By Hazel Lodevico

The author (right), and her sister stand in front of a church in Taal, Philippines.

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As the automatic doors of the Manila airport slid open, a gust of thick, humid air greeted me and my family as we pushed our luggage cart, piled high with suitcases, through the throngs of people waiting for loved ones. I looked at their brown faces and their dark, almond-shaped eyes, and realized that I had never seen so many Filipinos at once in my life. A woman held up a cardboard sign over her head — Balikbayan, mabuhay! “Returnees to the country, welcome home.” This was my mother’s trip, I thought. It was she who was returning home. My sisters and I, we American girls, we’re just in it for the ride.

It had been 14 years since I had last seen the Philippines. I was seven years old then, but over the years, the trip had become a foggy memory. The Philippines had become some mythical place my parents spoke of with nostalgia, a place they called home.

My eyes took in the first images of the country that was the birthplace of almost all of my ancestors, and a completely foreign land to me. My Uncle Tito’s van inched forward through the congested streets of Manila, past the traffic director who whistled madly with every bit of his frustration at the cars coming at him from all directions. A newspaper boy walked through traffic selling the day’s headlines, along with a man who was a walking market with a barrel of peanuts and almonds in one hand, coconut pies and eggs in the other, and bananas hanging from a pole strapped to his back. An old, crippled man came to our window to beg and a naked boy squeezed his hand into a window of another car, begging for spare change. In the background, large skyscrapers stood tall, proud and defiant, casting a dark shadow on the shacks at their feet.

With a population of 13.5 million people and a land area of 36 square kilometers, Manila’s attempts at economic improvement and modernization are hampered by population growth and overcrowding. There is talk of “A New Manila” for the 21st century, yet poor, half-naked children continue to play in mounds of trash and waste.

Before our trip, my mother tried to warn my sisters and me about the poverty we would see. “It’s nothing like you see here in America,” she said. “There you will see just how lucky you are here.”

When my mother announced that we were going to the Philippines months before, I gave her a perplexed look, as if she had said something completely absurd and random. “Why?” I asked.

“I want to go home. It’s been too long,” my mother said. My mother had been in America for nearly 30 years, more than her time in the Philippines. “And plus, you haven’t seen your relatives in a while,” my mother said. It was true. Most of my cousins were in the Philippines, but I barely remembered their names.

I tried to recall as much as I could about that last trip, when we brought my dying grandfather back to his homeland. I could only evoke memories of the miserable heat, the mosquitoes that seemed to feast on foreign flesh and the fever I came down with. My family had gone once before, when I was 2, to bury my grandmother, who had died of a heart attack.

Now death was calling us back again. Ninang, my mother’s aunt, and the matriarch of the Aguila family, was dying. She had suffered her third stroke and was not expected to live another year. I could only think, with regret, that it was only in death and not in life, that we remember our relatives.

Tropical winds blow through the palms while children play in the Philippines’ warm afternoon sun. Photo by George Estrada.

We stayed with my cousin Charmaine and her husband in Quezon City. Her mother, Tita Jessie, lives with them in the apartment, taking care of Charmaine’s two little children, 3-year-old C.J. and 1-year-old Jermaine. Family from around the Philippines often came to visit. I thought they came to see the family members who had returned from America, but I realized the family gatherings were a regular event. Every weekend, the aroma of food and the laughter of my mother’s large family filled Charmaine’s small apartment. I sensed a warm, close-knit bond between the family members, something I knew we lacked with our relatives in America. We were scattered all over California, connected only by the yearly Christmas card or the occasional family gathering.

Despite the tight bond of the family, I still felt like a hopeless observer. They all spoke in Tagalog, the national language, and I blushed in embarrassment when someone approached me in the native tongue. I never learned how to speak the language. Although I heard it almost every day at home, I never felt I needed to learn it myself. It was my parents’ language, not mine. English was the only language I needed to speak, and I would speak it without my parents’ funny accent.

Yet, here I was, in the Philippines, being laughed at because I couldn’t speak their language, and when I tried to, they would mimic my American accent.

“Isn’t it funny?” Tita Jessie asked me. “You are a Filipina and you look more Filipina than many of us here, but you can’t even speak the language.”

I came to realize that many of them resented my sisters and me for being so American, so ignorant of the culture. Errol, my 17-year-old cousin, told me once, “It’s so typical of Americans to be forgetful. Yes, you leave behind the poverty when you leave your country, but you also leave behind your culture. You forget about it, you look down on it, and the children grow up never even knowing it. The past is gone, like it never happened.”

Shame engulfed me. I had shunned everything that was a part of my culture and now I felt as though my own culture was shunning me in return.

We arrived in the small, historic town of Taal in the early morning. It is south of Luzon — the main island of the sprawling archipelago of the Philippine Islands — in the lush province of Batangas. It is the birthplace of many of the Filipino revolutionaries who fought for freedom during the 400-year rule of Spain. Spain’s influence on this Asian tropical island is evident almost everywhere you go- from the old, crumbling cathedrals to the Filipino traditions inspired by the Spanish formality. Years of trade and Western colonization made the Philippines a country influenced by other countries. The mixture of cultures seems to be deeply embedded into the Filipino people.

