There were lots
of reasons why I chose to go to the Philippines for my recent holiday, some better
than others. There are also lots of
episodes, impressions and encounters that I could record from my time there,
but again, the hard part is exercising choice.
Intramuros
Intramuros is one
of the oldest parts of Manila – it is a walled city within the city that was
constructed by the Spanish conquerors – hence the name, which means “within the
walls”. At the heart of Intramuros lies
the Church of San Agustino, one of the few buildings to escape the near-razing
of Manila during the Second World War.
We visited San
Agustino during our first day in the Philippines, and besides the beauty of the
building, what struck me is how successful the Spanish were in introducing
their own faith. In the crypt of the
church, there are religious statues, images, woodcarvings dating back hundreds
of years, and all of them, without exception, have Western features. In fact, to my eyes, there was nothing that
showed an attempt at local adaptation – these images would not look out of
place in any Catholic church in mainland Europe. I found myself wondering what had been the
reaction of the original Filipino converts upon seeing these pale saints in
their strange clothes. How did they
connect the saints’ stories with the patterns of their own, very different,
lives? How did they come to believe?
No matter how it
happened, Catholicism came to the Philippines, and is still very much in
evidence: it is one of the few countries in the world where it is still
impossible to get a divorce…village post offices shut while the staff attend
mass…during our time there, my friends and I stumbled into a village fiesta,
and took part in the procession of the Virgin Mary through the streets – it
seemed that the whole village was walking alongside us.
While waiting for
a bus in Bohol, a stranger started asking me about my faith: What church do you
belong to? Why don’t you go to
church? What do you think about
God? Admittedly, he was a born-again
Christian, so was probably not representative with respect to the country as a
whole, but it made me wonder if that might not be a way of categorizing people
that still exists in such a religious country.
In the same way that in England we would use questions about someone’s
job to make inferences about their education, financial situation, background,
so is it the case that in the Philippines people use questions about what
church you go to in order to probe deeper questions, draw deeper conclusions?
And yet, the
Catholicism that is practiced evinces a tolerance that suggests other
influences besides those of the Vatican.
While we were there, the country was debating the RH (Reproductive
Health) bill, which aims to promote family planning, and give greater rights to
women. Catholic churches flew posters
that denounced the bill with emotive slogans such as “The Filipino Family is
Pro-Life!” and yet, most of the people that I spoke to were in favor of
it. Indeed, there is hope that the bill
will be passed.
Somewhere between
the crowds milling through the streets during the procession of the Virgin, and
the crowds in favor of greater reproductive health rights for women, there is a
devout yet tolerant middle ground.
Galing kong sumayao
“Galing
kong sumayao” is the Filipino pop song that we enjoyed listening to during an
impromptu karaoke session in the village market in Baclayon. It means “I am very good at dancing”. 
Sadly,
I never got to try the phrase out, not even when I went to Malate, the centre
for Manila’s nightlife.
I only learnt a
few scraps of Tagalog while I was in the Philippines, and most of them were
phrases that I adapted from “galing kong sumayao” and “buko” (which means ‘coconut’). Even so, I was intrigued by the way the
language has absorbed influences from Spanish and English, the languages of the
two countries that have occupied it during its history (Spain and the US).
From Spanish, we
get words like “baso” (cup), “kama” (bed), “guapo” (handsome) and “problema”
(problem). These words are freely used
in Tagalog, yet Spanish has not influenced the language to the same degree as English. Entire English phrases are injected into Tagalog or vice versa, as the passage below from a blog post makes clear:
"My mother's death has brought us closer. It took him quite a while to accept the real me; I understand his feelings since siga sa lugar namin ang father ko, so to have a child na kumekendeng is totally questionable....Lagi mong tatandaan na you exist because you have a purpose."
