How would it sound to you when you see a group of people moving their houses on the streets to another location? Weird right! To the Filipinos, Bayanihan is a tradition of literally moving one’s home to a new location. Villagers gather, lift up the home, and carry it over quite a long distance.
Bayanihan is derived from the word Bayan, which means “town”, “community” or “country”. It literally means “being in the community”. Bayanihan culture derives from that meaning: “being helpful in the community, being one of those people who are working together to achieve a certain goal.
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In rural areas in the Philippines, houses were made from indigenous materials like coconut leaves, which are very light. When a family wanted to move to another place, they would ask the men in the town to help carry their house to the new location.
This was a very fun activity. 15-20 men carried the house in unison. Afterward, the family expressed its gratitude by preparing food for everybody to share.
Today, Bayanihan doesn’t mean exactly what it used to. What remains is the spirit of cooperation and helping each other.
For example, before the school year starts, the community will gather on a particular day to clean up everything, and pul
l weeds.
It is no longer about carrying houses. Another example, as you may have heard, is that the Philippines is very prone to typhoons. After a typhoon, people gather to help clean up the area and rebuild the houses.
However, the Bayanihan Festival is an organized activity that represents their culture. It’s a kind of fund-raising activity where people re-enact the Bayanihan activity of many years ago. People carry houses from one place to another, to raise funds to help victims of natura
l disasters.
For the festival, people make houses from indigenous materials and race with the houses to a distant location. The festival draws many tourists and anyone can participate. The distance could be 1 to 5 km.
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