Thursday, December 02, 2021

Living in the Philippines

 We moved to the Philippines when I was 5, and come back when I was 7-and-a-half. During the first 6-8 months, we were living in Quezon City, so we saw other Americans most of the time. We lived in an ex-pat area and I was young, so I didn't really understand that we were viewed as invaders and colonizers.

Then we moved out into the barrio, and lived there for two years. There, we were the only white people at all. Everyone else spoke Ilocano or Tagalog, had brown skin, and were Catholic. That last part was important, since my dad was a Lutheran missionary. So, while we learned Ilocano, we didn't speak it fluently, were white, and were protestant. "Other" in very obvious ways. I remember comments about how funny it was that we got sunburns. Or that they didn't realize American men could get pregnant.

I became acutely aware of my other-ness here. We didn't go to school with the kids in the barrio -- mom homeschooled us. We had two live-in helpers, a full-time gardener, a house with a foundation and a window AC unit in one room. I was aware, even at that young age, of our privilege, though I didn't understand that Americans were hated. I knew we left quickly. Decades later I understood that was due to death threats received by our family in the aftermath of political unrest that ousted most US presence from the country.

No comments: