On the road

It was freezing that December in Belgium and the only place to offer warmth and a seat without me having to buy anything was the Catholic church, and so I quickly dashed into it, hoping to also light a candle and say a prayer. 

The church was a cavernous Gothic structure designed to make you feel small and overpowered by God’s presence, as its medieval builders intended. It was empty except for a few people, and I was deep in thought when out of nowhere, a voice said, “Are you Filipino?” I almost replied, “God, is that you?”

But no. It was another Filipino who, like many overseas Filipino workers, popped up when and where you least expect it.   

I smiled and said yes because I understood how homesick Filipino migrants must be in such cold and dreary weather. She obviously wanted to talk to someone in her mother tongue, and soon enough I took on the role of father confessor and resigned myself to listening to the story of this virtual orphan.

She wasn’t exactly destitute. She said she once had a job or small business back home, and that she was at one point in her life elated when she won a house and lot in a television game show. Unfortunately, that jackpot failed to alter her circumstances, the property not offering any sort of relief since it was far from her source of livelihood.  I am not sure whether she sold that house but whatever it was that happened, she ended up in Belgium married to a much older man. She was inquiring about insurance and legal matters, but I could not help her, since I was only visiting and in fact scheduled to leave the next day. She said she would be in Manila in April, so I gave her my business card but I never heard from her again.  

I’m telling this story as an example of how Filipinos can be anywhere and everywhere all at once, how richly diverse and interesting their life stories are, and how the exodus continues. Filipino travelers like me have surely collected their own endless stories of encounters with compatriots in foreign lands. A few of the those I have met through the years:

• A band performing in a Beijing hotel
• The manager of a Japanese restaurant in Birmingham in the UK.
• The servers at a Thai restaurant in California 
• Wait-staff at a Korean buffet also in California 

(I noticed these are all restaurants, which tells you where my priorities are most of the time.) 

There are perks to meeting and befriending kababayans (compatriots) in service occupations in strange lands. Quicker service or at least more attention, if not some discount. At the Korean buffet, the maître d’ was a Filipina who led us to a good table. When we were paying, the waiter/cashier asked something that sounded like, “What’s your city?”, but fearing I misunderstood him, I asked him to repeat the question and sure enough he said, “What’s your ethnicity?” I replied without hesitation, “Oh, Filipino!” to which he responded that his parents were Filipino too. In our bill, he counted only the adults, minus the little one. 

At the World Market, a salesperson went around asking patrons, “Everything okay?” She also happened to be the cashier. When it came my time to pay, she saw me fumbling with my dollars and asked if I was Filipino, and she said she was too. I told her I thought she was Caucasian or at least Japanese, and she said she gets that often. Both her parents are Filipino, she said. 

Decades ago, I was with nine other journalists on a fellowship inside a building in San Francisco where a newspaper office was located, and we were all going up when suddenly from the back of the elevator, someone asked, “Anong meron (What’s up?)?”  Inescapable. They are simply inescapable. 

The helpers at the Church I go to now are Filipino, as is the priest. I enjoy hearing mass there because the Filipino padre officiates the mass at my preferred time and I can tell he takes great pains to write his homily, unlike, I hate to say, some older Americans who ramble through their sermons. 

The padre’s every homily so far has been relevant and humorous. He constantly reminds parishioners that God is color-blind, that race and ethnicity do not matter to Him, and that He comes to us in all forms, even in the form of migrants, to whom we should open our doors. I felt like asking again, “God, is that you?” and this time I was sure it was. ### 

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• Featured photo was taken in Brussels many years ago.
• The second and third photos are of St Peter’s Church in Leuven, Belgium.