Motag 'living museum' - traditional Filipino farming

On the island of Panay, in the central region of the Philippines, there is a 'living museum' near the city of Caticlan. It is a rice farm, set up and run in the way a rice farm would have been run in the 1930s i.e. no machinery, no modern technology; just living off the land and making do with what is around them. It was set up by the local government to create jobs for young Filipinos who do not wish to, or cannot afford to, go to university, and for older Filipinos to teach their agricultural and rural-living skills to the younger generation.

We had to book in advance as you are unable to just show up and look round - the people who work there only work on the days that a booking has been made, so that the farm does not lose money paying wages when there is no-one to show around. So make sure you book ahead of time if you ever plan to go!

We were shown round by three ladies, who walked us round the farm in about 2 hours, showing us all the different, ingeneous ways that the Filipinos lived off the land. The farmhouse, for example, was built entirely from bamboo and took about 6 months to build. Different parts of the bamboo plant were used for different sections of the house, so nothing was wasted.

We walked around the farm and were shown things like their medicinal herb garden, which had different plants for all kinds of ailments: asthma, headaches, tooth abcesses - you name it, they could cure it. 

We then walked out to the rice paddies, to see the traditional planting and harvesting methods for farming rice. It was here that we were introduced to their caribou, a water-buffalo type animal which is used to plough the fields and drag the cart, instead of a horse. We were given an opportunity to ride it, which perhaps unwisely, I took. Riding an animal with no saddle or reins is challenging, especially when it clearly doesn't want you on its back and might throw you off into muddy paddy field at any minute!

 Picture credit to Kim Johnson

Vita and Emma tried their hand at rice planting:

I had a go at threshing the dried rice; you stand on a raised platform and work your bare feet into bundles of dried rice. The grains fall through the bamboo floor onto a sheet below while the straw from the rice plant stays above, separating the two. The lady next to me had incredibly nimble feet that were a lot more skillful at threshing than mine!

There was a lady weaving banana leaves to make all manner of things: bags, baskets, slippers, the roof for a new outhouse. She made it look verey easy as she had been doing this for all of her life (83 years, we were later told) but Vita didn't find it as easy!

They had prepared traditional refreshments for us: fresh buko which is the young coconut fruit - the flesh is more soft and jelly-like than the dried coconut flesh we see in England. Also bananacue - barbecued banana with brown sugar, and a lemongrass and ginger tea, both picked fresh from the garden.

The elderly ladies of the farm, to whom this life was normal, rather than a 'throwback', seemed very taken with us and sat us down to sing to us in Tagalog, the national language (although each region also has its own local dialect too). They were very lovely ladies, all pretty old but still so full of life. They had very good English too so we were able to sit and talk to them for a little while and find out about their lives. One of them was 92 and still had a full head of naturally black hair (see the centre of the photo below); she confided that the secret to not going grey was to regularly use pure coconut oil on your hair. We all immediately promised to give it a try!

The museum was set up to show tourists the 'real' Philippines, as most foreign visitors come to that area to relax on the beach with a cocktail, and try out the watersports that nearby Boracay has to offer. We went to Boracay to see the beautiful beach (and to have a cocktail or two) but visiting Motag was far more interesting and insightful into Filipino culture than the tourist haven of Boracay. We met people who didn't just see us as a chance to make some money by selling us tat, as is what happens in any beach resort around the world, but instead to learn about their livelihood before machines took over. Their skills of rural living are slowly dying out and Motag aims to ensure they are not forgotten. Definitely worth a visit if you are ever in the area.