Kankanaey in our Backyard

When we were asked if we could reenact a Kankanaey Scene for the Cross Cultural Communication students, our minds went into gear, wondering how in the world we could do something like that in England?

After much thought and turning down many radical ideas, we finally settled on sitting in our back yard, showing the students how the Kankanaey relax. Ragnar built a small fire and had a typical Asian grapefruit. Often the men sit outside the 'man house' chatting away while they pass pieces of grapefruit around that have been dunked in coarse salt and hot peppers.
A group of 4-5 men came at a time. Ragnar is starting to peel the grapefruit with his machete.
The rest of the thick peel is taken off with his fingers.

Crushing the hot peppers with the coarse salt.

Passing the 'suha' around for the men to taste.

They are also interested in his hand made machete.

Trying to understand what the students are saying, since he only understands and speaks Kankanaey.

When the ladies saw me busy shelling peanuts, they came and joined me. It was amazing how much we could communicate (or think we were) with me only speaking Kankanaey, and only English on their part. With me pointing to one of them and then one of the men, they could guess that I wanted to know if they were married. Then we went on to tell each other how many children we had.

We were both quite impressed with all of their observations when we later joined them in the classroom to see all that they had observed - how we sat - did we get annoyed easily - men and women in different groups and lots more.

In the end, I guess all of my worrying about 'how in the world could we do such a thing' paid off. I really enjoyed it and would even be willing to do it again!!