Taal is the town where my mother and her family originated. Ninang still resides in the Aguila family home. It is quiet, small and peaceful, and the streets are narrow and winding, the air, clean and fresh. The beautiful landscape is made up of Spanish architecture surrounded by thick, green, tropical vegetation.

Taal is full of reminders of tradition and culture, yet there is a sense of the old culture slowly giving way to modernization. In the heart of the old, historic town, stands St. Sebastian’s Catholic cathedral built in the early 18th century. Down the street is a new McDonald’s with flashing neon lights. It attracts about the same number of people every Friday night as the Sunday morning mass at St. Sebastian’s.

When we pulled into the muddy driveway of Ninang’s house, a feeling of disappointment dropped in my stomach. One of the few visual images I had of our last visit to the Philippines was of Ninang’s house — a grand-looking house that seemed to revel in antiquity. I remembered Ninang as a chipper, lively woman rushing out from her porch to greet us with long kisses, sniffing deeply as if she were trying to take in our scents. I remembered the lush, green garden of trees and tropical flowers in the front yard.

I found it almost impossible to believe that this was the same house that contained all that mystery and wonder for me as a child. What greeted us instead was a flooded, muddy mess, containing only remnants of what used to be a garden. The roof seemed to be sagging in, as were the walls. The house seemed sad, neglected, just waiting to be condemned.

My mother jumped out of the van to greet Ninang, who was sitting on the porch. My sisters and I followed, and as we climbed the porch I fixed my eyes upon the tiny, scrawny woman who stared at us through large, glassy black eyes.

“Here are the kids,” my mother told the old woman. “Look how much they’ve grown!” Each of us took turns taking Ninang’s fragile hand and pressing it against our foreheads — a blessing in Filipino culture, a gesture of respect for the elders.

“Kumusta ka, Ninang?” My older sister, Misty, asked the old woman in Tagalog. “How are you?” Ninang turned to Misty and studied her closely as if my sister had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

In English, Ninang retorted, “Who are you?”

Ninang’s third stroke had ruined her memory, and she often wandered around her house in total confusion. My mother said Ninang always resented that most of the family had moved to the city, leaving her behind. Although Tita Jessie makes weekly trips to Taal to check on her, my mother says Ninang spends most of her time alone, heartbroken.

The elder people in the family claim that Ninang’s house is haunted, filled with the spirits of forgotten family members. The younger cousins are afraid and asked me, “Why? Aren’t you scared?”

Of course, I was scared, but I tried to put on a brave face, I said, “If there are ghosts, maybe they just want you to pay attention to them.”

During the second week of our rip, a monsoon hit the island with a relentless force. We watched TV on Ninang’s black and white television with some American programming, particularly “Baywatch” and ‘Friends,” but I found myself consumed by overwrought Filipino dramas instead. Although I had no idea what they were saying, the overacting and foreboding music gave me a good idea of what was going on. I watched the news. Most of the coverage was of the Muslim terrorist group, Abu Sayyaf, which kidnapped and murdered innocent people in order to seize control of the southern islands. A decapitated body was found in the island of Boracay, delaying our planned trip there for another week.

Since the terrorists are known to kidnap Filipinos with U.S. connections, my mother advised my sisters and me to appear less American whenever we went out.

“I’ll give myself away as soon I talk,” I told my mother.

“Just don’t open your mouth,” she said.

Being holed up indoors gave me the chance to reconnect with the family members I had never known.

I adored playing with C.J. We bonded over Powerpuff Girls and Barney, and unlike everyone else, she understood my attempts at Tagalog and never laughed at my accent.

The family often came to Taal to visit, which included grand feasts of pansit noodles, chicken adobo and luncheon-roasted pork. The men slaughtered a pig in the backyard, and my younger sister, Amy, a newly converted vegetarian, refused to touch it at dinner. The family was offended when Amy refused to eat since most of the dishes contained meat. When we tried to explain to them that she chose not to eat the food because of moral reasons, my uncle shook his head and said, “Here, we don’t have the luxury to choose what we eat.”

Cultural differences aside, I found that I was becoming more a part of the family circle. The elders told old stories and legends around the dinner table and my sisters and I pored over old, black-and-white photographs with my aunt. The younger cousins asked us about life in the States — even Errol, who once seemed so cynical of American life.

“Do you all drive BMWs and convertibles there?” he asked me once.

“Errol, some of us don’t even have cars,” I said, laughing.

After two months of living in the country, immersing ourselves in the culture, it was time for my family and me to leave. I felt a little regret, thinking just as I was becoming more familiar with the country and my family, just when the sound of the language became less foreign to me, it was time to leave.

Before we left for the airport, C.J. climbed onto my lap and handed me a picture she had drawn of the Powerpuff Girls.

“Salamat,” I said, thanking her in Tagalog.

“You’re welcome,” she answered in her best English.

“Will you come back again?” Errol asked me. I told him I would and he smiled. “What do they say in the States? Home is where the heart is?”

“That’s right,” I said, picking up my suitcases, heading for the door.

“Then you’ll come back again to visit us?” Errol asked.

I turned my head and looked at the family members who came to say goodbye.

“You bet.”