Where has your heart gone

BEHIND THE SCENES
Alfred P. Dizon

(This piece was written and emailed to the Northern Philippine Times by Skye Ferguson, a US citizen. Read on and bleed.)

Philippine citizens, where have your hearts gone? What is left sacred to you? What truths do you hold? The Declaration of Independence in the United States of America was written by men who dreamed, and fought, and gave their lives.

They said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.”
I
am an American Citizen, and have only recently returned from a vacation in the Philippines. I work as a manager in a shipyard in California. I make $100K a year here (about 5M PHP) and yet I cannot afford a home to call my own. I do not own a single piece of dirt here where I can plant something.

I have no piece of land to bury my mother when the day comes. I am 40 years old and the trip was the first real vacation I have ever taken in my life. I have never been able to afford one before. I saved for five years to bring my Filipina wife and four sons to your beautiful country. I have no regrets.

I wish you, who have what I can only dream about, could once again see your country through my eyes. My ancestors on my father’s side are Scott Irish and I am from a long line of Jacobite rebels who fought against injustice and impoverishment meant for generation after generation.

On my mother’s side, I am Vietnamese, a people who lost their country and their heritage. Both people are people who were displaced to all corners of the earth, both peoples who long for a piece of something to call home, a piece of dirt somewhere in the earth to call their own.

The lands of my forefathers were taken from us by force and bloodshed. You give yours away to foreign countries like the American Native Indians for beads and liquor…for pennies.

I stood on the mountain tops in Mindanao and I saw your rivers, untouched by man. I saw your land, raw and wild. I walked through green land in Bukidnon and I felt your dirt, rich and full of life in my hands. My heart sang to see it all.

My soul hungered for one small piece of what you have to call my own. Yet, just like here in America, it is all unattainable to me. I cannot own land there, because I have no citizenship. I cannot buy citizenship in your country.

Some of your sons work for me here in America . They work hard. They struggle, but they are fighters. The expense of living here is staggering. What little bit they have left over, what little happiness they can buy, they send home to you. Do you buy happiness with it? Do you know and appreciate what they are giving? Or do you waste it in squalor and leave them no happiness of their own?

You have complacently allowed yourselves to become slaves to your upper class. You sell your children into slavery willingly. I am appalled at the very idea of it. I who have struggled all my life, who has worked 100 hour work weeks for years, who has gone to school at night and sold my health and years off the end of my life…for what?

I did it all to get one handful of what you have laying at your feet. A piece of something I can call my own. A piece of something I can pass on to my sons, and they to their sons. I worked my whole life for a piece of real freedom.

I would trade everything I have to live in the country with your oxen, and your honest people and farm a land that is mine. Yet, it is denied me. And you, you allow the entire world to visit your country and the beauty that she is and to see the corruption that is everywhere?

Are you not ashamed to allow her to be seen as a whore? You who trade in your people throughout the world? You, who send your sons to break their backs in other countries and your daughters to sell themselves to animals for money, for what?

To send money home because you refuse to stand up and protect or defend what you are standing on? Do you not know that there are things that money cannot buy? Your rich own land and houses here in America by the thousands.

They stack your money in our banks. They have raped your country and your people and they are welcome to bring your money here. They prefer to be here, because America is great for the wealthy. America is not all it seems.

I was in your country during a time of year when you remember Jose Rizal -- a countryman of yours and a poet. I am accustomed to waking up at 4 a.m. to work, so I spent my mornings looking out at the mountains and valleys in Cagayan De Oro, drinking cups of your coffee and reading your newspapers.

What a beautiful land you have. It is fine porcelain, it is art, and it is a soul and an angel. It is music. I read about the history of Jose Rizal and I read some of the quotes the newspapers printed. He said things like “He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination” and “There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves” and “It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.”

One of my favorite quotes was “You, who have love in your heart and look around, and find no one worthy, love your country.” How powerful that statement is. I am no writer. I am no poet. I am not a hero, or a man with any hope of my name ever being in a history book for my grandchildren to see. But next to a man with those words I could stand proud, fearless, and die, with those words whispering in my ears.

Everywhere I went in the Philippines, I met wonderful people. I saw beauty that took my breath away in a country that takes it for granted. I saw corruption in every facet of your regulating society.

I saw sadness and resolve in the eyes of the poor. I saw a giant chasm in between social classes. And yet, all around I saw a place where a man or woman with a dream and willingness and a strong back has the chance to make something, build something, and have something of their own.

What if you all just stopped for a moment and loved your country again? What if? What if your government officials had to drive their own luxury automobiles to get somewhere? What if they had to wash their own car? What if they had to cook their own food?

What if there was no guard outside their developments and their huge houses? What if they had to raise their own children for a week? What if they had to make their own beds or wash their own clothes? What if they had to get dirty and remember their roots and their heritage and the land and the people that are theirs? What if?

You who stare longingly across your beautiful blue oceans at some ideal that you perceive, you who do not see the priceless treasure that is right in front of you, lower your eyes. See what you have through the eyes of a foreigner.

See what is real and not some fictitious façade. Love your country. Love your children. Love what you have for I will die and never have had it. But when I close my eyes and take my final breath, I will remember you and your land and feel at peace because I imagine heaven must look like your land and I will finally be going home.