I had a conversation with this Filipina lady in the bus on the way home from school two days ago. It was an encounter that I never expected. From the stories that she's telling me about her family, I could tell that she came from a well-bred family, "me kaya", is the word for it in Tagalog.
She asked me about my parents, how long we've been staying here.. all those standard Filipino question and answer.
When I told her that my dad was back home and didn't want to stay here. She gave me this whole speech about America being a good land to live in. That you can live in it without any worries and frustrations. That life here is much better than life back home. She came to a point of saying the words, "wala ng pag-asa ang Pilipinas, kaya sabihin mo sa tatay mo dito na lang sya".
I never really got the impact of those words when I read it from other immigrants' blog, but when I actually heard it in reality, that's when I really got the whole meaning of it. I mean, here's a Filipino, born in the Philippines, who is downgrading or shall i say downcasting her own motherland, where she came from.
I didn't really know what to feel when I heard those words from her. Deep inside me, I felt like I want to be mad at her at tell her off by saying, "it's your homeland, it's where you come from, how dare you say those things to her? it's people like you who makes the Philippines worse than it already is." But then on the other hand, I thought, she's right, in so many aspects she's right.
I don't know. I guess in a way I think highly of the Philippines, no matter how hard it is to live there now. Philippines is so much more than economy and growth. It's a place I call "home". A place where I grew up. To me, it doesn't hurt to think that one day, this country will rise above every challenge it is facing right now. To me, it doesn't hurt to think positive about the country.
Sure it is what it is right now. But with the right amount of help especially from its people living abroad, that country can fluorish.
I just don't really get why there are people like that. Like I said, those kind of people are the people who make the Philippines what it is right now. Wala ng pagasa. Good thing there are others who still thinks that Philippines is a country with many opportunities. I still think that there is a lot of good opportunities there --- farmland, culture, sights, beaches, metropolitan --- people just don't see it or they just chose not to see it anymore.
