kurob
Originally uploaded by anetz.
This was the kurob of my childhood. In the cycle of amihan, rice planting and rice harvesting, it was the prelude to the third stage, harvesting. When we went to the kurob, the rice was ripening and notice had been given to the pivotal persons in the barrio grapevine that the Reynes ricefield would soon be ready. It was a makeshift affair, usually quickly constructed from wood, bamboo and nipa by my father and another man, sometimes two men. After the harvest it was usually dismantled and the nipa thatching kept in storage with other materials for the main house’s maintenance.
For us children, it was an annual pilgrimage which smacked of a grand adventure. My parents would pile us up on the kangga which was like a big sled built from bamboo and hardwood, pulled by a water buffalo or carabao. Before this it had been different pots and pans, a half barrel and several kerosene cans of drinking and cooking water, food supplies, clothes and a small number of reading material.
A ritual that went with the harvest season like an opening ceremony was making pinipig. Rice which was not quite ready for harvest yet, still with a minute quantity of the milky juice that made it soft, not quite brown but greenish was harvested then dry roasted. It was then pounded to the quick rhythm of the harvesters’ strong tempo. When they finished and the grains were separated from the husks, the product was fragrant, flat-grained rice pinipig. This was mixed with sugar and milk and again pounded in the meticulously cleaned wooden lusong. Then the final product was moulded into attractive shapes on fire-softened young banana leaves. That is if the waiting children could be held off for such matters of aesthetics! It kept very well.
We learned special things during our stay there. For example, I learned to be ready for the owl’s sudden screech and powerful swish of wings early mornings in the ricefield and not to be startled witless by them. It always seemed like it waited until I was just three feet or so away before it took flight. That heavy dew sparkled like fat diamonds on the leaves of weeds between paddies, fat and wet enough to wet one’s feet and legs. That the orchids with the dove-shaped white flowers hanging along the banks of the Tagada-o River had such a powerful fragrance that if you inhaled it for a long time, it would make you sneeze. That if you left footprints in the gray mud along the river banks and it was low tide the following day, then you would most likely find small fishes in your footprints where water remained until the next high tide. That it was easy to capture the fish in your scooped hands, take them home in a can of river water but they did not survive on the diet of rice, although mudfish sometimes did. The same with trying to steal and foster the downy gray chicks of the long legged tugtug, newly hatched from their brown flecked eggs- they died or if they survived early days, then the family cat which also made the move to the kurob as an essential member because it was the sole pest control unit would kill it.
One learned to stay away from the little paths that led to heartbreak.
One day when we were at the kurob, my parents left me in charge of my younger siblings while they were in a place called Bagidanan to collect rice owed us. This was common practice that people who ran out of their rice supply early would borrow rice from those who still had it and pay it back in the next harvest season. I was just a little girl but responsible, able to cook rice and look after the baby. This time though it was night and my parents hadn’t come back. I had the rice cooking on an iron tripod but the baby cried and cried and wouldn’t stop. My Tio Joe and his wife and all my cousins were also in a kurob on the other half of the ricefield. They must have have heard the baby’s cries. He came over to our kurob and took the baby from me. Relieved, I finished cooking the rice.
Soon all was quiet.I went out into the night and looked for my uncle and the baby. They were up on the huyaban. This is a very high ladder made of the tallest bamboos one could find, with a small platform at the top shaded by a small nipa roof. My father and his men separated the chaff from the grain here by waiting for winds to blow and when they were just the right strength pouring the rice in a steady stream on to a big reed mat below . The chaff gathered in mounting piles at the sides outside the mat. When all was still, the men would take to a long drawn whistle supposed to call up the wind.
Tio Joe had taken the baby up there. He sat on the platform humming a song, the baby asleep in his arms.
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