Tau't Batu

Synopsis

They have been walking for hours through the jungle. They come from the high plateaus to the south of the island of Palawan in the Philippines, abandoning their houses on stilts and their fields to escape from the typhoons and torrential rains of the monsoon. They do this every year. They migrate to the mountains and seek the sanctuary of their cliffs, peppered with caves and rocky shelters. Together we reach the cave of Signapan. What do we know about them? They spend the five months of the monsoon season here and they feel at home. Their families have occupied the same caves for generations. There are only a few thousand Tau’t Batu left. The name means “people of the rocks”. The Manila government accords a strict protection to their homeland, hours on foot from the nearest village, on the edge of the jungle, at the edge of the world.