When Turtles Come Home

by Victoria Hoffarth

  Another of my mother’s oft-repeated stories was how I was overheard by a friend of hers talking to my shy cousin of similar age. “Rosie,” I was reputed to have said. “Don’t cry if no one can hear you. Your tears would be useless. Wait until you see an adult coming, then wail as loudly as you can. That makes better sense.” I don’t recall any of these incidents, but I have no doubt about their veracity. Perhaps that and my being quarrelsome were some of the reasons why I thought my mother never liked me. My eldest sister was disobedient, I was feisty, and I thought she didn’t like either of us.

  One of the things I enjoyed was sitting beside my grandmother after school watching her play mah-jong. I must have been little more than five years old when I started learning the game. A woman named Pita would recruit three other players so they could form a quorum of four. Pita prepared meals and merienda (snacks) for the players and, in return, she would pocket the tong (change tossed on a small plate) paid by whoever won a turn. Sometimes when Pita couldn’t get enough players, my mother would pitch in and play for a while. But I was naturally on the side of my grandmother, watching her tiles, wishing she would beat my mother. After all, it was my grandmother who gave me everything I wanted and who tried to satisfy my every whim. I was her favourite! One reason for this was because I was born with two fully formed baby front teeth, an abnormality considered lucky by my grandmother’s Chinese relations. She loved it when I returned from school and sat beside her as she played. She thought I brought her luck. On one memorable day, my grandmother whispered to me that she needed to pull out a ONE BIRD from the tiles facing down. The three other ONE BIRDS were all out, there was only one left on the wall. So I did the honours, and pulled out the ONE BIRD tile. My grandmother beamed!

  If I didn’t become addicted to mah-jong, it was only because I left Victorias when I was ten years old to board in a convent school ran by Spanish nuns. Then, a year later, off I went again to another one ran by German nuns. There I stayed for some six more years, and I forgot all about gambling. I was only reminded of it when, in her later years, my mother took to slot machines.

  Small-stake gambling had always been a favourite activity of her family. Never needing much sleep, my mother would go to the casino at night and still be up early enough for her daily activities. I remember one incident that my father recounted to my siblings and me. My mother had been in the casino all night and had crept into bed at around five o’clock the next morning. Knowing that my father worried about the effects of little sleep on her health , and noticing he was stirring, covered herself, still fully clothed. Pretending to be asleep, she didn’t fool him one bit. He jumped out of bed, catching her red-handed.

  After my father passed, my mother felt less guilty about going to the casino, perhaps on the grounds that what she was gambling was money my father and she had earned over the years. She would sit beside her favourite slot machines, at times not even waiting for the evening, instead starting in the afternoon. We understood all too well when the housemaids would respond to our telephone calls with, “She’s at school.” In old age, my mother had at last fulfilled her dream of going back to “school”.

  University Years

  After graduating from secondary school, I left Negros for university in Manila, resisting my father’s suasions to attend his alma mater, The University of the Philippines (UP), and choosing instead another convent school, called Maryknoll College, ran by American nuns. It offered a four-year course in liberal arts.

  Going to UP was totally out of the question. Not only the nuns but the bishop himself had warned us Catholics that we would be excommunicated if we went to UP, a haven for communists and atheists. By then, I had grown into a withdrawn teenager, afraid to displease, totally cowed by authority. My father never imposed his will, my mother didn’t get involved, and at any rate, the Church was the higher authority. It helped matters that one of the American nuns was actually the nanny of Robert Kennedy, whom I idolised. By then, I was living in make-believe worlds, a voracious reader of comic books—I preferred Superman to Batman because Batman didn’t really have superpowers. I was also addicted to teenage adventure stories, the Hardy Boys series in my younger days, graduating to biographies of Alexander the Great, history’s glamour boy. I would imagine him, handsome, young, and virile, with tawny locks and light grey/hazel eyes, astride his great horse, Bucephalus. I was also a consumer of pop music, listening to Pat Boone croon his songs over and over again until I could sing them, admittedly off key, in my sleep. In the 1950s and 1960s, American culture had so dominated not only their former colony but the world stage that, amongst my classmates, my American tastes were by no means unusual. The difference, of course, was that they had real boyfriends whereas I was still pining for Robert Kennedy and Alexander the Great.

  I wanted to write and to teach, but my father suggested I took up something more practical. Therefore, after graduating with a liberal arts degree major in English literature, I decided indeed to take up something “more practical”. I leafed through the programme brochure of the graduate school across the creek from Maryknoll College—The Ateneo de Manila University. Their catalogue started with letter “A”: Anatomy, Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Art History …hey, wait a minute, “Anthropology” was quite exciting. You travelled to exotic places, lived with interesting peoples, learning and writing about them. I didn’t even get around to the letter “B”.

