craft corner

In Zamboanga, the YAKAN VILLAGE is home to people and weaves with colorful stories to tell.

- TICIA ALMAZAN

WITHOUT A TOUR GUIDE OR LOCAL FRIEND, IT’S EASY TO MISS ONE OF ZAMBOANGA’S MOST CULTURALLY CHARGED CORNERS. Type in the address on Google Maps and you’ll get a location pin, but click on Street View and you won’t find an entrance. The directions will lead you to a busy road in Barangay Upper Calarian, where the destination is tucked next to an aqua green building. The only indication of its existence to an unknowing outsider is a meter-long tarpaulin that reads, “Yakan Village Weaving Center.”

Stepping through the archway, the compound is deeper than it looks. To the right are about ten merchants, while to the left is a set of steps that leads to more shops. Each booth is dense with a melange of geometric colors: polo shirts, bags, coin purses, pouches, accessories, table runners, and placements, all crafted from Yakan weaves.

“Yakan refers to the majority Muslim group in Basilan, an island province just south of Zamboanga peninsula,” writes award-winning writer Rosalie S. Matilac in her 1994 article titled “Yakan.” She continues, “‘Basilan’ may mean ‘the waterway into the sea’ or may derive from the Yakan word for ‘the way to the iron’ because of the presence of minerals in the island.”

Formed in 1974, the village houses over 300 Yakan families including that of Serge Ilul, their tribal leader. He recalls the day a number of them journeyed from Basilan to Zamboanga when he was just in his mid-teens. “It was way back in the early seventies when there was a skirmish between the Moro National Liberation Front and the military, so we were forced to leave the place empty-handed. [Then] we stayed here, around fifty Yakans, scattered all over Zamboanga city in different churches and good samaritans that housed us.”