The Sea King’s Daughter in the Post-Colonial

by PAULINA BIANCA OCAMPO

I don’t remember how we got to the topic of local magic and folklore, but for certain, I remember the incredulous looks that the Europeans tried to conceal.

On an uncharacteristically cool night on Anne’s patio in San Juan, La Union, we take turns telling stories. We are a group of six, four Filipinos and two tourists, a Belgian and a German. It is a get-together planned by Anne in her old, provincial home for new and old friends. We have just met through our shared interest in the watershed, while the Europeans had learned to surf from her friends, local surf legends from the area. Moths circle around a warm porch light; we are damp from the humidity, the Europeans red-cheeked from a day of surfing, and all of us a little tipsy on kwatro kantos. Every now and then, Anne tosses a shot of gin into the night behind her. Outside of the light, old trees with hanging tendrils lie in a loaded quiet.

It is on nights like these that we share certain stories. Anne tells the story of a ride home she gave her friend one late night. What should have been a five-minute drive took over an hour. Her friend could attest that she was on the right path, but the straight line towards home led them on and on into the middle of nowhere. “Is it perhaps an aswang or a kapre?” I ask. The European men do not seem to follow. Nature spirits have been known to meld one realm into another, we explain.

I speak up carefully, conscious of who is listening, so as not to offend any unseen visitors. “Yes—it also happened to my grandmother once,” and I share this story with the rest of the group. She told me of a car ride in her youth where they had entered a tunnel, expecting to be out in a few minutes that turned into hours. She said the tunnel had shifted several times during the ride. The plain tunnel had transformed into a dark, overgrown forest, and then an ornate cathedral that they could only hope would end. The four nod to themselves as if to say, “Yes—I know it as well.” The consensus is that a kapre may have deceived them.

There is no reason to worry about this tonight; we already threw a shot of gin onto the ground as an offering. None of the Filipinos question this common practice. A shot of cheap gin is worth avoiding an angry kapre; their smoke is known to lead people astray. A teacher in my youth swore that his offering of cigarettes to the kapre in their overgrown mango tree were indeed taken, with smoke billowing out of the tree on midnights. One of the Europeans asks Anne if she was drunk or sick; there must be some scientific explanation as to why the tunnel had seemed so much longer.

They are kind—but not our kind. They try their best to listen with open minds, but their faces give them away. I pretend not to notice the quick wince the Belgian throws the German. Though polite, they question us the way one does a fibbing child. I can’t blame them; they are trying to understand something so far removed from their reality. They are from places where magic no longer penetrates everyday life. I understand this; I am taking my master’s in one of these places. In Europe, no one talks of trees that hold companies of spirits and shapeshifters—trees are simply trees. Anne herself has worked with multilateral organizations in Europe and after years of international research, she is on track to finish her PhD in the natural sciences locally. I know how strange we sound; the secret is that I know I sound foreign even to myself.

Even before I left for Europe, my education had always been Catholic and Westernized. In the Philippines, school is conducted in English from the moment we enter it. Americans had set up the Philippine education system as a means to pacify their new colony—to colonize our minds. Covertly, we are made to believe that English is the language of progress, of the educated, and that our own languages are less superior, less academic. The Americans have long left our country and educational system, but I grew up thinking in English. Words like aswang and kapre are not thrown around in science class, and so much less in religion classes. Many local schools included Catholicism classes in each school year, a legacy from our Spanish colonizers. If science had not convinced us enough that the kapre did not exist, then perhaps we would listen to the nuns who would tell us that belief in spirits is a sin. Yet even our religious parents taught us to tiptoe around trees and anthills and to ask for permission to pass lest we anger the spirits they hold.

“Perhaps you were sick?” one of the men tries again. “I just can’t imagine how that could happen.” We are pulled back onto Anne’s porch; her dog whines for attention. Someone loudly tries to kill a pesky mosquito in the intermission. The cool air carries an energy I can’t explain, and I’m not ready to drop the topic just yet.

I then speak of the Sama-Bajau I had met doing fieldwork during my undergraduate studies in Manila. I spent every weekend for a few months visiting the large barangay of migrants seeking solace in one of the most notorious parts of the city. The Sama-Bajau are a nomadic group of Indigenous peoples living in floating settlements, often practicing a mix of their own religion alongside Islam. Most of them had fled their floating homes in Zamboanga and Basilan because of conflict; the others were already born in Manila’s slums. When asked, they had said pirates had scared them away, or perhaps they were attacked by rival tribes; they weren't entirely sure, except for the fact that it was unsafe. Most of the Sama-Bajau I had spoken to had seen a loved one die violently at the hands of one of these groups. They had then packed up their lives to migrate to Manila. Even for those without a shanty to call home, Manila was “safe and quiet.” If you’ve ever been to Manila, you know that those are not the first words that come to mind to describe the metropolis. Some sold pearls as they did in Basilan, but many had turned to begging for survival. They did survive, though they had to leave much of their cultures and traditions behind to live in Manila’s slums. Dancing at a festival on floating boats was different from the gymnasium stage in their barangay. Magic for the Sama-Badjau of Manila, however, did survive.