  It was during my second year of graduate studies in anthropology that my younger brother met with his “accident”. Unlike me, he followed my father’s advice and went to the University of the Philippines. For that, he was rewarded with a Volkswagen Beetle. During his first year at university, when he and a few ex-classmates attended a school fair of their alma mater, De La Salle College, they noticed a scuffle breaking out. One of their former classmates was being pushed to the ground by several boys. Hurrying over to prevent a fight, they thought they had succeeded but, as their group were leaving the scene, one boy shot at them, hitting my brother squarely at the back. It turned out that the gang consisted of children of prominent families in Manila. One or two were sons of powerful politicians, and another, the son of a top surgeon at the country’s prime hospital. They were on a killing spree. The campus guard who was willing to testify about the incident involving my brother, was killed before he could do so, as were two waiters in Aristocrat, a popular restaurant. Apparently they had displeased someone from the group. However, when they shot and seriously wounded the young son of the American consul, the American government filed a formal complaint and the courts decided to promptly prosecute. One boy, the scapegoat, admitted to pulling the trigger in all the cases and was duly sentenced to serve time. The rest remained free. After the media interest had died down, however, my family never heard any more about what happened to the convicted boy. It was this lack of justice in the country that contributed to my brother’s best friend’s decision to run to the hills and join the communist insurgents.

  The incident was to change the course of my brother’s life. He was then nineteen, a soccer player and active in other sports as well. He would subsequently spend his life a paraplegic. Admirably, it afforded him both strength of character, and a fortitude that was to see him through life’s challenges. This was in 1969. There must have been hundreds of people who suffered like my brother. I remember that as you went to most restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, and other public places in the country, this signage was prominently displayed at the entrance, “Please deposit your firearms”. Once, my family entertained an American academic couple at Madrid Restaurant, considered the most genteel restaurant in town. My sister, who wanted to give a good impression, stood between them and the directive so they wouldn’t see it, but they did anyway, and worse, commented on it. In retrospect, I guess they were not members of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA).

  I was already studying in the US when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972. A
t that time, I only had one other Filipino friend at my dorm but nonetheless word spread fast—few facts, lots of rumour. With no CNN or social media at the time, we were reliant only on radio and TV broadcasts. However, there was a total news blackout coming from the Philippines. Along with it, no one was allowed in or out of the country so that people were totally in the dark.

  When communication channels were finally reopened, I am very proud to say that I was one of the first amongst those I knew who got through with a telephone call to my father. However, it would not be until four years later in 1976 that I went back to the Philippines. By then, the country had changed quite radically. There was a curfew at midnight and people were much more guarded.

  No matter the difficulties, Filipinos are known to retain their sense of humour. When feeling helpless, they resort to jokes. Amongst the first jokes I heard on my return was about a radio commentator who had broadcast, “Para sa kauunlad ng bayan, bisikleta ang kailangan”. (For the progress of the country, cycling is necessary.)” This was a pun on the slogan promoted by President Marcos, “Para sa kauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan.” (For the progress of the country, discipline is necessary.) It seems the military detained the poor radio guy in a military prison and later sentenced him to cycle around the park over and over again for everyone to see.

  I was one of those who initially supported in Marcos. Traumatised by what had happened to my brother, I witnessed on my return peace and order seemingly restored to the country. I saw better roads, new buildings and other infrastructure, which were sorely missing when I left. The World Bank/IMF annual meeting was held in Manila in 1976, a recognition I had thought that we were on our way to “economic takeoff”, the catch phrase for the Philippines at that time. I congratulated myself for taking the right decision to come back to Manila. In keeping with the wishes of my patriotic father, I would be participating in the economic recovery of the country. However, it didn’t take me long to realise my total helplessness in trying to contribute to any kind of change in the country. Deciding to “work from the inside”, I had sought and was accepted for a job in government. It took less than two years of total frustration to crush my idealism. It was now time to seek opportunities for a more fulfilling future for myself in foreign lands.

  Two

  Fly Away Home:

  Expatriation And Repatriation

  … While whales feeding on mackerel

  are confined forever to the sea,

  we climb the waves,

  look down from clouds.

  Marvin Levine

  Like “love”, “home” is a word that is saddled with a heavy burden. When we talk of home, we think of support, comfort, safety, sanctuary: far too big a load for such a small, four-letter word. It is of little wonder that some of us spend a lifetime in search of it, for where our home is, there also is our treasure.

  I had always thought of myself as an outlier, not feeling truly comfortable in my own skin in the Philippines. Even as a young girl, I identified with a cartoon character I once saw, holding a magnifying glass crawling under the dining table asking, “I’m looking for myself, have you found me somewhere?” Consequently, I spent a great deal of my life looking for where I most fitted, where “home” was, so to speak. This was to result in an odyssey of some thirty-odd years. Yet, I never escaped the nagging feeling that where I was, was never as good as where I could be.

