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Home vs. Away, Foreigners vs. Locals

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Not to get overly philosophical here but human history can be summarized into the universal divisions of us vs. them: country vs. country, religion vs. religion, race vs. race. Or in the case of the Philippines, “foreigners” vs. “locals.”

Now I know that some foreigners don’t like being called “foreigners” and I get it, I suppose. But it makes me wonder how Filipinos feel about just generically being lumped together as the “locals.” If any Filipinos/Filipinas want to weigh in on that question I’d be happy to hear from you. My guess is that you’re too polite to call the “foreigners” who refer to “locals” with the word you’d really like to use and it ain’t foreigner. Janet, OTOH, would have a choice name and it ain’t exactly “Joe Kano.”

I got to thinking about this, something I do far too much at present, particularly since I hope to retire soon and lay around on a beach drinking San Miguels, chasing Janet and certainly not spending much time thinking. But for now I’m allowed to think and here’s what occurred to me. Often the “foreigners” who don’t like being called foreigners, but like calling Filipinos the “locals” have another pair of words that get in the way of their happiness: “here” and “home.”

I was talking to my friend Robert the other day and we were pontificating on the differences between guys who are able to expat (or even travel) successfully and those who can’t. The former are the ones who adjust, instead of expecting the Philippines and Filipinos to adjust to them. And again it occurred to me that the key might just well be how we define “home.”

In a couple of months I will have lived in my “home” city for 40 years. It’s hard for me to believe. I came here less than a year after college on a complete lark. Bought an old Beetle, loaded up all the junk I owned in life (which filled about half of the VW) and off I went. When I arrived here I told my friends and anyone who might listen that I was only here temporarily and would be returning “home” in a year or so. “Home” was Philadelphia, where I grew up, although it could have just as easily been New York City, where I went to school and dreamed of success.

Every time things went badly I would again tell my friends and anyone else (who no longer wanted to listen) “I’m going home.” But of course I didn’t.

After a year or so I stopped saying, “I’m going home.” I still wasn’t 100% committed to my new city and would say, “If things don’t work out here, then I might go home.” That’s how it was for the next couple years. “Home” was still on the other side of the country, though it beckoned less and less.

After a few years I stopped referring to (or threatening to) go home. Where I lived was now “home.” It took a few more years but eventually those other places became “where I grew up” or the “back East.” Pretty soon, I stopped dreaming of even visiting those places; truth is I dreaded it and when I infrequently went there, I couldn’t wait to “come home.”
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Of course, it took still many more years before I stopped calling myself an “East Coaster” or a “Philadelphian” and defined myself as a “local” of my current city, despite the remaining hint of an East Coast accent. Forty years has allowed me to create whatever identity I decide upon.

I suspect this is how it is for many expats in the Philippines and elsewhere. They’ve lived abroad for a few years but still think of “home” as where they came from. Their people aren’t the “locals”; they’re people from the same country they left. Maybe they even spend most of their time hanging out with those people. I know in the first years after I moved West, I spent a lot of time hanging out with other East Coasters, who I thought had a more reasonable view of the world than the fruity West Coasters did.

The difference is that while I eventually made the adjustment and came to call my new home “home” and that old home “the shithole I came from,” some expats don’t seem to make that transition. Perhaps it’s the massive differences between cultures, or that most expats are older and less flexible. In many cases the guy came to the Philippines for his wife or girlfriend and never considered it to be “home” and doesn’t want to.

But there are exceptions. I read blog pieces from a guy who’s a retired Philippines Snow Bird, spending half his year in the US and half in the Philippines. When he is spending his half year in the US he misses his “home” in the Philippines. I never hear him say he’s missing the US; that’s the place he came from and the place where much of his family lives. But his “home” is 8000 miles away.

It took years, decades really for me to make the transition. So can I really get pissed at the expats who called their Filipino neighbors the “locals,” think of home as the country they came from and get annoyed when they are referred to as “foreigners?” Actually, I can still get pissed but that’s a “me” problem, I guess. Seems to me that once you’ve made that transition – that’s “home.” The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start to enjoy the pleasures of your new home instead of bitching about its shortcomings.

But what about Janet? I know she hasn’t yet made the transition. “Home” for her isn’t the town where we live. Home is in the Philippines, specifically Alcoy. Hell, she doesn’t even think of any island other than Cebu as home. For Janet, Mindanao is as alien and frightening as living in the U.S. We spent a few days in Dumaguete on our trip in April and despite the fact that it is closer to Alcoy than Cebu City, because it is not in Cebu it felt too far and unhomelike to Janet.

I want Janet to be able to accept our current city as “home” without giving up Cebu as “home,” as well. Perhaps I am unreasonable, wanting her to maintain a Walenda-like tightrope balance that most expats don’t maintain. I except that I have high expectations; probably why I went all the way to the Philippines to find my lovely wife in the first place.

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Say it Loud – I’m a Foreigner and Proud

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A lot of expats and visitors to the Philippines get pissed off that many Filipinos refer to them as a “foreigner.” I have never completely understood the beef – we are foreigners. Most of us are not Filipinos culturally, ethnically, via language or by citizenship. So I have no problem being referred to as a foreigner – except when my wife calls me “that foreigner”:)

So I have no problem being referred to as a foreigner – except when my wife calls me “that foreigner”:)

The other clichéd name you get called in the Philippines is “Joe”. Walking down the street I have occasionally heard calls of, “Hey Joe.” I turn around expecting someone to start in on the old Jimi Hendrix tune, but no, they’re calling to (or at) me. Some “foreigners” are very offended by this, as if every street kid ought to know their real name, or come up to them and respectfully say, “Excuse me, Sir. Are you a foreigner? Is your name actually Joe? If not, can you tell me your true name so that my friends and I can yell your correct name as you and your inappropriately young and quite guapa wife, saunter by?”

For that matter the name I am most often called and that puts me off the most is “Sir.” In the Philippines seemingly everyone calls foreigners “Sir or Ma’am” or even “Madam.” “Good morning, Sir.” “Here’s your coffee, Sir.” “Would you like a date, Sir?” (ok, that’s a joke, Janet).

Equally sweet but odd, they call Janet “Ma’am,” at least when she is with me. I suspect, at 26, she is not called “Ma’am” when conversing in Visayan.

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On a related, though reversed note, Janet and I were in Thailand last April. Virtually everyone we encountered assumed she was Thai. They’d walk up to her and begin to speak Thai and she would look at them, speechless, like a deer in the headlines. Or they would come up and ask “what part of Thailand are you from?” I would have to be the one to say, “She’s Filipino.” They were all shocked and my wife hated it and never wants to return to Thailand because they refuse to recognize the fact that she is a foreigner.

And frankly I am no better when it comes to identifying nationalities. I worked for ten years with a woman and had no idea until I began to travel to the Philippines that she was a Filipina-American. To me she was just “the cute, small Asian woman” I worked with. Nor did I realize that the Starbucks barista I’d been getting coffee from and talking to for a couple years was Filipina. She’s now good friends with my wife and me.

Few of us are very culturally or geographically knowledgeable. Ask the average Amerikano high school kid to identify the Philippines on a map and they can’t. Hell, most probably couldn’t point out Washington, DC on a map either. For that matter, my son can’t find home without GPS assistance.

So Amerikanos – be proud of your foreigner heritage. There’s a lot worse things I’ve been called in life than “Joe the foreigner.”