the rounds of towns and cities in Pangasinan and beyond, reaching as far as the greater Manila area and even past it.

Like a mobile sari-sari store for homes but using a beast of burden (typically carabao or cow) to draw a big cart, they traveled as a group selling all sorts of items, but most of them traditional woven products, such as an assortment of baskets, hammocks, clay stoves, and kitchen utensils.

Today, the carabao merchants are gone, but the tradition remains, though much diminished. It survives through the replacement of the animals with machine, through a motorbike with a sidecar called garong, kulong-kulong, or tangkulong, a minimum of concession to modernity.

I chanced upon this man from San Carlos City, a proto-"delivery rider" of sorts (minus the online pre-order), and asked that his ware be photographed.

Among those on sale right at my doorstep were anduyan (rattan hammock), baba (rope hammock), ubong na manok (chicken nest bamboo basket), buksot (a stout squarish bamboo basket), alawa (a fruit picker with netting), panagtapa (cobweb cleaner), balulang (a fish basket), and what he called takkab or talukab (ta'lu'-kab) or chick coop, among other basketry items.

The goods for sale are hung about like a collage of items, the whole contraption acting as a moving canvas to the diversity of hues and textures, the more to attract would-be parokyanos or the merchant's suki (repeat customers or buyers) along its route for the day.

The usual baba (woven bamboo crib-hammock) and andador (baby walker) for newborns and toddlers are notably nowhere in sight.

It looks like this traditional way of selling merchandise, or at least its most recent incarnation, has a captive market still, ensuring the whole enterprise remains a part of the local landscape for underground or informal trade.