By Terence Eyre Belangoy
(This
piece by the author, an award-winning and published part-time writer,
was written a few years ago. The sentiments in this piece still remain.)
It
had been quite a long time, almost ten years. Although I had returned
once in a while, all those homecomings may, at best, be described as
sporadic, intermittent, and brief. This is the first time I had spent a
month-long summer vacation (summer of 2006) in my home city since I
first left to pursue college and then law school in Manila.
In my four years in college, I had gone home only twice---two Christmas vacations which were all too brief. Most of the time I was (of course) busy with regular classes and summer classes. Every Christmas vacation, I would grapple with the dilemma of going home or not. The prohibitive cost of transport (air transportation, because I don’t like riding in our dignified floating coffins, I mean, marine vessels) contributed to this. Most of the time, economics prevail. Now that I have recently graduated from law school (which took me six years), I can recall that during that span of time I went home also only twice--- for two quick Christmas vacations. In all those times that I had been home, I naturally spent them with my family since Christmas is said to be primarily for the family. I never had the chance to rediscover our city, and only a very limited time to catch up with old friends.
This is the first time that I had spent my summer in my home city. This is the first time, too, that I had spent it for an extended amount of time.
I had a hard time describing my experience. I felt like a stranger in a familiar place. It is . . . disorienting.
Where
have all my friends, classmates, and schoolmates gone? What is
that----a mall? Wow, our city now has a mall! What is that wide strip of
cement called--- Boulevard or Baywalk (similar to the one in Manila)?
Hmmm, this red and orange building looks pretty familiar (translation:
Jollibee). Great, we now have a fast food chain; at least were not that
behind.
When
I was in high school I could fondly recall that whenever I stroll
around our city, I see a familiar face every few minutes or so. As such,
my face would go sore from constantly grinning. Or, my hand would
always be ready to make a quick wave at an incoming acquaintance. Now,
it would be very rare (yet a total delight) to see an old familiar face
after several blocks or so. (I have two reactions to this “development”:
it makes me sad that fewer people now know me and there are now fewer
people I know----having lots of acquaintances in my home city makes me
feel safe, secure, and---oh well, popular; simultaneously, knowing less
and less people could mean that there are now more people in our place,
that is, our city is “expanding” or growing/developing.)
I believe the situation I had experienced was not at all unique to me. I can just imagine that the same feeling was experienced, at one point or another, by people who, just like me, have to go to presumably “better” places in order to study or get an education. For some other people, though, it would mean going to presumably “better” places to get a job, to seek better opportunities and greener pasture, or to experience a better environment. (I could only ventilate the sentiments of people, i.e. students, like me. Those balikbayans, OFWs would probably experience the same thing, perhaps of deeper magnitude.) Students who had to study to far-flung places usually grapple with the reality that whenever they go back to their hometowns or home cities after a prolonged absence, they would feel like total strangers. Everything would be different. They would have to re-orient themselves about the location of certain streets, the grocery store, their favorite bakeshop, their favorite parlor/barber shop and favorite hairdresser/barber, the look of their neighbors, the addresses and location of their friends’ houses, etc. (I certainly experienced all these when I went back.)
It is quite sad that there are those, like me, who have to leave the localities in which they were born and probably the only ones they have known for most of their lives either to get an education, a job, or just to experience better standards of living. Most people in the provinces have to go to presumably “better” places, the hegemonic centers (in the Philippines, Manila or Cebu) since it is in the latter places where good schools and better job opportunities abound. Not to mention that these so-called hegemonic centers are also the centers of culture, arts, entertainment, industry, commerce, etc. Extrapolate this inference further and one can see the continuing picture of diaspora and discontent: people in the far-flung places or provinces going to the big cities; people (students and workers like nurses, doctors, engineers, and health professionals) in poor countries going to the industrialized “First World” nations to seek the same things: better opportunities, professional development, better education, or better standards of living.
It
is not too presumptuous to conclude that people would have no need to
seek “better” things in other places and to make great sacrifices in the
process (in terms of family life, finances, adjustments, well-being,
sadness) if only wealth were better distributed and people (almost)
everywhere would have equal access to opportunities---be they in the
provinces or big cities, in quote-unquote Third world countries or
quote-unquote First world countries. (To digress a little: There are
academicians who spurn the use of the discriminatory Third World/First
World dichotomy which is a Western invention.) The reality of the
situation, of course, is otherwise.
Oftentimes it is so heart-breaking to see so much inequality and imbalance in society. While certain places (or countries for that matter) would enjoy relative prosperity, others would forever remain in the backwaters of development. (I am not saying that my hometown/home city is such; but we are definitely a far cry from the so-called “hegemonic” centers.) While some places have become more advanced and relatively industrialized, others have remained sleepy, bucolic, and rustic. As such, inhabitants in these latter places are impelled to seek the “better” things elsewhere other than in their own. One cannot even begin to pinpoint the cause or causes. Should our government and its programs/policies be to blame? Should we point accusing fingers at the powers-that-be in the national (or world) stage? Or should we just accept the fact that it is an immutable economic principle and a fact of life that there will always be inequality and imbalance in society and the world?
Tough questions with no unequivocal answers.
For the time being though, my (and I believe, for many others out there) amorphous discontent remains.
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