To be honest, I’m not sure why I bring them up. I’m afraid that I don’t give justice to their stories, but perhaps it would be a larger disservice not to defend them at this moment. How could the Europeans be so quick to dismiss magic when the Sama-Bajau still believe and experience it in Manila’s hardiest slums? I empathize, however; I was in the same position as these European men a few years back.

In a focus group discussion, the Sama-Baja women told stories of their husbands getting possessed by spirits fairly regularly. They all agreed it was a hassle; their husbands would begin acting out of character because of a possessing spirit, and they would have to find offerings and discuss it with their local healer. This I had a hard time believing myself; maybe they were acting out as errant husbands often do? They disagreed; interaction with spirits was an everyday occurrence. One of the older ladies told the story of a child she knew in their old community, though she wasn't sure where she had ended up after the conflict. She said that her mother had been pregnant with her with no human father; her father was the king of the sea. I hid my reluctance to believe this. They say different things about young pregnant women without known partners in the city I grew up in. As the child grew up, she told me, she would occasionally disappear for days at a time at sea to visit her father, the sea king. The other women agreed—they knew her too. Their confidence could not help but make me believe it as well. They told me their people could hold their breath for five minutes at a time and longer underwater, swimming for hundreds of feet. I thought it was an exaggeration until I saw it in a documentary years later.

Months later, I’m far away from Anne’s porch and back in my dorm room in Belgium. Cobblestone and gray skies replace the sun and sea of La Union. I can’t help but think about both incidents again: one in which I am the storyteller, and the other, the skeptical audience. I’m not sure which one I am on most days. To the Sama-Badjau, these stories are not folklore of old. They are part of a shared reality of nature that I respect but could not relate to. They share a deep ecology that does not only believe but knows that they live with nature and not simply in it. The nature spirits and their different names—the aswang, the duwende, the kapre, the sea king, and all the unnamed creatures—are as much a part of the world as they are.

The Sama-Badjau resisted colonization by living on floating settlements on the coast of Basilan. In Manila, where I’m from, three hundred years of colonization by the Spanish, then the Americans, and then the Japanese. When the Sama-Bajau tell me their stories, I feel a sense of wistfulness. Their lives are by no means simple, but believing in a world shared with spirits and magic is. They share an elusive part of the world untouched by colonization and I want in, but I worry I am not invited. However, they never once excluded me in my inquiry. They even found it funny I didn’t know these things—strange that I’ve never noticed magic in the ordinary. I do believe, many of us do, but with varying levels of reservation and intent. In doing so, local magic persists, resisting coloniality without asking.

Despite centuries of mental colonization through Spanish Christianization and an American educational system, this deep ecology is ingrained in our spirituality and values. Local Folk Catholicism treats itself to some forms of resistance, masking local gods of the rain, sea, and harvests with names of European patron saints. Our Spanish colonizers did this to make the transition to Catholicism easier, but if you’ve ever seen the Feast of the Black Nazarene, among others, you may wonder if it’s the same religion altogether. Thousands of devotees rush to touch the black statue of Jesus in Manila’s sweltering heat, even at the risk of injury and death, in hope of the fulfillment of a personal miracle. It is a devotion to magic because of and despite the difficulties of being a Filipino in the post-colonial.

I sometimes wonder if studying abroad is a betrayal somehow. I remind myself often that it’s silly, that only I could feel bad over being awarded a scholarship. For me, like many Filipinos, a pervasive sense of guilt comes with the comforts of leaving home for “greener” pastures abroad, even when a harsh lack of opportunities locally pushes us to do so. Yet even the Sama-Baja can find magic in Manila’s harshest streets. There is, perhaps, no more “uncolonized” thought and spirit, but only that which resists it. Separated from home, I carry a small resistance—my belief in nature’s magic and the reality of a magical nature. The Sama-Badjau take this resistance even as they beg in Manila’s harshest streets. Three hundred years of mental colonization and more have not been able to end this resistance. I muse, as I sip my coffee and watch pigeons fly by, if the Sea King’s Daughter has made it to Manila as well—maybe, even, abroad and wistful of home under the same gray sky.