Week 5 - Let's Talk School

Filipino Folk Games that I Play with My Friends

     ​I’ve played a bunch of folk games in the Philippines. Have you? In Asia there are a lot of similarities to these folk games, kind of. Do you like folk games? To me playing folk games is always fun. I am going to show you three of the famous folk games in the Philippines that I always play with my friends as well as my classmates. 

     First is Dampa. Dampa is the act of producing air to come out from a hollow of dome-shaped palms when struck against the ground. This game involves your hands and rubber bands. The objective of the game is to move the rubber bands to the finish line with certain distance. The players take turns to move the rubber bands, the one who gets there first wins. The loser will give at least 1 rubber band to the winner. You can sometimes gamble but we don’t do that. Warning: You might hurt your hands from practice, so just deal with the pain. But you will get used to the pain more and more. I am moderately used to the pain. It’s best if you play in a really smooth surface when you just started playing it. Then you can work on rougher surfaces.

​     Next is, Bato-Lata. Bato-lata is a traditional game in the Philippines. The game is played by a group of kids, one watching over a tin can or lata at a designated spot, and the other kid, also at a distance and a designated spot, attempts to topple over the “lata” with a rubber slipper (the act of throwing the slipper over the tin can is called “bato”). once the “lata” is toppled, the watcher will try to place it back to its original location as fast as he can, while the other kid will try to retrieve his rubber slipper, while running to get his slipper he has to avoid being caught by the watcher. once caught, he will be the one watching over the tin can and the other kid will get to try to topple the can.

     And the last game is called Spider Fighting. If you have arachnophobia, don’t try this. Arachnophobia means fear of spiders. You might need adult supervision with this. In this game we find spiders and keep them in match boxes with a tiny bit of leaves in it. Then you can fight the spiders with a long stick. Put two of the spiders on both ends, then make them fight. The loser’s spider might get eaten by the winner’s spider for breakfast after the fight. This is a fun game, if you are brave enough to play. And be cautious, you might find poisonous spiders. I'm not going to put pictures for this one because I can't find any spiders here.