When I was a kid, my sisters and I love to play bahay-bahayan or playing house like setting. For us to experience bahay-bahayan as if it is true, we asked our tatay (father) to create a nipa hut for us. At first he was hesitant to create one but as we beg him to have one, he was convinced.
It was just easy for my father to create a nipa hut for the materials are available because we’re living in the rural area. He even finished it that day that made us so happy. It was just a small nipa hut but we are glad to have it. It’s like living during our ancestor’s time every time we use that nipa hut, we are also using it during our siesta time since its cold inside because of the anahaw as the roof.
A nipa hut, also known as bahay kubo is a symbol in Philippine culture and considered as the home of native Filipinos before the Spanish came. The native house has traditionally been constructed with bamboo tied together and covered with a roof using nipa/anahaw leaves. Nipa hut is still being used today, especially in the rural areas, I can even see nipa hut in our Barangay today. The material is inexpensive that the people living in rural areas can easily afford and most of the materials are already available in rural areas like bamboo and anahaw.
The nipa hut is also prominent in "bayahihan” which refers to a spirit of communal unity or effort to achieve a particular objective. I even witnessed a “bayanihan in our barangay before, but that I was kid then, I don’t know if it still happen today.
Now that I’m already in college, I realized that I miss those times, the bahay kubo, the bayanihan, and the simplicity if living. How I hope that even we have dreams and goals in life, even we have new technologies and building nowadays, still we will not forget our culture, and our spirit of being a Filipino.
Bahay kubo: Only in the Philippines
credits to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipa_hut
photos from:
http://samalbahaykubo.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/bahay-kubo-designs/
