Weaving Their Future by Mat Weaving

Libertad highways lined with yellow corn or palay, the unpaved road is like a long aisle adorned with colorful mats.

It was a major livelihood as the less fortunate people of Libertad.

It was a very humid morning and soon dark clouds covered the sun after lunch that the women rushed to gather the mats and the raw leaves, some colored, rolled into a circular thing that resembles a hot pad.
Mat-weavers, mostly women and girls, are hoping for fine weather to stay longer to enable them to gather and dry wild palm leaves to eventually weave into mats.
With unusually long dry spell this year, business appears brisk for the local para-banig (mat-weavers). 

"Ang baligya namun depende lang man ran sa kaduruhon it ga bakasyun nga gusto mag bakal ukon ga order nga magpa ubra it banig",(Our trade depends heavily on the volume of vacationers and those who orders mats too) said Ate Christine, 28 and mother of two.

 She and most women and girls in the Town of Libertad and neighboring Towns make one or two mats a day depending on the volume of house chores they could forgo.

 The raw material for banig has to be dried under the sun before this is further processed for weaving. The finished banig also needs a one-day drying before it is brought to stall-owners in different Towns.

  " Ang mga bata nakausyan man mag ubra maskin ga lantaw lang sanda kag hala ubra lang asta maka usyan run gid"(Children learn by watching and later by doing it little by little) she narrates her own experience at teaching her daughter. 

According to the Libertadnon women, they engage in weaving in between their house chores, Because most of them are young mothers of two to five children, they only attend to mat-weaving when the school-aged children are off to school and if the smaller tots are asleep. 

Buri, a palm leaves..abound in the hills, are not so far from the Town . The supply of Buri also comes from the forest of other Towns and the women have to travel on foot to get their supply.
They and either their espouses or grown-up children gather the leaves, de-thorn and haul these home where these are dried for about a day before passing these under a heavy coconut trunk to soften.

As a first-time visitor to the up land village I noticed the ingenuity of the gadget and wonder what the long trunk is for. It could be very tedious for the new-comer to do the softening activity, pushing the round coconut log through the strips of Buri leaves some six to eight feet long.

WOW! it was really hard and heavy to turn it upside down. I can see how this people do it just for the sake of their kids and for their family.

These undergo dyeing by boiling the rolled leaves in “dyubos,” a locally available coloring medium. These are further left to dry some more to extract the water.
After weaving, the mats are spread on the hot road before packing them for their final destination like, houses,markets or even  export to Metro Manila.

Woven by Heart

One of the women brings the mats to low land once a week for the money to be spend for food and basic needs for the week.
A mat commands P245 to P380 depending on the size, which is determined by its width measured based on the number of “feet.”

“May apat kag tunga, anum ukon walo,” (There is 4.5, six or eight) says Christine demonstrating by walking through the width of a single mat, measuring almost five with her petite foot as a unit of measure. These represent the single, double and queen-size beds.
Christine sells 50 to 60 mats per week. When she has more time, she goes to other towns which the price of banig is higher.
The mountains and forests of Libertad is still abound with Buri and the women "parabanig" are optimistic the supply for mat-weaving is far from dwindling. 

As long as their environment remains friendly to the plant that gives them the raw material for banig, Libertadnon  women and their daughters will have a sustainable means to make a living. 


Boys carrying rolled mats on their heads emerge from a row of houses into the soft slopes and hills. All of a sudden, the idyllic rural scene comes alive with people who create in the visitors from Manila,different Barangays or Town a nostalgia for the banig.
If anyone survives and is happy over the heat of the prolonged summer due to changes in climate, the Libertad parabanig does.