About the Philippines – Balikbayan

“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
(Tennessee Williams)

Filipino mother and daughter.
Cervara in Rome, 2019

One of the keywords for Filipino culture is “balikbayan”, difficult to translate, which is the one who returns, composed of the words balik (to return) and bayan (the birthplace, one's country). Bayan is also root for bayani, the migrant worker who became the national hero in President C. Aquino's famous address to the nation. It is no coincidence that in 1999 Migrant Workers Day was established in the Philippines, celebrated on 6 May.

The balikbayan is therefore both the one who returns permanently to his country after a long absence for work, or only for holidays, bringing with him the fame, the honor and the burden of being the rich relative. A moment, therefore, highly symbolic and full of emotions for both sides: those who return and those who have been waiting for this moment for years, as the Filipino writer Yuson Alfred also comically recounts in “A Christmas from Balikbayan”, in the collection of contemporary stories Filipinos entitled “Balikbayan”, where the protagonist returns to his country for Christmas after seven years as a croupier in Las Vegas, with a large sum of money won on slot machines. And after various misadventures, typhoons, robbing money, losing a few fingers during the New Year's fireworks, returning to his work he concludes by saying – after having outlined a different version of how things went to his employer:  “Anyway if I had told him my real experiences at home he would not have understood anything, because he has no idea what it means to spend an authentic Filipino Christmas as balikbayan.”

 

But the funny side, often counterbalanced by the appearance more melancholy and at times excruciatingly painful, these long absences, which applies to all migrants not only Filipino: leaving the children and returning after very long years often involves total estrangement, and the emotional void is filled only by gifts and money. In many cases the return of the balikbayan relative no longer has anything emotional, because the years have erased all kinds of feelings, but it is merely an economic question. Therefore I know of many Filipino friends who, when they return to their country, do not say it around and often go elsewhere, so as not to be used as gold mines without any real affection.

 

In 2015, Filipino writer Mia Alvar collected many awards and prizes with her collection of short stories “In the Country”, in which she explored the loneliness and problems of Filipino workers abroad, the OFW – Overseas Filipino Workers: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, New York, places where tragedies and loneliness of those who have sacrificed their happiness to necessity are staged.

But also about returning home, as in the first story, where a pharmacist now from New York returns to his hometown to assist his sick father with smuggled medicines. A father he has not seen in many years and whom he hated deeply, for how he squalidly used his mother for his pleasure, and who eventually came to almost resemble him.

 

A story like many others. Like the many I have heard over the years.

Sometimes difficult to accept, but I have learned over time that moral judgment must always be suspended when listening to the life experiences of others, because no one has the right to judge the choices of others.

The art of listening without to judge is one of the hardest things I have learned in my life and in my work.

 

I talk about this subject because I know many Filipino women who work and live far from their families.

And I know how hard it is in this period especially, during the Christmas holidays, to be away from loved ones, from children.

So this is a thought that goes to each of them.

 

So that they can feel less alone.

 

Little Filipino dancer.
ROME, 2009

 

• Postcards from The Philippines 
• And You Cry 

“Balikbayan – Contemporary Filipino Tales” by Ubaldo Stecconi (Ossigeno, 1999)
Mia Alvar: “In the Country” (Knopf, 2015)

 

Italian version