Wobollo: Indigenous Technology that Magnify the Glory of Lake Abaya

Abstract

Wobollo as a conduit of transport across Lake Abaya adds its indispensable and evident role to the natural beauty and scenery view of Lake Abaya and its environs. It actually symbolizes the wisdom and invincibility of its builders and operators on Lake Abaya. The construction, operation and its indispensable role evidently signaled deep rooted experience of our forefathers in probing solutions to problems that encountered them in their everyday life. Its production sensibly needs indigenous knowledge and strong and positive mental setup. With a strong believe in themselves, the inhabitants of both the shore and islands of the lake had developed a good experience of building this particular technology after inquisitively observing their environment. After thoroughly observing the manmade and natural processes taking place around them, they were attempted to construct knowledge that would enable them to solve problems, to challenge challenges, and to upgrade their life in different forms. They had attempted to integrate different forms of indigenous knowledges to make life comparatively easy. Among others, the construction of wobollo and its astounding operation to float it on Lake Abaya is the living still indigenous knowledge and technology. Therefore, this manuscript intends to give some important insights with regard to the emergence and eventual development of this technology. In addition, the manuscript also attempted to portray the efforts and skills exerted to operate wobollo. It also unveils acknowledgements and appreciations forwarded to the wobollo technology, its builders and operation systems.  To evidently and objectively reconstruct the emergence and development of wobollo transport technology, researchers collected written materials, oral histories and travel accounts. Data gathered from different contexts are cross-checked among each other to write an objective history of the subject. The researchers also personally observed both the construction process and the operation of wobollo technology during successive fieldworks.

Keywords: Glory, Indigenous knowledge, Lake Abaya, Magnify, Wollabo