When Turtles Come Home

by Victoria Hoffarth

  After Marcos had escaped to Hawaii, I was one of those who celebrated the ascendancy of Corazon Aquino, only to become disheartened by her government. I had thought that she had been given a unique mandate to wipe clean the corruption and excesses of the Marcos regime. Her popularity was so widespread that she could have done almost anything, and I think it would have been accepted by the Filipino people. But I came to the view that she didn’t have the moral courage to start anew and to go against the various vested interests of her family and friends, most of whom were members of the elite. Many would later call her tenure the restoration of the old order.

  By 1988, I was totally frustrated, whilst having had a number of options open to me. Accordingly, like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince who decided to escape by flying away from his planet with the aid of a flock of birds, I decided to emigrate—first with my husband when he decided to go back home to Germany. Then after another of our marital spats, I applied for a job in Singapore. I was accepted to teach at the newly established Nanyang University with an attractive compensation package. At the same time, my husband was offered a job at the also newly established European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. He invited me to join him in order to give our marriage another chance, and I opted to go with him to London.

  London and South Buckinghamshire, UK 1991–2004

  My husband Klaus, legal ward Paul (to be fully adopted by Klaus and me several years later), and I arrived in London in August 1991. The EBRD was a multilateral international bank tasked with bringing about the privatisation of government-owned enterprises in the newly independent states in Eastern Europe. We were to stay in London for the next twelve years, with weekends spent in our country home situated between the little towns of Burnham and Taplow in southern Buckinghamshire (South Bucks), approximately forty-five minutes’ drive from our West London flat. I played golf, Klaus loved his walks in the surrounding forested areas by the River Thames, and Paul invited schoolmates from St Philips, his day school in London, to spend the weekends with us.

  I was not prepared for life in London and Buckinghamshire. I had initially thought London would be like New York since both the English and the Americans are mostly Anglo-Saxons. I was mistaken. My initial impression of the UK was that life was slower and less harried. In the early 1990s it had not yet embraced the “cool Britannia” feel of the 2000s. Perhaps it was because we arrived during the time of economic recession that I felt the locals were less efficient and less work-orientated. For example, just when you expected your furniture to be delivered, the lorry would break down. Also the locals were much less welcoming. My friends, none of whom were English, would joke that this was a Third World country—that the English were so used to their empire that they had forgotten how to work. Our Circle Line train was always late, the buses were unreliable. Perhaps, my small son would opine, the drivers were having tea together, because often, after a long wait, three buses would come in quick succession.

  Even back then, like New York, London was a multicultural city, but whereas in New York, your friends came from all over the world, in London, you circulated with your own ethnic group whilst the rest of the community left you alone in a spirit of generous tolerance. New York was a melting pot, London a salad bowl.

  We lived in a mansion flat (purpose-built flats usually constructed during the Edwardian period around the turn of the 20th century) at the back of Kensington High Street. It was a convenient location, three minutes by foot to the tube station, (albeit with an unpredictable tube line), with two attentive porters. They would invariably greet us every morning with talk about the weather—either it was bright or would soon turn around. I had the good fortune of having next door neighbours who were much friendlier: a couple from Sweden. After they left, they were replaced by a family from mainland China with a son of Paul’s age; then a Jewish couple from New York moved in. Unfortunately, these were itinerant expatriates, and after an average stay of a couple of years, they were reassigned elsewhere. By then, we would have formed bonds of friendships and I missed them greatly when they left.

  In South Bucks, our weekend place was in a country mansion called Nashdom (Russian for “Our Home”), designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, a prominent English architect who also designed New Delhi. This once grand mansion housing a Russian prince and his English heiress-wife had been converted into town houses and apartment units. We bought one of the town houses and I became a member of the nearby private golf club.

  As I could never get close enough to the English to befriend them, I read books in order to understand them: from Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Country to Jeremy Paxman’s The English. Much of what Paxman wrote I had observed as well: the English were predominantly moderate and fair, but also often prejudiced and distant. They were certainly totally uninterested in me and my family. I noted that even during breaks in various workshops that I attended, or perhaps over lunches after a golf competition, I was often left to myself, ignored by everyone—as though I were a piece of furniture. I had heard that the English were polite and courteous; and so I reflected, hmmm, where was the vaunted civility of the English? As a young girl, I was taught that whilst seated at a dining table, etiquette mandates that you talk at least to the person on your right and the person on your left. I often wondered why they were not at all curious to find out where I came from, or how long I had been in the UK, or what I was doing in their country. After all, I looked very different, and surely, that at least should have elicited some interest? Except for the brief spell of an Indonesian married to an Englishman who joined the club for a few months, I was virtually the only non-Caucasian member and felt utterly unwelcome.

  Perhaps it is true, that geography is destiny. Inhabiting an island with a wet and humid climate, I found the English strangely provincial, wanting to keep to themselves with no intrusions from strangers. Whilst there, I learned to respect their privacy, even developing the trait myself so that when I repatriated to the Philippines, I had some problems coping with what I felt was the constant invasion of my privacy. However, privacy carried to the extreme can lead to isolation.

