Through the Eyes of a Foreigner
By Andrew Engel
Nothing like a good chat to start the day.
I had coffee several weeks ago in Bislig with a very nice Filipino gentleman.
It was early morning but daily life was already in full swing. The pulse of the waking dawn beat steadily in my consciousness and I was again reminded how much I love this time of the day.
We met at a small sari-sari store adjacent to the hotel where I was staying, arriving around 6 am, both in search of caffeine to get things moving and wash away the cobwebs. A ritual I must admit is one of my many faults.
There was a small seating area out front, enclosed behind a high security fence that was completely out of proportion with the building, but in keeping with the environment, a rather narrow street with an assortment of ramshackle buildings that were equally fortified.
The congenial owner supplied us with several 3-1 satchels and hot water, an unhealthy start for our bodies made worse by the cigarettes we consumed. We both agreed it was another habit we both needed to overcome.
We settled, as easily as two barkadas sharing bar stools, into a discussion and the gentleman, perhaps 20 years younger, talked about life in general and Bislig in particular. He was a wellspring of information, and knowledgeable about a wide range of subject matter.
I felt totally at home, yet again being schooled on life in a way only available when you seek companionship and open yourself to insights.
Regardless of the security measures everywhere I looked, I felt no sense of alarm. The advice I received constantly from many friends and family about being careful and the risk foreigners run in Mindanao didn’t enter my mind.
Why would it, my companion and the shop owner were friendly and I never find Filipinos to be anything other than courteous and giving. That is not to say the robbery doesn’t take place or people shouldn’t take precautions.
But, life is full of dangers, and believe me, when I say I feel safer here than I do on a street in Los Angeles or Port Moresby. In any case, I would not give up the chance to talk to people and live in some guarded compound, or seek to mediate in private like a Buddhist monk……….for all the tea in China.
I need to be with other people. Singular self-reflection is something I am forced to do only when I can’t be with people, of before I sleep. And even then I talk to myself.
What I hear from others in conversation is always sufficient to cause me to reflect, both in agreement and disagreement. It gives meaning to my own thoughts. It stimulates my thinking. It is the catalysis of my cognitive awakening which otherwise seems to be on some sort of permanent vacation.
My companion and I talked of the town and its history. How its current circumstances were damaged by the closing of its paper mill and the cascading impact of the unemployment that followed. I said I had noticed how the town seemed to me to have had better times and the closure of this important plant went some way to explaining what I had seen.
At the same time I said that the town was situated in a beautiful area, that I could see the money that had been spent on beatification of the foreshore, and how tourism was one industry that held the prospect of economic growth.
I explained how I had visited The Enchanted River and the Tinuyan Falls. Both were breath-taking and I would recommend a visit to anyone. These two natural gifts alone, it seemed to me, should be enough to form the basis on which a tourism industry could flourish. I assume locals are aware of the potential without me pointing it out, but I don’t have any specific details and my companion likewise, while agreeing, didn’t know either.
I was fascinated by his insights more generally, and the degree to which he understood the dynamics at work in the town, how peopled coped, the work that was available, the good and the bad.
His own life choices were revealing. He had worked overseas, but ultimately had come home, “even if I am poor and have to struggle”, to look after his children. He just couldn’t subjugate his paternal feelings, or justify not being with his children.
As I sat there talking I realised that we were neither a Filipino nor Foreigner, just two people talking about life’s vagaries. It didn’t matter that we had lived two very different lives, or the cultural disparities and diverse paths of our combined history. I could have come from Mars for all that mattered.
We were talking the same language, we harboured the same aspirations, and we worried about the same type of things. But more than that, we appeared to hold similar views on what was lacking and what was needed to make things better. And, as is usually the case when the conversation turns philosophic, we ended up agreeing we had no idea how to go about making things better.
I left my companion after an hour or so, not feeling defeated by our failure to solve the world’s problems.
No, I left happy to have met him, to have shared a coffee and a few experiences. I hope he felt the same way. When I returned to the hotel I found my friends frantically searching for me, relieved I had not been ”grabbed”….I just smiled and explained I was just fine.
Is there a moral to all this? Maybe something like: “coffee and cigarettes are bad for your health, but a conversation will always make you feel better.”
(Comment or write to Andrew at engelmint@hotmail.com)
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