Sungka with an Englishero

On a lazy afternoon, for once the digital glow of a screen is set aside. Sitting on the table in between two siblings, one bunso and his ate, is a wooden board etched with decorative flowers and carved with sixteen holes. In the many years they have owned this sungkaan, this is one of the few times they have ever taken it out. Despite that, the board isn’t dusty. Mother taught bunso how to play yesterday. So, bunso takes the lead to teach his sister how to play.

“Seven seashells in each hole” he says in straight English. Their hands move across the board. “But don’t put any seashells in the bahay,” bunso points out, keeping his sister’s hand from the two larger holes sitting at the ends of the sungkaan.

For a brief moment, the accent of a Westerner possesses his tongue. Bahay comes out as a strangled foreign sound—elongated where it shouldn’t be. As bunso reiterates the same instructions his mother taught him the day prior, the idea is there but at times the words come out wrong. Wrongly-pronounced. Wrongly-said. Bulol.

This is what it’s like to play sungka with an Englishero. Actually, this may be what it’s like to play any traditional Filipino game with a younger generation.

A Filipino’s Game (translated in English)

Many kids nowadays are no longer familiar with the games that once made their parents shriek with joy. For them, sungka is a decoration on the wall, slippers aren’t meant to be thrown at tin cans, and a shuttlecock is hit with a badminton racket not your feet. Some of them have never known what it’s like to stay out late—so late that the only source of light is flickering streetlamps—running and pushing and laughing, ignoring the calls from their homes telling them magsiuwian na kayo! Such scenes are slowly disappearing in neighborhoods. Traditional Filipino games aren’t the norm anymore. Entertainment is changing.

Today, entertainment has become a handheld device. It’s doomscrolling on a phone. It’s playing mobile games on a tablet. It’s flipping through Netflix dramas on a smart TV. These gadgets make it so that kids don’t have to struggle anymore to make their own fun. They don’t have to search for an adventure outside. They don’t have to open their doors to make friends. Their fun exists wherever there is a screen. As technology increasingly becomes the quickest way to kill boredom, it also becomes the easiest way for Filipino kids to become more exposed to Western culture.

There is a growing concern among adults that young Filipinos are becoming more westernized. Too many children learn how to introduce themselves in English first before they learn how to greet in Filipino. They don’t have sungka, but they have Monopoly. It’s not taya, but tag you’re it! Then there’s rock, paper, scissors, shoot, and not bato bato pick. Children are seemingly estranged from the Filipino games that used to fill the streets. Even when they go out to play, the rhymes that used to be sung by their parents have been replaced. Kids still know how to play. They know how to have fun. But there are some who are foreigners to the fun that once defined the childhoods that came before them. It’s almost as if there is a new generation of Filipinos who are strangers to their own culture.

Passing Down the Game to the Player

Traditional Filipino games are more than just a pastime, it’s one of a child’s first introduction to their culture. Sungka teaches strategy the Filipino way, because though the goal of the game is to hoard as many shells in your bahay, the players still have to distribute a shell to either side—they have to share their blessings before they can receive their own. Tumbang preso is a game of endurance and camaraderie, not just agility and aim. Sipa may seem like an endless loop of hitting a target with your feet, however without cooperation between the players, if even one person gets too greedy, the shuttlecock falls to the ground. All these games bring the community together. It brings Filipinos together. When these games are passed down, another generation inherits the Filipino values associated with them.

As a form of culture, traditional Filipino games have to be passed down. When families play games with their children, their children pass on the games to their friends, and in turn, the streets are filled with Filipinos playing games made by them and for them.

According to a paper titled, Factors Affecting the Decreasing Interest of Filipino People Under Generation Z in Playing Traditional Games, though the number of kids who play traditional Filipino games is slowly going downhill, there is over 56.66% of the Gen Z population still play traditional games while 43.33% prefer to browse and play online. Over half of Filipino kids today still play games like tumbang preso and patintero. They still go outside searching for adventure. They still want to open their doors to make friends. Some of them may butcher how the game is pronounced. The way they tell each other how to play may be in straight English, or a netted mesh of Taglish. But these games are still being played. Even after so many years, traditional Filipino games are still breathing and still holding on.

Times are changing. It isn’t so easy anymore to set aside the digital glow of a screen for one lazy afternoon. But there are still those who, for just an hour in their day, choose to sit across their little Englishero or Englishera and play sungka, of all the games they could be playing instead. Some words may come out wrong. Wrongly-pronounced. Wrongly-said. Bulol. But no matter how these games are played today, they will always bring its players—families, friends, and neighbors—together.