  I was not therefore at all surprised to read recently that in January 2018, Britain officially appointed its first “Minister for Loneliness” in order to address what the government felt was a growing epidemic of isolation and solitude in British society.

  Despite the downside of my residency, I was not unhappy, at least not in London. London, I thought, was a different country altogether as it seemed that half of the city was populated by members of minority groups such as myself, with all the variation and vibrancy that fact brings. I earned my financial independence during my stay there, and this gave me a great deal of flexibility in my life, and the luxury to enjoy the many pleasures the great city had to offer: museums, operas and concerts, travel, dining, shopping.

  I grew to love London. I loved the summertime open-air operas in Holland Park—only a ten-minute walk from where I lived. In these uniquely British affairs, you brought your own picnic hamper, complete with china and cutlery, tablecloth, stemware, cold food, and perhaps a bottle of champagne. You would reserve an open table in the park or even simply sit and spread your tablecloth and dinnerware on the grass. Dressed in more formal clothes, you would luxuriate in the light breeze of the late afternoon sun (hopefully) among the park’s resident peacocks. These feathered residents might have their own loud repertoire to accompany the soprano, perhaps just as she ended her aria. Amused, the audience would smile. Intermissions would be spent finishing your picnic meal. You tidied up your own litter afterwards. An especially memorable night was when Paul and I sat on the bench outside the marquee where the opera was staged. We couldn’t get official tickets, but seated on a park bench outside, we found ourselves perfectly able to listen to Carmen whilst enjoying the cool evening air under the full moon.

  Then, a big bookstore was nearby. Employed there were some very good li
terary-minded personnel who could help you out when you said something like, “I’m interested in the general history of the Crusades. Can you suggest something readable?” After a couple of questions to gauge your degree of sophistication, they could lead you to half a dozen books, and discuss what they thought were the merits and demerits of a selected few.

  The British Museum was further afield, but if I hadn’t resided where I did, I would have moved to Bloomsbury and happily lived in the museum. A history buff that I am, it is probably my most interesting activity in London. It helped that as a member of the “Friends of the Museum”, I didn’t have to stand in the ever-lengthening queue getting into the museum and I could enter all major exhibitions free of charge plus enjoy generous discounts in museum shops. It was worth every penny of the annual dues. Another talent of the English is their presentation skills—they could make even the most seemingly humdrum artifact come alive with significance.

  Most importantly, as I got older and had more frequent medical needs, I was pleased to note that the hospital—with some very good doctors consulting there—was not more than a five-minute walk from my place. This helped reduce my anxiety levels whenever I sought medical treatment. Another short walk and you had a quiet Catholic church. A Michelin star restaurant, my bank, Waitrose, and Marks & Spencer grocery stores were more or less in the same street.

  This is to say that, London, with all of its approximately eight million people, maintains a local village-like feel. In my little “village”, my daily needs were serviced by these assorted facilities, all well within walking distance. It is possible that these neighbourhood configurations are the peculiar result of London’s history. Originally, different parts of London were villages, growing helter-skelter, encroaching on each other, until the Great Fire of 1666. There were then master plans to rebuild the city with “pomp and regularity”—another Paris perhaps—including one planned by the great English architect Sir Christopher Wren, who proposed big, formal boulevards. He was, however, opposed by the merchants and artisans who wanted “business as usual”. In the end, Wren had to be content with his masterpiece, St Paul’s Cathedral.

  Today, you can explore London’s “villages”, guided by a plethora of London Walks information pamphlets, “village” by “village”, with detailed maps that list their various points of interest. Unfortunately, I cannot read maps nor do I know my left from my right, and consequently have to rely on friends to find my direction. (My husband used to remind me that my left was where I wore my watch.) One of them, a Filipina married to a Jewish property investor, knows all the shortcuts around these winding streets. Another Londoner is a Canadian married to an Egyptian. A third, a German management consultant, lives by herself. Even after moving away, I have maintained these friendships, making an effort to see them each time I am in town. The rest of the community simply leave me be.

  *

  When Paul was eleven, he started nagging Klaus and me about boarding school, finally going to Harrow School in 2003 when he was thirteen. Klaus then decided to go back home to Münster in Germany. For my part, I decided to move to Nashdom and stay there full-time. The time spent alone in South Bucks was the most isolating experience in my life. The enigma of expatriation—I wanted to fit in but remained outside looking in. I gave small parties and invited neighbours, but aside from the thank-you notes that I would invariably receive the next day, there was no reciprocation. I couldn’t make friends. As far as the English were concerned, I was a foreigner. When I complained to a friend from London, she replied, “They [the English] even think the French are foreigners, how much more you?”

  On the positive side, it gave me some personal experiences behind the theories I had learned and later used when I conducted workshops on expatriation and repatriation, talking about culture shock, coping mechanisms, and the process of adaptation to foreign cultures.

