The Tree of Life (Part 1)

For years we've been eating sago - in the form of the pearls that float about in Taiwan bubble tea and the flour that lends a wonderful chew to various Southeast Asian sweet treats - without knowing exactly where it comes from.

Nor did we know that Mindanaoans owe their survival of Word War II, in large part, to lumbia, the local name for the sago palm. During the war sago flour, a highly absorbent carbohydrate source that expands in the belly to make one feel full, stood in for rice. This we learned from the residents of Barangay Banza (Butuan City), where last month we were gifted the opportunity to watch the processing of this ancient foodstuff from start to finish.

The sago palm grows wild near brackish water in much of coastal Southeast Asia; in some areas it's also cultivated. At the end of its fifteeen-year life cycle, right before it begins to flower, the tree is felled for the starch stored in its trunk.

Getting at the stuff is no easy task (using traditional methods, that is; these days much sago is industrially processed). The trunk is splt and its insides hacked out, bit by bit, by a blunt hoe-wielding strongman.

It takes a few hours of strenuous labor to shred the trunk to nothingness. As the 'shredder' works, trunk innards are transferred to a large container - in this case, a disused dugout canoe - and doused with water.

 

As he adds water to the sago palm shreds, the man responsible for processing the sago kneads them repeatedly to extract their starch. It turns the water the color of milky Thai iced tea.

After the sago shreds have been thorougly moistened and kneaded they're squeezed dry, handful by handful. The final squeeze takes place over a mesh-lined sieve suspended over the boat, and the spent shreds are discarded.

This gentleman was washing and kneading and squeezing when we arrived around 9am. He was still at it a few hours later. After years of making sago flour he knows by touch, he says, when all the starch has been squeezed from the sago shreds. When he's finished, a mound of fine white starch hides underwater, in the depths of the canoe.

Left aside for a day, the water evaporates. What little is left the next morning can easily be scooped, without disturbing the puddle of sago starch, out of the canoe with a shallow pan.

At this point the flour is scraped off of the bottom of the canoe. It comes up willingly, in big, flat slabs of snow-white velvet.

Though it feels dry when rubbed between the fingers, the sago flour hides moisture. Setting it aside in storage at this stage would result in much moldy flour and hours of wasted effort,

 

so the starch is further drained in ingenious and beautiful conical sieves made from the base of the leaf of the sago palm from whence it came.

The hole at the bottom of the cone is loosely blocked with a bit of discarded shredded sago palm trunk,

and then the flour, just scraped from the bottom of the canoe, is packed tight within.

A triangle of palm leaf, placed inside the cone with its point covering the very bottom,insures that the packed flour can effortlessly be dislodged from its sieve once it's completely dried.

 

The cones are then tied upright and the flour left to finish draining and drying for several days. When all is said and done each cone will hold about ten kilos of sago flour.

The resulting sago flour - or unau, as it's called in these parts - can be used immediately, or it can be transformed into kinabu, which is essentially toasted flour, via a few turns in a dry pan. Kinabu can be kept without spoiling for up to a year. It's used to make a number of cakes, and can also stretch a meal if added to cooked rice at a ratio of about 1 cup kinabu to 1 kilo rice.

Next up, sago nibbles.

Comments

[Kalyn]

Very interesting. Never heard of this before.

[James b]

hi, i dont remember how i stumbled upon your blog, but im glad i did. i enjoy reading your blogs and the photography is great. i always find myself checking on your site for updates and new entries. your entries from the philippines excite me for the trip i'm planning with my cousin to cavite, phil. (our parents' home town). thanks. i could only hope to be able to go on the travels you guys go on, after i graduate from college. take care. Godspeed.

[Chad Edward]

Sometimes your posts are so unique I have no frame of reference from which to comment. Thank you!

[renato]

Always an interesting post...I've always had sago and never realized how labor-intensive it was using tradtional methods. No wonder much of it is now processed.

[Sandy]

This is so interesting! I've had sago all my life and never knew where it comes from exactly. Your photos are great too. Keep up the great work!

[Phil]

This is a great series of posts. As a matter of interest, were you shooting with a flash or is it just great natural light?

[Robyn]

Kalyn, neither had I until we moved to SE Asia.

James - thank you. Eat well in Cavite!

Chad - thanks.

Renato - exactly ... this is a time-consuming and arduous task!

Sandy and Phil - thanks. As for your question Phil, I'll pass that on to the photographer. Dave?

[Dave]

Sandy, thanks. Some subjects seem to photograph themselves.

Phil, I used a combination of natural light, on camera fill flash, and off camera flash. For the opening shots I used two radio triggered strobes, one camera left clamped to a chicken coop roughly eye level 8 feet from the subject. The other light was clamped to a tree waist high. Both were set manual at 1/4 power. I like how the "sandwich' lighting gives a kind of 3D effect to the guy digging out the sago. What do you think?

[Phil]

It really does make your subjects pop out. I thought that maybe you had a giant reflector.

(I'm assuming that's your shadow in the fifth shot down. heh. If it was me, I'd manage to get my thumb in there too, possibly both of them.)

[Dave]

Phil,

Actually the shadows are from the trees above. We did this at about 10 am on a bright day.

I had one strobe camera left mounted on a tripod roughly 2 feet high and 8 feet back. The second is directly behind him mounted on a fence. Both were on manual at 1/4 and 1/8th power respectively. The camera was set on manual and was shot at 1/125 at F11.

Is that more than you wanted to know?

[Aly]

absolutely stunning and very interesting. Makes me feel so unskilled - the only part I'd be able to do is the mixing, and even then.

Our forebearers were very ingenious and inventive to figure out how to prepare some of these foods.