Balikbayan
Balikbayan
Posted 11:28pm (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
LAST week, I had to pick up my mother from a hotel restaurant, where she said she was going to meet up with a distant cousin, a “balikbayan” [visiting overseas-based Filipino] now based in California.
I asked her how long it had been since she last saw him. "Since the end of the war," she answered casually.
So, I eventually met Uncle Lou, still a spry 75. It turned out he'd lived in Manila for a while longer after the war, migrating to the United States in 1955. In the last few years, he'd been coming back to Manila each year, but it was only this time that he looked up my mother.
I listened to him as he updated my mother on news from his end. Then he began asking about my mother's brothers and sisters, naming each and every one of them, and that, I can tell you, was a real feat because my maternal grandfather had so many children I still can't keep track of those uncles and aunts.
Earlier brain drain
Uncle Lou introduced me to his roommate, another balikbayan and a golfing partner. This one was Dr. Paul Luna, a pediatrician who graduated from the University of Santo Tomas and who left the Philippines in 1957. I realized he was part of the earlier brain drain, mainly of physicians and nurses.
Dr. Luna also visits frequently, but he was ebullient telling me about this latest trip where he joined a medical mission to Laguna that treated more than 3,000 people in a few days. The mission had been organized by the Michigan chapter of the Philippine Medical Association (I was amazed to know there were American chapters, and quite heartened to know they still maintained ties to the Philippines).
I told Dr. Luna about the current brain drain, now mainly involving nurses and caregivers, and how medicine was becoming a pre-nursing degree in the Philippines. He was surprised to hear about this new twist to brain drain.
I asked if he'd thought about retiring in the Philippines, and told him about the Philippine Retirement Authority, which helps balikbayan Filipinos and foreigners who want to settle down here in their old age. He hadn't heard about that office, so I think it should think about waging a more active information campaign to get to our balikbayan. (Technically, like Dr. Luna, they would now be considered foreign nationals since they would have become American citizens.)
But as we talked about retirement here, Dr. Luna did pause to think, and explained he had lived in the States longer than in the Philippines and that all his children lived there. I realized "home" for him was the States, but that at least he did think of coming back to the Philippines from time to time, and of serving with medical missions.
Roots
Meeting with Uncle Lou and Dr. Luna got me thinking. In our youth, we're more willing to explore new horizons, new worlds. But as we age, we think more of our roots, going back to ancestral homes, looking up long lost relatives.
Given the Filipino diaspora, that may not always be easy. What and where is home? How do we answer the classic Filipino question, "Taga-saan ka? [Where are you from?]"
I wonder at times about our claims to having close and enduring family ties. A few years ago while directing an anthropology field school in Bohol, I brought the students to the municipal cemetery and was surprised to find so many abandoned graves, some dating as recently as the 1980s.
The cemetery caretakers explained that the abandoned graves were usually those of relatives of Filipinos who had migrated. Bohol is well known as an out-migration area, and in fairness, I have to say Boholanos are quite conscious about maintaining ties with their hometowns, coming back to visit and donating books, medical supplies and medicines and setting up scholarships.
But we may have to face up to the fact that many Filipinos, once they migrate, will eventually think of America as their home. The idea of retiring in the Philippines is not too attractive, especially if their children live in the States. Some of my older relatives who now live in the States or Canada explain, too, that they feel more secure in North America with the medical system. There, with health insurance and retirement plans, they don't need to worry about their savings being wiped out if they come down with some catastrophic illness
Left behind
Sadly, it is this precarious life in the Philippines that may also push overseas Filipinos not just to stay abroad but to reduce ties with relatives back home to a minimum, to dodge the never-ending requests for financial assistance, usually associated with illness.
But I hope, too, that overseas Filipinos find ways of helping those left behind in the Philippines. Fr. Rudy Manoloto, a former student of mine who now ministers to a parish in the States, visited recently and I suggested that he appeal to his predominantly Filipino parishioners to be more conscious about relatives in the Philippines. I told him about several elderly Filipinos I know, within our own university community, living quite miserably despite having several children overseas.
Many overseas Filipinos do send monthly checks back to help their families, but tend to centralize the assistance with one relative, who presumably would take care of sharing the bounties. I'd advise our overseas Filipinos to pick that relative with great prudence. I know of families where the "chosen one" squanders the monthly checks on wine, women and song, even as their elderly parents suffer from grievous chronic illnesses.
We are now several decades into the Filipino diaspora, with Filipinos now living in all corners of the world. Their ties to the Philippines vary. Some will come home each year while others have not revisited since they left 20 or 30 years ago. Some left mainly because of economic reasons. Others were political exiles. Still others are "sexual" exiles (I know many lesbians and gay men who left because they could not live with the homophobia here). Still others feel countries in the West actually offer a better environment to raise their children in-how, indeed, does one raise a child to be honest when corruption is so pervasive, from the friendly neighborhood cop to the highest echelons of public office?
There are variations, too, among those who come home, the balikbayan. The classic stereotype is the whiner, endlessly complaining, in an American accent, about how nothing goes right here compared to Mother America. Others silently find ways to help out without being patronizing, sharing hopes that we will come to a time when Filipinos will still think of living and working overseas, but not as a desperate last option.
