No Place Like Home
By Marisse G. Abelgas
May 2005
From the moment you step out of the airport terminal, the humidity alone jolts you into sweet remembrance: you were born here; you grew up here; this was home.
The unforgiving sun makes you sweat like you’ve never sweated in years. But you quickly realize it’s no big deal. The entire jolly barangay has come to greet the balikbayans at the airport and they could care less if you drowned in a deluge of your own perspiration. All they care about are the 10 or so pounds you’ve gained since you left, your skin is whiter, your hair is reddish and my gawd, you’re fat!
The short ride to the hotel, even in a brand new air-conditioned Revo, is no picnic. Every inch of road is literally every driver’s personal domain. There is no right of way here, and the only way to get through the traffic is to grit your teeth and challenge every vehicle that gets in your path. There are massive billboards that assault you from every corner, and at every stop, there are still disheveled kids who tap on your windshield, selling washcloths. And you think, “Oh, but there are so many of them now.”
The landscape changes in a matter of minutes. Pitifully cramped dwellings and dirty sidewalks abruptly give way to breathtakingly ultra-modern buildings and residential mansions. Were it not for the incongruity of such wealth in the midst of third world squalor in this metropolis of more than 10 million people, you’d think, “ why did I ever leave?”
Your relatives warn you: like a chameleon, you must blend with everything, or you risk having your cellphone taken at gunpoint or your purse getting sliced up like a piece of cake. Massive poverty has spawned the kind of criminality that knows no bounds.
Only a few minutes into your trip, you realize you made the right decision by uprooting your family to seek a new life in another country. The desperation is palpable enough and your heart bleeds for those who can’t get away.
But you know too, in your heart of hearts, that no matter what happens, your people will survive. Things will change for the better, sooner or later. They will make it. You know that for a fact simply because you were born here. You grew up here. This was home.
May 2005
From the moment you step out of the airport terminal, the humidity alone jolts you into sweet remembrance: you were born here; you grew up here; this was home.
The unforgiving sun makes you sweat like you’ve never sweated in years. But you quickly realize it’s no big deal. The entire jolly barangay has come to greet the balikbayans at the airport and they could care less if you drowned in a deluge of your own perspiration. All they care about are the 10 or so pounds you’ve gained since you left, your skin is whiter, your hair is reddish and my gawd, you’re fat!
The short ride to the hotel, even in a brand new air-conditioned Revo, is no picnic. Every inch of road is literally every driver’s personal domain. There is no right of way here, and the only way to get through the traffic is to grit your teeth and challenge every vehicle that gets in your path. There are massive billboards that assault you from every corner, and at every stop, there are still disheveled kids who tap on your windshield, selling washcloths. And you think, “Oh, but there are so many of them now.”
The landscape changes in a matter of minutes. Pitifully cramped dwellings and dirty sidewalks abruptly give way to breathtakingly ultra-modern buildings and residential mansions. Were it not for the incongruity of such wealth in the midst of third world squalor in this metropolis of more than 10 million people, you’d think, “ why did I ever leave?”
Your relatives warn you: like a chameleon, you must blend with everything, or you risk having your cellphone taken at gunpoint or your purse getting sliced up like a piece of cake. Massive poverty has spawned the kind of criminality that knows no bounds.
Only a few minutes into your trip, you realize you made the right decision by uprooting your family to seek a new life in another country. The desperation is palpable enough and your heart bleeds for those who can’t get away.
But you know too, in your heart of hearts, that no matter what happens, your people will survive. Things will change for the better, sooner or later. They will make it. You know that for a fact simply because you were born here. You grew up here. This was home.
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