In 2016, when in New York for a couple of weeks, I took my son Paul to the United Nations. I thought about when I was a tour guide there. At first glance, things seemed the same, but on a closer look, they weren’t. The traffic situation was still at a snail’s pace when we took a cab during rush hour one day, but I couldn’t find my way using the subway anymore. The Lower East Side where I used to buy discounted clothes had now become fashionable streets with upscale residential buildings. We visited Columbia University on 116th St. & Broadway and my Residence Hall. We went to the once “no-go” Morningside Park. I couldn’t find the park! The whole city seemed familiar, but it really wasn’t. Like me, it had moved on.
I looked for those fondly remembered friendly American faces, but they, too, were all gone. My kindly professor who, one Chistimas Day, invited a lonely foreign student to the small flat he then shared with his wife, had long since retired. Friends had left for other pastures. In their stead is a new America. Now I hear of the National Rifle Association who despite the senseless shooting of small children carry on proclaiming, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” I read about the members of America’s legislative body who seem to consider loyalty to their party more important than loyalty to their country. This is definitely not the America I thought I knew.
I have wondered why I felt myself so “American” back in the 1970s? I conclude that it was because I was open, impressionable, and easily enculturated as I gained positive experiences my first time around. Also, I knew a lot about the place even before I got there, no need for any country briefings. Culture shock was minimised, so was homesickness, whilst I completely immersed myself in an idealised American society. On the other hand, is it possible that the America I so nostalgically remember has over the years lost its moral bearings, becoming in large part now, a “me-first Trumpian” society?
In short, I have learned there is no ideal place for seekers, as both place and the seekers themseves are in a state of flux. As if to drive home this point, I recently had the opportunity in the course of a social occasion to sit beside someone who was describing his just-concluded travel experiences in France and Spain. I personally find France & Spain especially beautiful with interesting histories and memorable architecture . But instead he said, “Sila doon sa Europa ay parang nalipasan ng panahon. Yung mga gusali ang lumang-luma na, at ang ka-kaunting mga tao sa kalsada. Ang lungkot-lungkot doon.” (Europe looks like a place that time forgot. The buildings are so old. There are so few people in the streets. It is very lonely there.)
When all is said and done, it is a question of point of view: who you think you are, and how you see yourself fitting in the world around you.
Part One
Photo Captions
Plate 1
a) Hacienda labourers harvesting sugarcane for milling. There is a single annual harvest for this cash crop.
b) In earlier days, cane was piled on carts running on rails for transport to the mill (background). The current mode of transport is generally the lorry.
c) “The Angry Christ”, an expressionist mural of a stern-looking Christ emblazoned on the walls behind the altar, with serpents and mechanised hands rising up the columns, wrapping the ceiling. The St. Joseph the Worker Chapel is a Roman Catholic Church located inside the Victorias Milling Company residential complex.
Plate 2
a) Real Street, the main street of Victorias, as it looks today. Our house, Balay Daku, now mostly empty, is located at one end of Real Street.
b) The main entrance of Balay Daku. Farm workers would wait outside the door until my parents, and in particular my mother, left the house for their office next door. They would then present their needs—perhaps asking for a small loan, or narrating their personal problems for my mother to solve.
c) The living room of Balay Daku as it now looks. The highly polished wooden floor and light floor-to-ceiling curtains are in constant need of attention. Two housemaids live permanently in Balay Daku even though it is seldom used, and only primarily by guests of the extended family.
Plate 3
a) My parents married on 1st of October 1939—my mother was then 19; my father was 27. To the right of my mother is my maternal grandmother, and to the left of my father is my maternal grandfather.
b) The family photo taken circa 1965, with my parents, two brothers, and my grandmother in Filipino attire. We were six siblings. I am third from the left with Reynaldo and Cynthia younger than me; Armita, Betty, and Abelardo Jr. were older.
Plate 4
a) A photo taken in the early or mid-’50s, possibly on the occasion of a piano recital—small children of prominent families in Negros were at that time supposed to take piano lessons. In the background is the gazebo motif of the photographer’s studio.
b) Below the photo of each graduating student in our High School Yearbook was supposedly their favourite quote. Mine was the biblical, “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, as swift seasons roll.” This is still a work in progress.
c) Up the stage, bowing to the audience as I received my university diploma in 1968. As with most Asians, education—more specifically schooling—was of great importance to my family, for whom university education was simply taken for granted. This was a great embarrassment to my mother who did not complete secondary school.
Plate 5
a) My mother, enjoying her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren one Christmas.
b) By the late 1980s, my clan numbered more than thirty. When my mother died at ninety-two five years ago, we were almost fifty (including in-laws), comprising three generations.
c) As one cannot relate equally to each other in such a big brood, we develop our own “best friends” among the family. My niece Mariana and son Paul re-enacting the friendship blood pact between Datu Sikatuna, a local chieftain in Bohol Province, and the Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines in the 16th century.
