Boka Boka Blues

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine SUMMER means kites. Or at least it used to. It’s almost a magical emergence: the sun goes high, the air gets warm, the wind picks up and then a host of kites, all sorts of shapes and sizes, fills the skies. There are amazing kites made of smooth, flashy plastic, often in the silhouette of avians and raptors. These kites soar the highest. There are the boxy kites, often made of Japanese paper or cloth, filling the airways like order being imposed on the realm of chaotic wind. But when Filipino children say our word for kite—saranggola—they have one particular kite in mind. It is lashed together, small sticks or even the bristles of the walis tingting, bound by threadbare string, wrapped in a skin of old newspaper with a tail of the same material. If made from sturdy old paper, you could even eschew the frame completely. We know it by its evocative name: boka boka. It is a project for fathers and sons and daughters, or between friends on the streets. It’s a collaboration for playmates when any time becomes free. I honestly don’t know where the boka boka got its name. It doesn’t mean anything in Filipino, and in other languages, “boka” is either the Bengali word for fool or the name of the tallest waterfall in Slovenia, neither of which seems to be what we’re looking for. Perhaps we named the boka boka because of another aspect: its movement. The way the boka boka is designed seems to actually work against its flight capability. It bobs and weaves, lists and shakes. It takes a prodigious amount of running and a considerable tail wind to get it into the air, if at all, and unless you get a remarkable confluence of elements all working together, it won’t stay up for long. Perhaps it never was meant to fly for long. But it does, for a little while. It’s a romantic idea on a string more than an actual flying machine, and that’s perfect for us isn’t it? The boka boka isn’t a contest-winning construct, or an aerodynamic innovation. It is a playful vehicle of the Filipino soul, the true “saranggola ni Pepe,” as Celeste Legaspi memorably sang. In these days of record temperatures and unfettered daydreams, the boka boka flies high and long in our collective memories. Hail the once and future Pinoy thing. Find out all the different things you can do this summer in the April 19, 2009 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.