Friday, February 03, 2006
Kapwa
When I return to the United States, which are anything by united, I want to make a drawing. It will not be artistic; I wish this was my talent. Instead, it will be a map of the human connections I made while I have been in the Philippines.
They do not seem random, these connections. (In Tagalog, I might write that as Mga connection hindi ba random. It makes more sense to emphasize the main part of the idea in a sentence and then modify it from there. And, for heavens sake, skip the verbs.
Americans are very verb. Very verb-al, very verb-ose. We are too much about action, and not enough about meaning, and connection. That Tagalog uses linkers between most words is a perfect analogy to the way the people relate: smoothly, and with consideration.)
Take tonight. The Baraoidians made a bookend to the last leg of my trip by coming down for dinner: Pedro (Pedring) Lydia (Jane) , Penny, and Manny. I loved talking with them. We went smoothly between humor and serious talk, between laughing about the coffee I spilled today at an important author talk at De La Salle, and serious talk about Filipinos in the US Navy. Pedro posed an important question for me to consider: if the work was so bad, why did the navymen keep encouraging others to come?
When my friends and family ask me next week, how was your time in the Philippines, I will not be able to answer them without teling them about the people I came to grow very fond of. Without the people, the Philippines is concrete, corrogated rooves, and neon signs. The West pushing into the East. Traffic. Honking. Food stalls. Many people working so hard and bravely to scratch out a living, that their futures are suspended, and their pasts are ghosts and what-ifs.
The Philippines is the easy human connections I made here, from the woman From Quezon sitting next to Rob on the plane over, to my driver, Phillip, to F. Sionil Jose and Antonio Pastor, to the proud and protective Obispos, to Rose Marie Mendoza, my new assitant, to the hard-working young man at the National Archives, the beautiful and helpful girls at the Mandarin, like Ivy,and to all the Dimayugas: Feling, Uray, Tess, Carlos, Carina, Amando, and Divinia. And, of course the Baraoidans.
At Solidaridad today I bought a book by Katrin de Guia (perhaps a distant relative!). It is entitled Kapwas: The Self in the Other: worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipin Culture Bearers.
Kapwa, she writes, beholds the essential humanity recognizable in everyone, therefore linking people, rather than separating them from each other. Humaness at its higest level. People remaining just people, despite titles, prestige or wealth.
I have found kapwa here. It was perhaps always a part of me, bequeathed to me from Pio,and the ancestors before him.
Kapwa, my self in others, and others in me, inseparable all.
They do not seem random, these connections. (In Tagalog, I might write that as Mga connection hindi ba random. It makes more sense to emphasize the main part of the idea in a sentence and then modify it from there. And, for heavens sake, skip the verbs.
Americans are very verb. Very verb-al, very verb-ose. We are too much about action, and not enough about meaning, and connection. That Tagalog uses linkers between most words is a perfect analogy to the way the people relate: smoothly, and with consideration.)
Take tonight. The Baraoidians made a bookend to the last leg of my trip by coming down for dinner: Pedro (Pedring) Lydia (Jane) , Penny, and Manny. I loved talking with them. We went smoothly between humor and serious talk, between laughing about the coffee I spilled today at an important author talk at De La Salle, and serious talk about Filipinos in the US Navy. Pedro posed an important question for me to consider: if the work was so bad, why did the navymen keep encouraging others to come?
When my friends and family ask me next week, how was your time in the Philippines, I will not be able to answer them without teling them about the people I came to grow very fond of. Without the people, the Philippines is concrete, corrogated rooves, and neon signs. The West pushing into the East. Traffic. Honking. Food stalls. Many people working so hard and bravely to scratch out a living, that their futures are suspended, and their pasts are ghosts and what-ifs.
The Philippines is the easy human connections I made here, from the woman From Quezon sitting next to Rob on the plane over, to my driver, Phillip, to F. Sionil Jose and Antonio Pastor, to the proud and protective Obispos, to Rose Marie Mendoza, my new assitant, to the hard-working young man at the National Archives, the beautiful and helpful girls at the Mandarin, like Ivy,and to all the Dimayugas: Feling, Uray, Tess, Carlos, Carina, Amando, and Divinia. And, of course the Baraoidans.
At Solidaridad today I bought a book by Katrin de Guia (perhaps a distant relative!). It is entitled Kapwas: The Self in the Other: worldviews and Lifestyles of Filipin Culture Bearers.
Kapwa, she writes, beholds the essential humanity recognizable in everyone, therefore linking people, rather than separating them from each other. Humaness at its higest level. People remaining just people, despite titles, prestige or wealth.
I have found kapwa here. It was perhaps always a part of me, bequeathed to me from Pio,and the ancestors before him.
Kapwa, my self in others, and others in me, inseparable all.
# posted by Patricia Pasick @ 6:41 AM 
