On others' eyes

COMMENTARY
Sky not falling, or why expats choose to live here

First posted 04:34am (Mla time) Aug 21, 2005
By Gilda Cordero-Fernando
Inquirer News Service

 

Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the August 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

A CHILDREN'S story when I was young was about Chicken Little on whose head one day an acorn fell. He didn't see what it was and, greatly frightened, cried, "Help! Help! The sky is falling!" His fear spread to others along the way and the hen, the duck and the goose followed Chicken Little one by one, screaming their heads off, "The sky is falling!"

It was panic time! Reminiscent of the Philippine situation! More and more people are shaking their fists, despairing, making one feel like a fool for believing still in a country so broke, so befuddled.

Was there really nothing more to our country than the sky falling? I wanted to know. I asked my Japanese friend Shoko Matsumoto, theater lighting designer living in the Philippines for 11 years. "Why did you opt to live here, Shoko? You have jobs in London, New York, Australia, Japan and can choose to stay anywhere in the world. Every rainy season your terrace floods. You have a terrible time raising funds to finance your dream of transferring all the theater technology that you know to Filipinos."

The Japanese

"Because when I light a stage," she replied, "I see all kinds of plays and shows-some very good, some not so good. But always there is a spark of creativity in Filipino work that I do not find in other countries. In Japan, it is very hard to create something new-traditions are too strong. It's like banging your head against a stone wall.

"You complain about an excess of Filipino kids. But children are life! In Japan there are very few children now. The streets are so quiet. When I was living there the elementary schools were seven. Now there are only two. Official report on the average age of the population is 78 years old for the males, 95 for females. My father's father is still alive at 103 due to a healthy diet of vegetables and tofu and good hospital care which is free from 65 years old on.

"Women don't want to have children. Too much sacrifice. The apartments are small, no aunt or grandparents within reach to look after them. And Japanese husbands don't help with housework.

"Japan is a man's country, very patriarchal. Women cannot be executives in companies because they have housework to do. The only jobs women can manage are part-time, in supermarkets or cleaning hotel rooms. Here women can work full time, be executives, or business people, be independent."

The Israeli

Saar Herman is an Israeli in his mid-thirties, an acupuncturist and holistic healer. "Why did I choose to settle in the Philippines? Because in my first week here I already met five people who claimed to be Jesus Christ and one of them was a woman. In this country there is freedom of religious belief. And you can't imagine what that means to someone from Israel. If he knew, my father would never even have allowed me to study acupuncture in Buddhist countries like China and India. All the wars in Palestine, as you now, are about religion."

The American

Jim Sharman was an American Peace Corps volunteer in the '90s, assigned to a Mindanao barrio ("water supply sanitation") with no water and no electricity. "It gave me a lot of time to reflect on what's important in life," shared Jim. "I saw that there was so much to do and could be done. Right here. I returned to the US for postgraduate studies but came back to the Philippines and never left.

"I guess I wanted to make a difference and this seemed to be the country with the most potential for that. Historically the Philippines is a place of many firsts-from being the first republic in Asia, to the first people power revolution that made such a mark on the world.

"In Iloilo they wonder why a white man like me is working so hard training teachers for a network of schools for the poor and putting up a center for sustainable farming. I tell them, this is now home. My son by my Filipino wife, Tesa, is 9 and so Pinoy. (You should see how he sucks the eyes of a fish and picks the bones of a chicken). I guess what I'm doing is helping to create a future for him.

Many foreigners have perceived in the Philippines a special mystical quality connected to the Divine which has escaped most Filipinos. In Europe there is none of that since they have willfully destroyed the connection by prohibiting the teaching of religion or any spirituality.

The German

"I believe in faith healers, herbolarios, apparitions, mosmos and all the unseen entities here in Mindoro," says Michael Wolf, a German engineer who has resided in Puerto Galera for more than a dozen years. His house on a mountain overlooks Batangas Bay and is a 20-minute walk from a rain forest. "I like the openness here to all kinds of spirituality," he explains. "The Filipino is still very much a natural being. I like the challenge of living only with basic things-natural water, something to eat, minimal electricity-which is what my provincial life is all about."

"Landing at 6 a.m. in the airport for a visit to Germany, all I see are long faces," says the beautiful Inge Horn (Bauzon), German resident of the Philippines since 1984. "If someone smiles at you it's either an Asian or a Filipino.

"In India is the real poverty. Everywhere else it is fake poverty. Poverty is a choice. The Philippines has many natural riches and can survive by itself. All it needs is infrastructure. The people are very adjustable. You see pushcarts piled with the garbage and the poor on top of them laughing, celebrating life. If people would look at things more positively instead of complaining and complaining maybe we can get out of this impasse we're in.

"The Filipino compassion for family is legendary. The members really take care of one another. That's not common in Europe where at 18 you find a job and survive on your own. No one is beholden to anyone. When you have your own family, once in a while you visit your parents but when they're old they go to an old folks' home.

Proud to be Filipino

"I had to learn to do business here. In the Philippines the clock goes around another way. There were many circumstances I couldn't have accepted before-brownouts, typhoons, no water-but you learn to live with them. Why do we have to go only one way? I thought. One can go another way and be successful too. I learned a lot here. I have been Filipina for 20 years and proud to be one."

Well, all Chicken Little needs is to borrow the lenses of foreigners who chose to live here to realize that the Philippines is worth saving. That it's only an acorn and not the whole sky that is falling.

 

-anben-

www.boronganon.blogspot.com

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