The chosen coconuts must be hanging alone, not in a bunch, and they must come from the east side of the tree and be harvested on Good Friday, only. This is part of the recipe for concocting the special oil that heals many ills and also protects from bad spirits, witches and those with evil intent. If someone touches you and you are not carrying a small bottle of the oil on your person, you must touch them back to keep any evil from settling on you and causing you harm or even death.
A woman should never let her panties hang on the line to dry overnight, outdoors. If she does, she risks becoming impregnated by a non-human being of the night. And if that happens, she will conceive a white child with white hair, not a typical Filipino child. And the child will not be wholly human.
A certain movement of the fingers, pointed at oncoming rain, can prevent the rain from coming further.
Evil beings can inhabit trees and take on human form and if angered can cause a person’s life to become a nightmare for them and their generations to follow.
The Philippine culture is rich with beliefs in magic, other-worldly beings, witches, the power of concoctions, healers and more. A woman in northern Cebu comes from a long line of healers. Eating her deceased brother’s teeth and using his skull in rituals helped enable her healing powers.
Uncle Placido has the third eye. He has the ability to see spirit beings. So did his mother before him – Emelie’s grandmother.
These are just a few of things I’ve heard since living here the past 10 months. There are some things I just plain don’t believe, like the woman’s underwear on the clothesline being responsible for pregnancy. No way. Some woman must have invented that one when she became pregnant as the result of an affair. And the excuse was kept alive through the generations by other women caught in the same predicament. “Oh my gosh honey! Must have been those panties I left on the line overnight!”
I can attest to the healing power of the special coconut oil: two drops of it cured, almost instantly, nausea I had had for several hours. Emelie borrowed a bottle of the oil from her cousin, Nilo, who got it from Placido. Emelie didn’t tell me much about the oil. She just said, “Take this. You won’t believe in it, but take it anyhow.” I did. It worked.
I try to keep an open mind about things that are beyond my experience and knowledge. Emelie was right, I didn’t believe in the curative powers of the oil. But neither did I disbelieve. Why form an opinion at all if there isn’t enough information on which to base it?
The Philippine people have been here long enough to have a rich cultural history. This is foreign to our American experience, since our ancestors came from many different countries and have only been in America
I thought about what it must be like to grow up in this area of the world, where traditions and beliefs have been passed down through the centuries, by word of mouth, from one generation to the next. The Spanish oppressed the Philippines
Both the differences and the similarities between Filipinos and Americans are a source of fascination for me. The differences point out the diversity which adds color and variety to our lives, and enables us, of a different culture, to look at life from another point of view.
For me, this creates an opportunity to not only consider different beliefs but to reconsider my own, in light of the new perspective. In doing so, something happens which I never expected: I begin to see that what I assumed to be a fact - to be reality - is often just a belief; just another point of view. This is a humbling awareness and it leads me to a greater respect for the culture and its people, in which I am immersed.
