Cordillera is a state of mind

BENCHWARMER
Ramon S. Dacawi

(Traveling simply overwhelms that it can only be written about when one is back home. Still on the road with youthful Baguio journalist Harley Palangchao, we feel refreshed by the renewal of kinship with expatriate Cordillerans who make you feel they never left home as they again open their homes to you. Under this spell, I retrieved from Harley’s MacBook Pro this piece I wrote in early 2008):

Respected columnist Conrado de Quiroz is right: The Person of the Year is the Overseas Filipino Worker. Make that of the Decade. Or a score, which you can stretch back to five decades and a year ago, when the First Filipino sugar cane planters and cutters landed in Hawaii to toil and make life a little sweeter for kin back home.

It’s more than their years of keeping afloat the family and national economy that make OFWs the right choice. It’s their longing for and reconnecting home any way they can that give the choice substance and relevance The meaning lies in their offering educational scholarships and sending books to our youth, clinging on to and passing on their kids the rhythm of the gong and the movements of the tribal dance.

De Quiroz and his family recently saw that among the hotel staff, nurses and other workers they met in wintry London. Baguio boy and Bishop Carlito Cenzon saw it in his visit top the United States last year, as guest of fellow Cordillerans in Northern California and in the St. Louis University alumni reunion in Las Vegas.

As in His Excellency’s visit, Baguio couple Joel and Emily Aliping have turned their Bay Area home as venue for many a reception for visiting “kailian”, however short the notice. Their fellow expats the likes of Dinah Villanueva, the booster of Baguio’s sisterhood tie-up with Vallejo, won’t think twice driving for miles to be there.

No wonder Benguet Gov. Nestor Fongwan and Itogon town mayor Mario Godio missed their domestic flight to an official function in Canada, as they were held up by Cordillerans receiving them upon their touchdown from Manila. When John Dee Tuling of Calgary couldn’t meet them there, he came home to receive the two officials in his family home in Tuding, Itogon.

In their making you, their visiting kin, friend and official, feel at home home, you feel they never had left home after all. That’s what sports writer Jogin Tamayo and our athletes felt when the Association of Cordillerans in Thailand led by Beverly Changilan-Balacdao received them during their recent victorious campaign in a martial arts competition in Bangkok.

Having had the chance to attend environmental courses and conferences through scholarships for Third World participants, I’ve always felt that. Manang Jane Panglao drove me from the airport to her home in Maryland, to anywhere within Washington, D.C., to as close to the White House as was allowed, and daily to the Smithsonian where I wanted to be. Dr. Alex Fangonil refreshed me with Baguio history and vitamins and, months later, he came home for a medical mission with the Association of Philippine Physicians in America which he led as president.

Jerry Abeya handed me a $20 bill. For gin, he said, when I would get back to the backstreets of Baguio where we used to repair to way back when. Edwin and Mia Abeya led me along the Shenandoah River and up the Blue Ridge Mountains for a feel of what John Denver sang about.I tried not to miss New York when Joel Aliping drove me and former Baguio councilor Elmo Nevada straight from the San Francisco Airport to the John Muir redwood forest.

When Elmo had to go to the Big Apple, Stanford nurse Pilar Manno-Marzan, Fr. Leonard Oakes and Estoy Aglit took over the steering wheel and served as my wallets, together with Pancho and Julie Alinos, Dorothy Pucay and Dr. and Mrs. Nap Batalao. Alfie Cornel, who’s topping body-building tilts in California, would have emptied his closet for gifts if we didn’t warn him of strict airport rules against overweight luggage.

For 18 days, Mr. and Mrs. Per Ericksson fed and took me around interior Sweden to absorb lessons in forest management. At the World Urban Forum in Barcelona, relatives of fellow newsman Eliral Refuerzo guided us to their kitchens and to the architectural legacy of Gaudi.

Home is anywhere there’s an expat Cordilleran. Edmund and Jane Bugnosen, Estong and Conchita Pooten, Henry and Lita Gano opened their homes for me in London. Cyril Salvador,who works quite a distance from London, also came over with a bag of choco bars and for beer –on him – at the Victoria station where he had to take the last train home.

I’ve yet to meet Freddie de Guzman, an architect in Canada who drove all the way to Las Vegas for the SLU alumni reunion with Bishop Cenzon . He and fellow Baguio boy in Canada. Irwin Ilustre just keep on sending support to patients here they never met and only read about. An Ibaloi expat in the U.S. who studied in the same high school I went has also been reconnecting since the other year through regular fund support for the sick here.

With new immigrant Conrad Marzan joining them, folksinging expats in California organized by Joel raised $2,800 in a concert for patients here. Expats in Canada last year also pooled their resources so the remains of Jocelyn Dulnuan, a housekeeper brutally murdered in her employer’s home, could be repatriated home to Hingyon, Ifugao. As did John Dee, Judith Piok and the rest around Calgary who shared the cost of bringing home the body of another “kailian” who died in Canada.

(The deep sense of loss over tragedies befalling Cordillerans out there on their own without relatives prompted Lovelyn, my daughter-in-law, to ask me to make a follow-up story on the final homecoming of Jocelyn.)

Even kids of expats are never too young to understand. Last Christmas, Elana and Bryan Aliping, the young kids of Joel and Emily, sent their $300 savings. For patients who needed help the most, they said.

I can’t forget a Baguio nurse who goes by the name of Princess Lea in the internet chatroom. Two years ago, she rallied chatmates to an “E-wagwagan”, an e-Bay inspired auction sale. They came up with $2,750, mostly from Princess Lea and her sisters. It enabled then 10-year old Santy John Tuyan.to undergo surgery to correct a life-threatening heart defect and grow up like any normal.

It all boils down to their longing for home - and for us when we get the chance to visit. We see it expressed in the educational scholarships and books they send to our youth, their clinging to and passing on to their kids the stories of the native village, the rhythm of the gongs and the movements of the tribal dance that many of us who never left now take for granted.

For actually never having left, the expat is the Cordilleran of the Year. (e-mail: rdacawi@yahoo.com or comments).