The Myth Of The Sungkaban
By: Zild E. California
Once upon a time, a poor
couple, Marta and Elmo, lived in a
town of Bonifacio, Misamis Occidental.
Marta was a loving housewife to Elmo
who was a farmer. They had three (3)
kids, two boys and one girl named
Panpan, Nab-nab, and Issi. Pan-Pan
was the eldest, aged 11, followed by
Nab-nab, 9 years old, and the
youngest, Issi, aged 8. Marta was a
loving mother to the kids.
Despite their being poor, Marta
made sure to bring food to the table
either from root crops she cooked well
with toyo (soy sauce) and tamban
(herring fish), or inun-unan (fish stew),
or salted fish (bulad) or chicken tinola
(chicken soup) using firewood and/or
charcoal. But most of the time, they
ate only vegetables. Nab-nab and Issi
considered veggie foods as “blah” (it
means, “bad taste”) and they always
complained of bad food and often
skipped dinner. Nab-nab even often
slept in an empty stomach. They
believed that their spirits got hungry,
too. Tossing and turning in bed was an
indication that the spirit was hungry
and that it would not let you sleep.
One day, Nab-nab woke up and
noticed that his face had black marked
of uling (charcoal marks) on his face.
He shouted in panic. “Nay, what
happened to my face?” “I did not play
last night!”, he added. Marta dismissed
the sight because it was just
uling/charcoal mark. “You just wash
your face and eat breakfast
afterwards,” Marta said. “It was your
hungry spirit who was scouting for food
at night,” she continued. Marta noticed
that the kaldero/casserole cover in the
dirty kitchen was not in its exact place.
She just returned the cover properly
after checking that the inun-unan was
untouched.
The next day, Marta and her children
heard of news that one kid in the other
barangay, a playmate of Nab-nab, had
died from his sleep. He did not eat
dinner and his spirit separated from his
body while he was asleep and made
sungkab (raiding secured food) in the
kaldero. But then, the kaldero was so
heavy that the spirit got trapped inside
it and was unable to return to the body
of the kid till morning. The child was
found dead in his sleep without trace
of any harm inflicted upon him. It was
believed that the spirit was so hungry
that it tried to get food or nangsungkab
in kaldero/casserole to eat.
Since then, the kids, especially
Nab-nab, always saw to it that they
slept not with an empty stomach.
Whatever was offered on the dining
table, the kids enduringly eat them no
matter what. Then, the spirit, as a
result, slept soundly with the body, too.
Today, parents in Bonifacio,
Misamis Occidental make sure that
their kids never skip their meals
especially at night. To have a very
nice sleep and sweet dreams, eat well
at dinnertime, and break the fast at
breakfast.