Plate 6
a) In 1991, The Immaculate Conception Health Center (ICHC), supported by Kaayong Lawas (Good Health) Foundation, was opened to serve the primary health care needs of the townspeople, especially the indigents of Victorias. Today, it services both out- and in-patients and has an ambulance for emergency cases. A mobile health clinic delivers basic health services to residents in remote sugarcane plantations.
b) One of Kaayong Lawas Foundation’s many projects is an innoculation programme for small children, a number of such projects supported by private donors. Being administered here is vaccination for MMR (measles, mumps, rubella).
c) Children and their caregivers are asked to queue for medical attention. Queuing has become more commonplace than when I first left the country.
Plate 7
a) Our country house in South Buckinghamshire, UK was a small slice of Nashdom (Russian for “Our Home”), a once grand mansion since converted into flats and townhouses. Ours is a small townhouse covered by a big tree on the extreme right. In the early 2000s, I moved full-time to Nashdom. This period has remained one of the most isolating experiences in my life.
b) The Holland Park Opera season starts in late spring and ends in late summer. The park was within walking distance of our London flat. If you can’t get tickets, you can sit on the bench outside the marquee and listen to the music from inside, sometimes accompanied by the voices of the park’s famous peacocks. Shown here is Paul listening to the opera Carmen.
c) The British Museum is home to an inexhaustible collection of significant artifacts. The importance and sheer quantity of these objects are well served by the excellent presentation skills of the British. It also helps to be a Friend of the Museum so that you don’t need to stand in the ever-lengthening queue in front of the Museum.
Plate 8
a) Members of the AV Zollern, an old Catholic student fraternity in Münster, posing with their trademark salute at Prinzipalma
rkt, Münster’s main street. They also goose-step in imitation of Prussian soldiers, as Münster was once the Prussian capital of the province of Westphalia. In the background is Lambertikirche, where four Anabaptists in cages were hanged by its steeple for their rebellion at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Münster has remained staunchly Catholic to this day.
b) One of the brotherhood’s homecoming events. My husband was loyal to his fraternity, flying in from wherever he might be to attend their regular get-togethers. This photo shows one such event attended by several generations of Zollerns and their families.
Part Two
Philippine Cultural Values
and
Norms
Three
Power And Patronage
It is not easy for Westerners to realize that the ideas … of the individual, his self-hood, his rights, and his freedom, have no meaning whatsoever in the Orient …
Joseph Campbell
As I start this chapter, I would like to borrow a little exercise first used by the American psychologist Richard Nisbett. Get some friends—show them a photo of a CHICKEN, a COW, and some HAY. Ask them to pick out two that should go together. Chances are that individualistic people would choose the CHICKEN and COW. Collectivistic ones, on the other hand, might pick out the COW and HAY. A cow and chicken are both animals, whereas a cow depends on hay.
Another version of the exercise is to choose between a TRAIN, a BUS, and some RAIL TRACKS. Individualists would choose TRAIN and BUS as they are both modes of transport. Collectivists wouId choose TRAIN and RAIL TRACKS. Trains would not be able to operate without rail tracks. Collectivists think in terms of relationships. Individualists think in terms of categories.
The Philippines is an extremely collectivistic society. All its cultural traditions are based on relationships and how you can function within these relationships. Therefore, chances are that if you were a traditional Filipino, you would have selected COW and HAY or TRAIN and RAIL TRACKS. If you were a traditional American or Englishman, two highly individualistic peoples, you would have picked CHICKEN and COW or BUS and TRAIN.
Collectivists favour interdependence, harmony, generosity, loyalty, cooperation, and accommodation. They emphasise the needs of the group over those of the individual. Individualists favour independence, self-reliance, assertiveness, autonomy, and competition. Their contributions to society are in terms of personal achievements rather than affiliations.
A Dutch social psychologist, Geert Hofstede, studied national cultures in more than seventy countries, albeit his sample was limited to staff employed by the multinational business company IBM, hence, very much subject to potential biases. He developed a set of categories where countries were scored according to their cultural propensities, one of which was the collectivistic versus individualistic index. Many countries in Asia scored high in collectivism, including the Philippines, as opposed to Northern Europe or America, which are more individualistic.
At one time, some experts thought that individualism came with the modernisation process, in other words, as as a country progressed and developed or adopted new technologies, it would become more individualistic, but as many of the wealthier nations in Asia have modernised, these same pundits were surprised to observe that these countries have nonetheless retained their collectivistic orientations. Think Japan or South Korea. Or think Singapore as portrayed in the film Crazy Rich Asians.