This degree of accommodation of one language towards another is unusual. I like to think it's characteristic of the Philippines too, a kind of signature hospitality, but that's probably just me being romantic. What is true is that the people I met in the Philippines, from all kinds of different walks of life, could talk quite easily about connections between their country and other countries. Part of that is historic - the Philippines has long links with Spain, the US, Mexico, as well as other parts of Asia; and part of that is due to recent migration - overseas foreign workers (OFW) from the Philippines have spread their wings across the globe, and the program is even supported by the national government. This familiarity with outside, combined with their facility with English could make the Philippines the envy of much of Asia.
The way Tagalog works also got me thinking about English. English is certainly a rich language, which wears its influences from other languages, but those influences mostly came at a time when English was not the global language. Now that it has achieved supremacy, I wonder if it still has the same ear as before. To absorb foreign languages, you have to listen. Do English people thesedays have the patience to listen to people speaking in other languages and absorb their ways of speaking?
Paoay Church
Paoay Church is
in the northern tip of Luzon, which is the main northern island in the
Philippines. The surrounding countryside
appears so fertile and lush with Virginia tobacco, as to resemble a giant green
womb. It’s also Marcos country – the
ancestral home is 4km away in nearby Batac; and Imee, daughter of Imelda and
Ferdinand, governed the province from Laoag, which is just 16km down the road.
Batac is also the
final resting place of Marcos – his body was returned here after he died in
exile in Hawaii in 1989. It currently
lies, embalmed, in its own mausoleum, while, according to some Filipino
friends, Imelda presses her demand for a “hero’s funeral” for her late
husband.
I visited the
mausoleum just before it closed. Inside,
everything is draped in black, and on the floor there are swatches of fake,
plastic, white lilies. The coffin is on
a raised platform, also drenched with fake, plastic, white lilies. There were few other people in the room, and
I was able to look at Ferdinand’s body for a long time. It looked plastic.
Near the
mausoleum there is a gallery recording moments in the life of Ferdinand and
Imelda via photos and newspaper cuttings.
There is something hysterical and declamatory about it from the moment
you walk in, when you are confronted with a big headline from Imelda’s trial
for fraud in New York in 1990, something like “Imelda Marcos Much Better After
Collapse”, accompanied by a blurry photo of a sobbing face. Next to it is another headline, declaring
that no Filipino was executed by Marcos under martial law. I asked myself if this was really the best
that could be said for a leader who ruled his country for more than twenty
years, from 1965 to 1986.
As I walked
around the room, I saw more images of Ferdinand and Imelda: him looking
handsome and spruce in his youth; him being garlanded as the “top-notcher” in
the bar exam of 1939; her meeting various world leaders…including violently
deposed despots (Ceausescu, Hussein) with curious accompanying captions that
did nothing to disguise the damning verdict that history had dealt them.
And then, near
the entrance, a final flourish: a series of posters which seemed to have been
produced by Imelda. On one of them, she
exhorts “Let us all make a beautiful world together to gain paradise unto
infinity”, while on another she records the “Biography of Spirit, Vision and
Deeds” of Ferdinand and Imelda, which skips lightly from geography to mythology
(he is Malakas, and she is Maganda – “useless each without the other in One
Spirit”) to nature and culture to justice.
So, imagine my
relief when I travelled to nearby Paoay and saw the church there. It stands in its own square of grass, free
and untrammeled. It looks like no other
church anywhere. It is happy like no
other church anywhere. It has smiling
suns that wink at you on its façade, and sinuous curlicues that twist like
snakes in the sun’s happy gaze. On the
sides, where it is sheltered, it has trysted with the moss, and the walls grow
dark green out of the ground. It is
simple, unassuming, and honest in its desire to be grateful and praise God.
And all around
the church there were schoolchildren on school trips: dashing around the square,
posing for photos…looking extremely happy.
Friends
Finally, I would
like to say a thank you to my two bukos, Boj and Jorge, for sharing the first
week with me; to Ramon and Irene for telling me about the Ifugao when I stayed in Batad,
and to Glen for introducing me to halo-halo on my last day in Manila.
