One of the most interesting indigenous homes is the T’boli Gunu Bong, the “big house,” found in Lake Sebu. The Gunu Bong is wide, owing to the practices and composition of the family units living inside the structure, and the casual observer may notice an absence of physical partitions to divide sections of the house.
The house looks like an entire roof on stilts of 2m. The roof slopes low and is made of cogon grass. The interior space of a Gunu Bong is about 14 by 9m and it is used for entertaining guests and also for work on the intricate dreamweaving of the T’nalak.
Instead of having different, separate rooms, the house has areas for different people. The guest sleeps on the center called lowo and the other side called the blaba is where the family sleeps. On the other end of the house is the desyung, the place of honor, while the canopy is decorated with piles of mats and cushions.
The sleeping quarters (dofil) flank the desyung, sometimes raised 1 m (3 ft) above the rest of the house. At the other end of the house is the döl, the vestibule floored not with bamboo but with heavy wooden planks. The utility area is called fato kohu along the wall, and a ladder going down to the ground.
For defense from enemies, such as neighboring Manobo groups, T’boli houses are built on hillcrests, with slash-and-burn fields covering the slopes below.
Reference:
“T’boli.” May 14 2020. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tboli.
Cultural Center of the Philippines. “Did you know… The Tboli gunu bong is a large clan house with no partitions”. Aug 1, 2017.
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