KIANGAN, IFUGAO—Seven-year-old Decci Codamon used to go to school with hair down to his waist.

His parents had kept his hair long since birth because of tradition as old as the world-famous Ifugao rice terraces.

But when classes opened last week, Decci showed up with his long tresses cut, courtesy of the kolot, the most expensive first haircut ritual in Ifugao.

His parents, Max Bernard Codamon, a junior executive at the Department of Science and Technology, and his wife, Isabelita, a doctor with the Department of Health, spent P75,000 for Decci’s kolot which lasted two to three days and included a feast.

For the community tending to the rice terraces of this town, the kolot is a rite of passage to manhood performed by the village kadangyan (the community’s most affluent or most influential families).

Codamon, who comes from a kadangyan family, said his culture compelled him to observe the ritual.

Tradition

From the time Decci was born on Dec. 17, 2001, his parents were forbidden to trim his hair. The family had selected Decci “because his features were suited to carrying that much weight in hair.”

According to Decci’s mother, the tradition is old and there is no formula or customary saying to guide them in selecting the appropriate child for the kolot.

Codamon said Decci, his youngest, always had a problem using the men’s room because of the length of his hair.

“Whenever my son would enter the men’s room, someone would stop him and show him the ladies’ room. When this happened, he would run away,” he said in Filipino.

According to Ifugao Gov. Teodoro Baguilat Jr., who also wears his hair long, the kolot is one of the rituals the Ifugao have managed to keep alive.

Weather cycle

Baguilat said climate change had forced the community to abandon many of its rituals. Most of its traditions are bound to the rice that villagers plant on the terraces.

The rituals are based on a weather cycle that has dictated how and when rice should be planted.

“Because the weather has changed, many of these rituals can no longer be practiced,” Baguilat said.

Sacrifice

The province’s School of Living Traditions has documented most of these traditions and has been teaching new generations of Ifugao how to practice them.

Lydia de Castro, a former teacher at the school, said the ritual required the sacrifice of a carabao (water buffalo), some pigs and chickens. Five priests must perform the ritual, which lasts two to three days.

She said the family must first kill a male carabao, which is offered to the Ifugao ancestors to protect the kolot child. The priests then sacrifice three native pigs in honor of the bagol (native spirit deities), and then offer five chickens to ensure the child’s wealth and well-being.

For two, sometimes three days, villagers share stories and prayers over an abundant supply of bayah (rice wine).

Love tales

During the entire ritual, old women would chant the hudhud, a ritual epic composed of four tales, which was enshrined in 2001 as an endangered oral masterpiece in the World Heritage List.

In the ritual for Decci performed two weekends ago, Carmen Dagupon led a group of women in singing the love story of Balitok and Bugan, who survived a great flood, as well as the tale of Agginaya and Kabbigat.

The last kolot conducted in the village was in December 2006.

Because of the expense, the ritual has become a sort of family reunion for large Ifugao families.

Decci said he cried at the end of the ritual because he was fatigued. “Nabanog (I was tired),” he said.