I had been talking on the internet for years with a girl who studied in a nice Manila-based university, and she was the most interesting person I had ever known. She was funny, she was witty, she was an amazing conversationalist. The sort of girl that you could talk to for what you thought was just thirty minutes, only to discover as you looked on the clock behind you that three hours had already passed…
When the two of us met and walked around in her city, and especially in her campus, something inside me just… clicked. Somehow, some way, I felt at home. The atmosphere, the temperature, the food, not to mention her company and that of her delightful friends. I loved the jeepneys driving pupils, professors and visitors back and forth between buildings, loved the tricycles, hell even the insane traffic was charming at first for a man from a country so organized as my nation of birth.
After that we traveled around, in between semesters we saw many of Luzon’s most beautiful places. Stayed in the province with the girls’ family for a few weeks and absolutely loved it there… her family was educated, clever, warm and loving, her mother a great chef and her father a natural born story teller. Her lolo and lola were hilarious, and sweet as can be. Everyone lived nearby, everyone was always available. They never felt like your typical ‘third-worlders’ to me, these were lovely and high quality people and I felt at home instantly.
Life was good, the pace of it all a lot slower than what I was used to. For years, there was no WiFi in the little town her parents lived, as it was in a mountainous area and reception was dramatically bad. Others may have been pissed off by this, me, I relished in the freedom it afforded me, the very welcome break from social media nonsense and the distractions of the internet… people really communicated with each other, more so than in Manila or other major world capitals where many kids could be found glued to their computer and phone screens like zombies. There was real interaction. It was refreshing.
In the mountains I drank the gin, the ‘4 by 4’ and ‘2 by 2’, clockwise, passing a little shot glass around a tiny wooden table until everyone had their fill, as we stuffed pulutan in the form of fried meat with onions or chicken tinola soup with ginger in our mouths… we went on hikes, had a lot of bonding with friends, family friends, relatives. At night I found myself smoking cigars with the village priest, seminarians passed us by on the road with girls on the back of their motorcycles, and the church had no organ but a live band instead with drums and a guitarist!
People seemed to take life a lot less seriously. Family was everything, food was affordable and in a nation so simple and yet so huge in population, business was always a possibility as there was always an abundance of things people needed, or wanted, with OFW’s (Overseas Foreign Workers) sending money home to their families, ensuring there was no shortage of money to buy things with, even in a country known for its poverty.
Oh and I saw the flaws, I did, I really did. I saw the issues. The hardships, and the struggles of those who lived in the slums. I saw the squatters, the begging children. But I also saw a lot of brave and inspirational people who kept smiling and singing their videoke songs, sipping their Red Horse and cracking jokes each night as they laughed their sorrows away and still somehow managed to put rice on the table for their kids…
Every kid had friends. Neighborhood kids, cousins, siblings, there was a lot of playing on the streets, a lot of social events. In the little towns kids would play in rice paddies, swim in shallow little mountains streams so clear you could count every stone on the bottom… I wanted to have my family here. I wanted to grow old here. The Igorots of the mountains buried their dead near their homes, while the Ilokano ‘immigrants’ buried theirs on top of hills and mountains in private mausoleums… I wanted my own little mausolum there, one day. I wanted to die overlooking the green hills and rice fields, stray askal dogs and carabaos. I wanted to darken my skin in the sun, toil the fields, drink with friends and walk around carrying a bolo in my trusted leather belt.
At the end of the day I fell for the girl. But I also fell for the country, and I fell hard. I knew I wanted to live here the rest of my life. My friends said I was crazy. But my father visited me there once from abroad, wanting to experience for a few weeks the life I lived, as he is a military man with what the locals called “a cowboy mentality”. He took all the shots, went on all the hikes, joined in on all the jammings and bravely stood his own at the videoke machine. At the end of his stay my father put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said:
“I get it. This is your home.”
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