PhilFAQS

One of the things that is always difficult for me is to come up with an answer to the question, ‘but why would you choose to live in the Philippines’.  This is especially hard for me when Filipino friends and family ask this, because it feels kind of snippy to answer them back with something like, “My gosh, don’t you know what you have here?”

I found a couple well-written articles that sum up many of my feelings.  If the ‘why live there’ question ever comes up in your mind, you owe it to yourself to read and reflect on them.   Since Philippine web site liking is so problematical, especially for the Inquirer, I’ll take the liberty of quoting the whole cloth here and save myself all the emails about broken links.  (about 90% of the valuable information about the Philippines is lost forever on web sites that can’t figure out the most basic of HTML linking rules, *sigh*)

That expat feeling

By Jamina Vesta Jugo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:33:00 01/15/2010

ENGLISH IS MY FIRST LANGUAGE. My primary and secondary education took place in international schools. I have been to the United States several times, and have also visited Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands.

These are the bare facts, but if I had space to do so, I would be able to cite many more possible explanations as to why I sometimes feel out of place in the Philippines. Those examples would both be more interesting and more difficult to explain, but I think the reader already knows everything he/she needs to know about my background.

Like many other young Filipinos with literary ambitions, I dream of writing an insightful, original story full of brilliant insights into contemporary Filipino society and culture. I have tried many times, but always, my style seems too Westernized, completely inappropriate for writing from a Filipino perspective. The atmosphere always feels forced, and I can never manage to write convincing Taglish dialogue.

And then I had a breakthrough. Recently, I began a story that, while far from great, is a lot better than my previous efforts. The main difference between this story and those before it is that the main character is a foreigner. Sam, the protagonist, is a young American staying with a German expat family in Manila. The story follows a small circle of classmates and their parents. There are no big political events, and there is only one “native” Filipino character with a major role.

For some reason, this unfinished story feels more truly Filipino than anything I have written so far. Since he is an outsider, Sam’s eyes see beautiful, funny, horrifying things everywher”e. He is not always right (actually, he is often wrong), but his mistakes often have more to say than his realizations.

I don’t think Sam resonates only with people with an upbringing similar to my own. I have shown parts of Sam’s story to others with a more conventionally Filipino upbringing, and they often agree with what he says and thinks about the Philippines.

Why is it easier to write about one’s own country by pretending to be a foreigner? Of course, that is not the real question. The real one is: Why is it sometimes easier to relate to foreigners when looking at one’s own country?

Many people will say that this is because Filipinos, especially the young ones, have been exposed to so much foreign media and culture that they can no longer think as Filipinos. There may be some truth to this. Still, I think there are other factors.

I refer here to the moments that make one’s own country seem like a foreign land. You might witness something beautiful, like a mountain or lake, that is so wonderful that you feel as if you were on the other side of the world. The country that you have been taking for granted suddenly shocks you with its splendor. Or you might see something very funny, like that ad with that popular novelty song teaching voters how to fill up a ballot. One can’t help but laugh at the charming strangeness.

Then again, the moment of foreign-ness may come on the heels of a terrible event, some shocking act of violence that we cannot accept as happening in our homeland. How is it that we live in a place where such things happen? Don’t things like that happen only in other countries?

This feeling is not unique to Filipinos. It can happen to a person of any nationality, whenever his country makes him feel alienated or betrayed. We all feel a little foreign sometimes, even if we have never left our homeland. It is the only logical reaction whenever we feel that the place we are supposed to call home has been turned upside down. We are standing on the ceiling, staring up at the floor.

Such a feeling often passes. It is astounding what sort of things, good and bad, human beings can learn to get used to. However, it is important to remember this disorientation. We have to remember how it felt and what caused it, so that we do not get used to living in a place where terrible acts of violence have become commonplace. Remember the expat feeling, so that we can clean house, and turn our country into a place where citizens feel at home. http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100115-247558/That-expat-feeling

photo credit: Ma.Ka

Then consider what Mr. Komarnicki has to say…

THE YOUNG BLOOD ARTICLE “That Expat feeling” by Jamina Vesta Jugo (Inquirer, 1/16/10) evoked a bit of nostalgia for me. My first language was Polish, but English was all around us, as was French, when I was growing up in the east end of Montreal. These three languages were also used during Masses at our local church of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Hogan Street.

But I left Canada for sunny Australia when I was 24 and, after 31 years, returned to Quebec to see my brother. The weather was unseasonably bitterly cold in June 2000 and there was little I could recognize of my neighborhood; and my beloved aunt’s place had been torn down, replaced with a sausage factory. The past is not another country, it’s just not there anymore. My relatives are scattered everywhere and hardly ever keep in touch.

But my son was much impressed with the Metro and I was glad to remember it as still being the iconic classic artwork of a revitalized city back in 1967 when it was host to Expo 67.

Where are my roots? Somewhere in Poland but I’m a Quebecker at heart as well as a Canadian who happens to be an Australian citizen who’s married to a Filipina and is thus allowed to live here as a permanent resident.

I used to feel like an expat once, almost 700 days ago, but the word itself implies a sort of “exile,” whereas in reality I feel very much at home here although not really as much as my wife, who’s a local. My son is a bit bemused by it all, but he can pronounce “Gingoog” heaps better than I can.

I think, feel and dream in English, but my deepest yearnings may still be Polish and I can identify with the aspirations of a once-enslaved people who now live free.

New York photographer Diane Arbus said, “What I have never experienced before, that’s what I recognize.”

And what I recognize in Ms Jugo’s article is that same sort of feeling, at once familiar and at the same time alien, but only because it’s something never felt before but seen through fresh eyes. So I’m not really nostalgic but astonished at seeing life through the eyes of my wife’s people, astonished at the vitality and wonder of it all.

—WALTER P. KOMARNICKI

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/letterstotheeditor/view/20100129-250037/Finally-at-home-as-an-expat

My dear wife, who also shares Ms. Jugo’s background of learning English as a first language (not nearly as rare in the Philippines as you might think) pointed me to these articles.  They say a lot. or they do for me, anyway.  Hopefully they will stir some thoughts for you as well.

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