14.12.27

Balik Bayan

The time between Bohol and Villa Escudero, where I am currently hammocking, has been a blur of Christmas meals at relatives and well, more Christmas meals at relatives.  The food has been delicious here, but it's just too much.  Even Sue is over-eating here.  The land has been beautiful-- orchids of all colours grow like weeds in every possible corner, and heavy, ripe fruits fall from the trees year round.  My Tito Popoy exclaimed to me, as he was tugging at one of his bountiful, twelve-foot tall banana trees, that he would have to cut this one down as having too many growing in the same area was bad for the fruit.  Annoyed, he said it would take another 4-5months before it grew back to this height.  4-5months!!  for a TREE to grow!  His farm was a forest of mango, dalandan (small green oranges), banana, palm and coconut trees.  Treasures sprouting from the soil.  Too much to keep up with.

It's hard to travel in the Philippines, to take pictures like a tourist.  I feel a kinship here.  I understand so much more than in other places I have visited in Asia.  The Taglish I can mostly pick up on (though not respond to), the tables of saucy lechon, endless fragments from my childhood made clear.  The Philippines I knew growing up was a pale reflection of what I encountered this Christmas.  So many things I treasured growing up Filipino in Canada--the brief season of Chinatown mangoes and mom bargaining for the best box, my ration of polborons already stale from the freezer brought back by a Tita, my family's midnight Christmas celebration that left us hagard for the next day's visit to every Tita, Tito, Lola, Lolo, Ninang, Ninong in the Greater Toronto Area.  Memories from adolescence in a cold country raised by my brown parents, still holding on to a distant home.

amplified.