Mt. Busa Protected Landscape

The Hanging Angels

 at the Sacred Grounds of
 Mt. Busa Mountain Range
  a T'boli Tribe Community
 Kiamba, Sarangani Province

 

It was not a hanging coffin, for a proper term in the observance of burying our dead, I do not know the exact word to call it.We have the said hanging coffin in Sagada Mountain on one of its cliff and became a tourist attraction for lowlanders.

In Kiamba, Sarangani Province, it is a customary practice of T'boli Tribe of  Sitio Falel, a community at the foothill of Mt. Busa mountain range,  to hang the body of a  dead newborn or babies, in a tree wrapped in their white cloth diaper (lampin). The observance of such practice was base on the belief that said newborn and infant were never to touch its foot on the soil and still innocent of everything about our earth. To keep their innocence, they were never to touch the ground thus they are being hanged in a common tree standing in the burial ground of their ancestors.

what is obvious is unusual

The most amazing part was to be standing at this sacred ground. It was not the usual cemetery and memorial parks  that we can see in  towns and cities. It is within a rainforest. Seeing an actual hanged wrapped cadaver for years in a tree was just not a feeling of  discovering an unusual experience but witnessing a hanging angel in the midst of  the  forest of Mt. Busa.