The frenzy surrounding the April 2023 cover of Vogue Philippine edition drew my attention to the story of this famous 106-year-old cover girl. As we were already planning a trip to the Rice Terraces in the Cordilleras, I conferred with our tour operator on how to go about visiting Buscalan after Banaue and before Sagada.
We left Batad at mid-morning and precariously maneuvered the winding roads, swerving to avoid landslide debris and incoming traffic. This was a road that needed drivers used to this terrain because the twists and turns were not for the faint-hearted.
By the time we parked in front of the makeshift tourism center, we found out we had it easy; in the past, the first long walk would have been to get to that center. Since it was also a weekday, there were just a few people coming and going. During weekends, buses and private cars queue for guides to get them sorted out and a lot of these visitors return from the mountain village frustrated because Apo Whang-Od retired early for the day. This increase in visitors can be traced back from the time broadcast journalist Jessica Soho featured her in one of her segments in 2017, six years prior to the Vogue cover.
Our assigned guide briefed us on how we should go about the crossing. We went down the mountain we stood on, crossed the river through a footbridge, and went up the mountain across us all the way to the top.
She pointed to a barely visible flag and declared: “Behind that is the house of Apo so, maybe it will take us around 30 minutes.” We were all silent as our driver whispered to us that the first time he went up there, it took him three hours! This was about 12 years ago when there were no clear passageways.
To the right of the tourism center, we saw what looked like a chair lift hooked to a cable line from base to village. We asked if that could be our alternate mode of transport and they laughed. Apparently, it served as a supply line for emergencies. It was intended to be used to transport people but the project did not get the green light from authorities.
Walking sticks in hand, our group headed down an uneven trail of soil, rocks and pebbles for the first 100 meters. Then we arrived on a flat, cemented trail that went all the way to the river where we crossed a foot bridge.
It took us about 15 minutes to get to the river and once we got to the opposite mountain, cemented steps with metal railings guided the climb all the way up to the village. Resting huts and trees provided shelter from the sun and by the time we got to the village. Forty-five minutes had passed.
Vendors lined the path leading to the waiting area where we were told that Apo Whang-Od was taking her lunch. This celebrated centenarian, born as Maria Oggay, has been hand-tapping tattoos on skin since she was in her teens, under her father’s mentorship. She was the first and only female “mambabatok” of her time and at around 16, she was already traveling to neighboring villages, at the request of the leaders of those communities, to tattoo their sacred symbols on individuals who were about to or have undergone transformational moments in their life.
For most men, this was a rite of passage towards becoming a headhunting warrior — this kind of tattoo would take days to finish and payment in kind was expected. For women, such markings were made for fertility and aesthetic purposes because of traditional beliefs that they could take their tattoos with them in the afterlife, unlike material possessions.
A mambabatok can only pass the craft within their bloodline and since Apo Whang-Od is unmarried and childless, her two grand nieces — Grace Palicas and Elyang Wigan — are her personally chosen apprentices.
My husband took a peek of the next room and saw Apo Whang-Od moving about, her dowager’s hump seemingly the only sign of how advanced she was in her years. Her wrinkled skin appeared to be glowing; the lightness of her mood, evident. The interpreter conversed with her (she does not speak Tagalog or English, only Kalinga or Ilocano) and soon my husband was called in and guided towards a low stool.
Deciding to have his first-ever tattoo done in his deltoid area, he requested that instead of three dots in a straight line, he wanted them in a reverse triangle representing the Holy Trinity. This three-dot tattoo is the only one Apo Whang-Od does nowadays and it takes about five minutes to complete. Traditionally, ceremonial rituals like chanting and offering sacrifices accompanied the tattooing but much has changed since then.
Using an inked “gisi” (a bamboo stick with a thorn attached to one end), Apo Whang-Od traced a pattern on the chosen section and used a larger stick to pound furiously for over a minute per dot, until blood and ink poured out of the wounded spots.
The whole process looked painful and raw, but my husband, upon the advice of our tour operator, had been briefed not to show any sign of pain during the process as this usually upset her. I asked him later what it really felt like and he described it as painful but tolerable.
The next order of business was to get her signature on our Vogue copy and all in all, this whole activity cost P400. P100 per dot, times three dots and P100 for the autograph. Money well spent from someone who is surely on the path to being a national artist.
Idle talk during waiting time even mentioned a rumor that Apo Whang-Od was once fetched by helicopter and brought to Manila for some VIPs who wanted her famous “signature” on their skin. This celebrity status, gained quite late in life, has visitors coming from all over the world now, and that number is foreseen to increase even more in the coming months.
The return trek to the tourism center was much easier because it was already late afternoon and pretty soon, we were on the road once again, heading to Sagada.
To say that it was an afternoon well spent would be an understatement. It would be more apt to call it one truly one for the books. To quote Audrey Carpio in her Vogue article: “The stories of the Butbut people and their beliefs will continue to be passed along through the vector of a thorn, plucked from a tree grown in Kalinga soil.”