Posted 11:28pm (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
LAST week, I had to pick up my mother from a hotel restaurant, where she said she was going to meet up with a distant cousin, a “balikbayan” [visiting overseas-based Filipino] now based in California.
I asked her how long it had been since she last saw him. "Since the end of the war," she answered casually.
So, I eventually met Uncle Lou, still a spry 75. It turned out he'd lived in Manila for a while longer after the war, migrating to the United States in 1955. In the last few years, he'd been coming back to Manila each year, but it was only this time that he looked up my mother.
I listened to him as he updated my mother on news from his end. Then he began asking about my mother's brothers and sisters, naming each and every one of them, and that, I can tell you, was a real feat because my maternal grandfather had so many children I still can't keep track of those uncles and aunts.
Earlier brain drain
Uncle Lou introduced me to his roommate, another balikbayan and a golfing partner. This one was Dr. Paul Luna, a pediatrician who graduated from the University of Santo Tomas and who left the Philippines in 1957. I realized he was part of the earlier brain drain, mainly of physicians and nurses.
Dr. Luna also visits frequently, but he was ebullient telling me about this latest trip where he joined a medical mission to Laguna that treated more than 3,000 people in a few days. The mission had been organized by the Michigan chapter of the Philippine Medical Association (I was amazed to know there were American chapters, and quite heartened to know they still maintained ties to the Philippines).
I told Dr. Luna about the current brain drain, now mainly involving nurses and caregivers, and how medicine was becoming a pre-nursing degree in the Philippines. He was surprised to hear about this new twist to brain drain.
I asked if he'd thought about retiring in the Philippines, and told him about the Philippine Retirement Authority, which helps balikbayan Filipinos and foreigners who want to settle down here in their old age. He hadn't heard about that office, so I think it should think about waging a more active information campaign to get to our balikbayan. (Technically, like Dr. Luna, they would now be considered foreign nationals since they would have become American citizens.)
But as we talked about retirement here, Dr. Luna did pause to think, and explained he had lived in the States longer than in the Philippines and that all his children lived there. I realized "home" for him was the States, but that at least he did think of coming back to the Philippines from time to time, and of serving with medical missions.
Roots
Meeting with Uncle Lou and Dr. Luna got me thinking. In our youth, we're more willing to explore new horizons, new worlds. But as we age, we think more of our roots, going back to ancestral homes, looking up long lost relatives.
Given the Filipino diaspora, that may not always be easy. What and where is home? How do we answer the classic Filipino question, "Taga-saan ka? [Where are you from?]"
I wonder at times about our claims to having close and enduring family ties. A few years ago while directing an anthropology field school in Bohol, I brought the students to the municipal cemetery and was surprised to find so many abandoned graves, some dating as recently as the 1980s.
The cemetery caretakers explained that the abandoned graves were usually those of relatives of Filipinos who had migrated. Bohol is well known as an out-migration area, and in fairness, I have to say Boholanos are quite conscious about maintaining ties with their hometowns, coming back to visit and donating books, medical supplies and medicines and setting up scholarships.
But we may have to face up to the fact that many Filipinos, once they migrate, will eventually think of America as their home. The idea of retiring in the Philippines is not too attractive, especially if their children live in the States. Some of my older relatives who now live in the States or Canada explain, too, that they feel more secure in North America with the medical system. There, with health insurance and retirement plans, they don't need to worry about their savings being wiped out if they come down with some catastrophic illness
Left behind
Sadly, it is this precarious life in the Philippines that may also push overseas Filipinos not just to stay abroad but to reduce ties with relatives back home to a minimum, to dodge the never-ending requests for financial assistance, usually associated with illness.
But I hope, too, that overseas Filipinos find ways of helping those left behind in the Philippines. Fr. Rudy Manoloto, a former student of mine who now ministers to a parish in the States, visited recently and I suggested that he appeal to his predominantly Filipino parishioners to be more conscious about relatives in the Philippines. I told him about several elderly Filipinos I know, within our own university community, living quite miserably despite having several children overseas.
Many overseas Filipinos do send monthly checks back to help their families, but tend to centralize the assistance with one relative, who presumably would take care of sharing the bounties. I'd advise our overseas Filipinos to pick that relative with great prudence. I know of families where the "chosen one" squanders the monthly checks on wine, women and song, even as their elderly parents suffer from grievous chronic illnesses.
We are now several decades into the Filipino diaspora, with Filipinos now living in all corners of the world. Their ties to the Philippines vary. Some will come home each year while others have not revisited since they left 20 or 30 years ago. Some left mainly because of economic reasons. Others were political exiles. Still others are "sexual" exiles (I know many lesbians and gay men who left because they could not live with the homophobia here). Still others feel countries in the West actually offer a better environment to raise their children in-how, indeed, does one raise a child to be honest when corruption is so pervasive, from the friendly neighborhood cop to the highest echelons of public office?
There are variations, too, among those who come home, the balikbayan. The classic stereotype is the whiner, endlessly complaining, in an American accent, about how nothing goes right here compared to Mother America. Others silently find ways to help out without being patronizing, sharing hopes that we will come to a time when Filipinos will still think of living and working overseas, but not as a desperate last option.
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