It takes a village: Neighbors lift old man’s house, who wants to move to be closer to his children

Bayanihan, or the coming together of a community to achieve a certain goal, is one of the Filipino culture’s most enduring traits — often traditionally depicted in school textbooks showing an entire rural village carrying a family’s nipa hut and helping them move to a new location, as in the ways of our ancestors.

Yet Filipinos online were surprised to learn that this tradition remained alive and well after a video of an entire neighborhood carrying an old man’s house made the rounds on social media.

User u/westcoastcdn19 shared a video on Reddit on the subreddit Humans Being Bros that showed several men carrying a house on their backs using thick bamboo poles.

Philippine villagers relocate a widower’s home so he could live closer to family. The journey took 2 hours
by u/westcoastcdn19 in HumansBeingBros

According to the OP, the house the villagers were carrying belonged to an old man who wanted to live near his children after getting widowed.

“The grandfather didn’t have anyone to take care of him because his wife was already dead so his children wanted him to live nearby. However, his house was too heavy for his relatives so some of our neighbors volunteered to help,” the user wrote in a comment, adding that the old man’s daughters cooked for their neighbors to thank them for their generosity.

“This is literally old school Filipino ‘Bayanihan’ culture. Our school textbooks have the whole community helping out to move Nipa Huts as a prime example. You’ll even see it depicted in paintings. I never thought this sort of event still happens today, since most homes here are now built with concrete, hollow blocks and reba,” iMadrid11 wrote.

Other Redditors chimed in and said they had similar practices in their home countries.

“We had that in Singapore too,” u/PhasmicPlays said.

“A big group of Amish people moved a big house like this also. I don’t think they moved the house as far though,” u/Byx222 said.

“As an American, seeing this sort of community assistance and cohesion both warms my heart and deeply saddens me how far we are from this sort of togetherness,” u/KimJongRocketMan69 added.

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