Busyadores: the nest gatherers of Palawan
We were on a boat heading East to Pabellon Island. I had met Omi the day before, after a long struggle to get permission to set my foot on this remote archipelago. Omi, the holder of the bird’s nest concession, had granted me a ride but he was not to join until the very end of the harvest. The men around me were leaving for the first trip of the season and I did not really know what to expect from the three days and nights I was about to spend on this cut-off island in the Sulu Sea. Needless to say, I did not speak a word of Filipino, but I was lucky to be with Alfred, a friend I had met a couple of days before at the local market who was willing to be my translator for the coming days. I was up and ready to follow these workers on their daily quest for nests.
I must confess the first time I heard of edible nests I thought it was a hoax. Is somebody seriously willing to pay for a bowl of soup made from hardened strands of bird saliva? Yet, Rosmal was not up for jokes. He was a serious man living in a small village in the North-East of Borneo, father of five and a hard worker. He was about to spend a whole season away from his family to collect nests in the most inaccessible of places: on the roofs and sharp walls of the intricate Gomantong cave system.
