YA LEUM.45 — New plans for Christmas
We started our countdown to get a new passport during the Christmas season. We went all around Manila to take care of documents, take pictures, visit the consulate, and praying to get that passport on time to catch our next flight. The passport was issued in the French embassy in Manila but it came from Paris…
We booked our flight to Hanoi as late as possible. Our plan was to spend an entire month in Vietnam but we had to shorten our time there because our flight to Argentina was already booked. Changing that flight was financially impossible for us.
Suddenly, we had no plans for Christmas and had to reinvent our stay in the Philippines.
Lewis and Mónica made us feel at home and invited us to spend Christmas with them and some friends who lived in Morong, a small fishing village 200 km away from Manila.
They only asked us to “bring some gifts for the children”… everything else was a surprise.
The trip to Morong took nearly the entire day, with a few bus changes in the middle and much time to admire the beauty of the interior of the Philippines.
The bus left us on the road, near the village. Once we started walking, we could already feel the joy of the village. The neighbors were talking at the doors of their houses, some people carried water containers and products from the market, while the younger were gather around their scooters and the children ran and jumped like no one was around.
Before we got to our home, we saw a girl running towards us: “Lewis!! Mónica!!! They arrived”. Soon, two more children ran to us and grabbed us by the hand.
When we arrived at their place, the father, the mother, and three more brothers were waiting for us. They all had a luminous smile on their face and indescribable exotic beauty.
We introduced ourselves, they showed us the house and the garden and made us feel at home. The house was modest and simple but their goodwill was the size of a mansion. They invited us to share the room with them and the children, which was typical in Asia. However, we had our tent.
We set the tent in the garden with the help of the children, who loved our little house.
We spent the days before Christmas going to the beach, going to waterfalls, and chatting.
Life went slowly there, slower than everything I knew before. The reality here was different than mine. I had plenty to learn.
People lived in a true community, they all knew and took care of each other whenever it was necessary. Bayanihan is a Philippine tradition that literally means “being in a bayan”, which refers to a specific aspect of their culture — working as a community to reach a common goal. This tradition has its roots in the most rural areas of the Philippines, resulting from the need for families to move their houses. When that happened, the entire community volunteered to help them change and literally transport their house. Nowadays, this tradition is more related to the civil effort of each Filipino to help other people. While we were in Morong, the father of the family also volunteered to help the neighbor fixing his house.
Those children were a true treasure: their joy and kindness were contagious, and the environment was light. In fact, everyone was light. The entire family was quite friendly and truly kind. It made us feel like staying with them and never leaving.
One of the nights, the 7 years old child wanted to sleep in our tent. She loved to sleep with us in that small house with legs.
For Christmas eve we prepared small different dishes and, between the four of us, we offered fish for dinner. Yet, the most awaited moment was all about the gifts! Everyone had gifts to receive and children were beyond happy!
To perfectly end the night, we joined the rest of the community and sang on the karaoke.
It was the first time Mathieu saw me singing with such commitment… and the liquor typical from that regions also contributed to that! It was a night to never forget…
On the 25th of December, we planned a fish barbecue and an afternoon on the beach.
Since that was a fishing village, we had to enjoy the great fish they had to offer.
We took all the children to the beach and although they did not know how to swim, they were not afraid at all to jump into the water.
Although the Philippines are surrounded by water, most of the Filipinos do not know how to swim. However, they are brave and do not get intimidated by the sea.
When Mathieu and Lewis wanted to swim to a small reef, the children asked them: “take us with you!”.
Yet, Mathieu replied: “But you do not know how to swim!”. They fearlessly answered that “that is not a problem, you can take us on your back and we will sit on the rock waiting for you once the water is too deep”.
And thus, they convinced Mathieu, who swam with two children, on each side and once they got to the open sea, they jumped to the rocks and just observed!
At the end of the afternoon, we prepared the table with delicious food and started grilling the fish, which took until the beginning of the evening.
After Christmas, we spent another two days with this family.
It felt like we knew each other since long ago. They welcomed us in such a way… with so much goodness and happiness that we did not want to leave.
These quite different realities teach us how to better understand the world.
Here, in the West, it is as if we are the owners of the truth. We think that our way of living is the right one, that we know what others want and think. We believe we have the formula for a proper and right living.
Yet, how do we dare to think that way? We are so small and know so little about the world…
We know so little about what happens around us, in other countries and cultures…
Observing and listening was a tool I found to learn and digest everything I was learning around me.
On the departure day, we received a thousand hugs.
Then, we left towards another adventure filled with even more unexpected stories.
December 2017,
Patricia Assis