  I must have relocated more than a dozen times, and not because of career moves either. As with many people who have lost their rootedness, I have not until recently felt really at home in any one particular place. However, I am now in retirement, and for the most pragmatic of reasons, I feel I am where I most fit—amidst the monsoon rains of the Philippines. I am living in Manila, where life is easy and help in inexpensive abundance: US$10 for home-service massage, US$20 for a good meal in one of Manila’s many excellent restaurants, and well-trained resident domestic helpers for US$300 per month. Then, there is the golf club right next door. Most importantly, I love the warmth of most people I meet, feeling less isolated than I did when I was living in Europe. I find myself quite happy here.

  However, life is easy for me only because I belong to the stratum of well off members of Philippine society. Any visitor to the country will readily see that, for many, life still consists of daily struggles. You cannot close your eyes to the wretched lives lived by those in shanties. As of 2016, 25% of Filipinos still live below the poverty line and they cannot possibly find life easy. Thus, my personal pleasures are mixed with a degree of guilt and a certain feeling of duty, in the spirit of justice, to contribute to the social welfare of the community.

  Negros circa 1960s

  At first it was all about dreams of Hollywood. Amidst the unremitting plains of monotonous sugarcane plantations through which I had a forty-five-minute weekend commute to and from school, I dreamt of more beautiful landscapes, more beautiful peoples such as I had seen in films.

  My first adventure was joining my mother’s friend’s European group tour in 1964 when I had just turned seventeen. This was my mother’s way of making up for not allowing me to go for a one-year Rotary Club exchange-student programme to Australia on the grounds that I was too much of a scatter brain to please my hosts. The trip was courtesy of the windfall profits my parents made in their sugar business in the early 1960s, and it served only to whet my appetite. I was also lucky. The timing coincided with the government’s experiment of changing the school calendar from June until March into September until May. (This was later brought back to June—March.) For three years, therefore, we had a three-month summer break per year. In two of these years, I spent the time travelling.

  I trudged on my first mountain deep in snow whilst on a couple of day’s stopover in Teheran. Onwards to Europe, I got my first glimpse of a young couple kissing in the garden—Filipinos are usually shy about displaying erotic emotions in public—and my only slightly older girlfriends from the tour group and I crowded around a window of our hotel, giggling. In Switzerland, I was mystified by cows wearing bells. Most of all, I ogled at handsome, young waiters dressed smartly in black tuxedos serving us whilst my group ate in upscale restaurants. In Paris, I watched bare-breasted women with elaborately feathered headdresses parade up and down the stage. In London, even the stage with the whole orchestra completely vanished beneath the floor as the leading lady came down a winding staircase whilst “waiters” sang “Hello Dolly”.

  After Europe, I spent some time with my uncle and his wife who were training at a hospital in New York. Whilst there, I visited the 1964 World’s Fair, watched Hamlet with Richard Burton, and attended, albeit only for a few weeks, the John Robert Powers “finishing” school. I learned how to carry an umbrella and hold my gloves, how to sit, how to get into a car, how to pick up something that had fallen on the floor.

  In Las Vegas, I used my recently acquired skills, did my hair in a French twist and wore false eyelashes. Who would have thought I was seventeen years old and not twenty-one, the legal age for drinking alcohol? My girlfriends and I spent the night with free drinks, gawking at elegantly dressed casino gamblers. Coming straight from a small, provincial town in central Philippines, to say I was in awe was to put it mildly. Indeed, my first extended trip outside the Philippines was a mind-blowing experience.

  In 1967, two equally innocent classmates and I, armed with a travel book, Europe on $5.00 a Day, embarked on another summer journey, this time going—if not exactly backpacking as there were no backpacks then—the low-budget route. What I missed in luxurious settings, I more than made up for in adventure.

  Going strictly by the book with its lists of hotels, restaurants, and free activities, we bussed from one to the other side of town in search of cheap meals, forgetting that time had its own costs as well. We detoured, got lost, decided the eating place didn’t fit our budget after all and so postponed our meal in search of the next restaurant, perhaps another hour�
�s ride away. In Rotterdam, we stayed in a hostel we had no idea was above a brothel until one of us saw an eye peeping through a small hole in the bathroom down the corridor. In Athens, we boarded a ferry to Crete—third class. I was in a tiny cabin with two bunk beds occupied by three other people: one, crowded around by the rest of his family, was coughing incessantly; another was possibly the owner of the pigs and goats which also travelled with us.

  We got left behind by planes, lost our luggage, and of course each other. Naturally, the most memorable were our many dates, all with strange men. We had made a pact: all-for-one, one-for-all. One of us would perhaps meet an airline check-in clerk who would get two friends and off we would go for the night, or a player in a band who would take with him two other members, or a waiter with a couple of kitchen-helper friends. Our greatest find was a Saudi prince—or perhaps not—but who cared? With two of his staff, he took us to see Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn in a ballet performance in Vienna, then on to a Magyar outdoor restaurant with flaming kebabs. We had fun pretending we were part of his harem.