A more current idea ascribes the collectivistic versus individualistic tendencies largely to a society’s means of producing its staple crop; in Asia and in the West, for example, those cultures growing rice as opposed to those growing wheat. Rice is a difficult crop to produce. From planting to harvesting, rice-growing requires much more time and labour than in the production of wheat. Rice paddies are separated by dikes and canals maintained through flooding by standing water, which require complex irrigation systems that have to be built and drained every year. As one farmer’s use of water affects his neighbour’s yield, both need to share their water, and to coordinate and cooperate with each other. Wheat needs only rainfall, not complex irrigation systems. For success, the farmer simply depends on the weather and their own individual skills rather than on coordination and cooperation with their fellow farmers.
Over thousands of years, both rice and wheat-growing societies developed distinctive cultures. As inheritors of these cultures, we do not need to be rice or wheat-growing farmers ourselves in order to be subject to them. Thus, as was pointed out by observers: in America, people say that it is the squeaky wheel that gets oiled; but in Japan, it is the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down.
Along with this comes the inevitable accidents of history. The individualistic West was born from the Greek world of personal achievement: the glory-seeking Greek heroes, the fierce competitors in ancient Olympia, Athenian democracy, to name a few examples. On the other hand, the Confucian ethical code has a strict injunction on fealty to the family and the group. An older civilisation, it was Chinese collectivism that spread into Korea and Japan and through most of the rest of East Asia. How do you apply these facets of culture to the Philippines—sharing as it does many of the commonalities of the rice-culture peoples, whilst evolving into its unique form of collectivism?
Collectivism and the Extended Family
Collectivism incorporates the idea that you get your sense of identity from your reference group, especially that most fundamental of all reference groups—your family. You feel more or less important depending on how your family is regarded by outsiders, and to build the point further, depending on how you yourself are regarded within your family. Family relationships are based on unequal positions within a relatively steep hierarchy. The more a family member is perceived to contribute to its welfare, the more highly they are regarded. Hence, the older sibling is often more highly respected than the younger. This is especially the case during the formative years of the family. As the members become mature and productive, however, the determinants of status change. Whilst the older members were heretofore considered to be the wisest—and thus the most respected—the family now becomes more pragmatic. The highest deference is henceforth more frequently accorded to the one who is seen as possessing the most influence in the community, therefore to the wealthiest and the most powerful. These members enhance the family prestige, provide contacts which are necessary if others are also to succeed, and help cover the expenses for the education, hospitalisation, wedding celebrations, and funeral services of the weaker members. Hence, they become the family leader, the key decision-maker and it is to them that the others will defer.
Over time, this relationship dynamic gives rise to binding expectations. The strong are obliged to help the weak, whilst the weak owe respect and loyalty in return. The weak thus gain a sense of security and the strong enjoy the power, potency, and the prestige derived from the weaker members’ deference and loyalty. This set of mutual expectations eventually becomes a moral contract, with infractions resulting in shame. If a rich man allows a poor nephew to go unassisted, he risks the condemnation of both his nephew (who may feel a certain sense of entitlement) and also the other members of his family, even his friends. Equally, if a poor nephew forgets to show gratitude to a generous uncle who saw him through school, he invites criticism. Within this system, the strong increase their dominance over the weak, while the weak no longer need initiative and self-reliance in order to survive.
Another point to consider is that the relationships are not simply between the most powerful and an undifferentiated group of others. Each member of the group has their own position in the hierarchy and their own code of behaviour vis-a-vis the others, who are either superior or inferior to them. Thus, in group gatherings where there are wide differences in status among family members, each one is quick to assess their relative rank and to adopt a mode of action befitting that rank. Moreover, family resources are often pooled together and accrued benefits
distributed not according to fairness or merit, but according to perceived needs. This leads to paradoxical behaviours. Whilst accommodation, cooperation, and sharing are emphasised, competition within the family, nonetheless, often occurs. Energies are directed towards getting a larger share of the pie rather than earning for oneself a separate pie.
An oft-repeated observation of an old friend is the attendant “crab mentality”. “Look at crabs inside a basket,” she would say, “as soon as one tries to climb up and out, others will pull it down. This reflects the Filipino propensity to be envious of the successes of others, and to want to level off.” I jokingly replied that perhaps these are collectivistic crabs and they want the aspiring crab to share his escape plans instead of going it alone. How to address this problem? Answer—share your successes: think of the idea of the balato practice, the notion of giving some largesse to the rest of the family members, so that they too have a stake in your success.
This reminds me of a real-life experience. When my husband and I were newly married and residing in the Philippines, we would drive out to the beach most weekends. He particularly liked one resort called Taytay Buhangin (Sand Bridge) in Lucena, Quezon Province. It only had perhaps about half a dozen or so nipa (thatch-roofed) cottages, but was nicely perched in an elevated site next to the water and above a fishing village. Although the cottages did not have electric lights and running water, we found them idyllic—their basic facilities were more than adequate for our weekend needs. It always had ice-cold beer and you could chat by the kerosene lamp with newly found friends well into the night, enjoying the sea breeze blowing gently into the dining area. In the morning, we would go down the beach and watch the fishing boats return to shore, buying their choicest catch for our breakfast.
When Turtles Come Home Page 9
