The one ceilingless room serves for kitchen, bedroom, and reception room. There is no decoration nor furniture. Scattered around or hung up, especially in the vicinity of the fireplace, are the simple household utensils, and the objects that constitute the property of the owner--weapons, baskets, and sleeping mats. On the floor farthest away from the door are the hearth frames, one or more, and the stones that serve as support for the cooking pots. A round log with more or less equidistant notches, leading from the ground up to the narrow doorway, admits the visitor into the house.
Under the house is the pigpen. Here the family pigs and the chickens make a living off such refuse or remnants as fall from above. The sanitary condition of this part of the establishment is in no wise praiseworthy. The only redeeming point is that the bad odors do not reach the house, being carried away by the current of air that is nearly always passing.
The house itself is far from being perfectly clean. The low, cockroach-infested thatch, the smoke-begrimed rafters, the unswept, dirt-bestrewn floor, the bug-infested slats, the smoke-laden atmosphere, the betel-nut-tinged walls and floor, these and other features of a small over-populated house make cleanliness almost impossible. The order and quietude of the home is no more satisfactory. The crying of the babies, the romping and shouting of the boys, the loud talking of the elders, the grunting of the pigs below, the whining and growling of the dogs above, and the noise of the various household occupations produce in an average house containing a few families a din that baffles description. But this does not disturb the serenity of the primitive inmates, who laugh, chew, talk, and work, and enjoy themselves all the more for the animation of which they form a great part.
ALIMENTATION
In the absence of such a luxury as matches, the fire-saw or friction method of producing fire is resorted to, although the old steel and flint method is sometimes employed.
The cooking outfit consists of a few homemade earthen pots, supplemented by green bamboo joints, bamboo ladles, wooden rice paddles, and nearly always a coconut shell for receiving water from the long bamboo water tube.
The various articles of food may be divided into two classes, one of which we will call the staple part of the meal and the other the concomitant. It must be remembered that for the Manóbo, as well as for so many other peoples of the Philippine Islands, rice or camotes or some other bulky food is the essential part of the meal, whereas fish, meat, and other things are merely complements to aid in the consumption of the main food. Under the heading, then, of staples we may classify in the order of their importance or abundance the following: Camotes, rice, taro, sago, cores of wild palm trees, maize, tubers and roots (frequently poisonous). Among the concomitant or supplementary foods are the following, their order being indicative of the average esteem in which they are held: Fish (especially if salted), domestic pork, wild boar meat (even though putrefied), venison, iguana, larvae from rotted palm trees, python, monkey, domestic chicken, wild chicken, birds, frogs, crocodile, edible fungi, edible fern, and bamboo shoots. As condiments, salt, if on hand, and red pepper are always used, but it is not at all exceptional that the latter alone is available.
Sweetpotatoes, taro, tubers, and rice are cooked by steaming. Maize and the cores of palm trees are roasted over the fire.
There are only two orthodox methods of cooking fish, pork, venison, iguana and chicken: (1) In water without lard; (2) by broiling. Python, monkey, crocodile, wild chicken, and birds must be prepared by the latter method.