  Freiburg-im-Breisgau 1989–1990 and Münster, Germany 2013–2016

  In 1989, after a long stint at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila, Klaus moved to Freiburg-im-Breisgau, a pretty town of some 200,000 souls at the foot of the Black Forest in south–western Germany. He had taken early retirement from the ADB and was attracted to the place for its reputed sunny weather, and its proximity to both France and Switzerland.

  I stayed in Freiburg with him for a while and have fond memories of the city, taking an intensive course in German at the Goethe Institut, often driving to the Black Forest with him, an area of great nostalgia. As a very young boy, Klaus spent some of the war years in the Black Forest. His uncle was with the Salesian Brothers there, and his father relocated the family nearby to be away from the intense fighting elsewhere.

  Freiburg was a university town and Klaus thought it liberal and welcoming, although I gravitated to the company of my classmates at the Goethe Institut, mostly young foreign kids who had been offered scholarships by the German government and were given six months of intensive German language classes before this offer was confirmed. I rejoiced with the community during the fall of the Berlin Wall, watched the spontaneous parades, and saw houses draped in German flags. It was as if I were in flag-waving America.

  As it turned out, Klaus soon accepted a job in London, and by 1991, we had moved there. We were to stay in the UK until 2004 (when Paul went to boarding school) and Klaus decided to go back to Münster in order to retire there. Whereas he wanted to leave the city in his youth when he found it too constricting, in his old age, he decided Münster in north–western Germany was his heimat8 after all.

  On the other hand, I had thought I could no longer live in a small town in Germany, and so made plans to move back to Manila. By then, having already forgotten what little German I knew, I did not want to be marginalised in my old age when relearning the language became more difficult and where few people I met spoke sufficient English. On the part of Klaus, he thought his long employment at ADB was enough foreign experience. He found Manila simply too hot, too noisy and chaotic, with too much traffic, too much pollution, too many people, and too much food!

  Even after this joint decision, with Paul in the UK, Klaus in Germany, and I in the Philippines, the family tried to do things together, keeping in regular contact by phone and meeting perhaps two or three times a year to go on holidays together. Meantime, Klaus would fly to the UK once a month when Paul was allowed to leave boarding school for the weekend.

  My next extended stay in Germany was to be in the reconstructed city of Münster, by now the place of residence of some 300,000 people in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Towards the end of 2013, Klaus was taken ill, and the next three years—until May 2016 when he died—were to be a highly traumatic experience for our family.

  Paul and I stayed in Münster whilst Klaus was in hospital with double pneumonia. However, soon after we left in 2014 when we thought he had recovered, he was diagnosed with dementia. The social worker from Caritas, a Catholic organisation in deeply Catholic Münster, informed the German court that they could not get in touch with the family who lived outside the country. In no time at all, the court had appointed a legal guardian to act for Klaus. Apparently, in cases where someone had not left a document regarding guardianship should they become incapacitated, the court would decide whom to appoint. Klaus would later explain he simply didn’t know such documents were necessary. However, because of the dementia diagnosis it was now too late for him to do anything, as he was, thereafter, considered incapable of making reasonable decisions.

  It was only from a message emailed by Klaus’s friend that I learned about the legal guardian’s appointment. Initially, I had thought of inviting Klaus to live with me in Manila. When I was informed that was no longer possible as he was now a ward of the court, I thought an appointment of a local as guardian made sense as it was indeed true that I lived far away and Paul was still at university and could not move to Germany until he graduated. However, what I didn’t know was that even as family, Paul and I wo
uld have no rights whatsoever, including rights to information. When I speedily visited Klaus in his flat, I found that he had not been adequately cared for, even though he had a full-time, supposedly “live-in” caregiver. By then, he had physical difficulties in moving around, but his apartment—especially his bathroom—had no grab rails, no non-slip bath mats, nor anything else to make it safe. His caregiver simply had the skill-set of a housekeeper. She stayed in a separate apartment next door, with no means of electronic communication between them. She mostly came in to serve his meals and to clean. The only care service I came to appreciate were the roving nurses who visited twice a day to give him his medication and to ensure that he took them.

  Doctors, nurses, caregivers, and other people in the health professions in Münster that I met often spoke very little English. Even when much later I was allowed by the guardian to consult with them directly, I felt helpless and therefore relied on Paul in far-away Manila who spoke fluent German. For meetings, I would sometimes have to pay interpreters who charged rates by the hour and, for documents, translators who charged by the page.

  In no time, it was apparent, however, that the real bottleneck was the legal guardian herself. When I next visited Klaus a few months later, he was undergoing diagnostic tests in another hospital whilst his caregiver stayed and waited in her assigned apartment. The hospital staff informed me that Klaus had not had a change of clothes for almost a week because they could not get in touch with the guardian. It later turned out she was on holiday in Barcelona. Unfortunately, she alone could give instructions to the caregiver.

  Paul was in and out of Manila helping me. He actually missed a final exam because he had to fly to Germany on short notice. We had received an appointment to see the judge, and we wanted to persuade her to award the guardianship to Paul if he promised to search for a job in Germany after his graduation the following year. Family who resided elsewhere often did not qualify for guardianship. Failing to get approval for Paul’s application, we requested that she, the judge, change the guardian.