Something

I remember the first time my late mother travelled to the United States. Consuelo Lozada Fernandez was a cancer survivor. After her mastectomy she went to visit her daughter Margie who immigrated here to work as a nurse. She stayed a few months and came back with something for all of us, a pair of shoes, dark glasses, toys, clothing and gizmos. In time, we in my family started calling these things "something", what else? Thus, whenever Mommy went on her many visits here, we always asked her to bring "something" for us. And whenever she returned we always waited for our "something" from her.

It seemed she always wanted to bring us something. She gloried in it. Straight from the airport, she would proceed to open her boxes and large baggage and pull out what ever "something" we asked from her on her departure, a tennis racket, the latest Timberland shoes, and then the regular T-shirts, pants, etc. It took a while before I would come to see the whole process as a psychology, a study of how we think and behave.

It is for us Filipinos part of the ritual of traveling to the US. On the way there, we load ourselves with boxes of pasalubong, dried mangoes, Lola Pureza's Peanut Broas, regular broas, dried fish, dried squid, ginamus, in the most extreme of absurdities even "silhig tukog", corn grit; and once, in the unfortunate case of my mother bringing something in behalf of a relative, a real authentic Philippine bolo, which appropriately enough did not make it through airport security. On the way home, we bring boxes of things: memorabilia of our visit here, clothing, shoes, electronics, canned goods, art work, cell phones, food, chocolate, any miscellaneous anything and everything, it seems. This, despite the inherent hardship of traveling halfway around the globe with boxes and overweight luggage. It seems only we, Filipinos, do it. 

Why?

It would have something to do with the availability of things. There are, of course, Filipino stores but they do not carry everything. For instance, dried danggit. It is not easy to find here, neither are those tocino bulad that is so easily purchased in Taboan. Otap is common. But Visayans are quick to say they are not really otap unless they're made by Titay's in Liloan. Lola Pureza's Peanut Broas is not sold anywhere in the Filipino stores so they are of high emotional value for Visayans, especially. Other Filipinos, I suppose, have they're own menu of treasured products. We bring a bit of the "old country" when we bring these for our kababayans who have been here for a long time. The act of bringing something from home becomes an act of bringing with us memories of home, whether bottled or boxed.

At the other side of of the spectrum, there are also quite a number of things you can find here that cannot be found in the home country. But the operational thing is usually the disparity of value and price. Pharmaceutical drugs are definitely cheaper here, the more so, for our countrymen who work here. And we have an uncanny ability to identify the outlets where things are generally cheaper and where they are on sale. You could, of course, buy them regularly priced at the "designer" stores but Filipinos search far and wide for outlets where the same products are sold at big discounts. They cut up coupons from newspapers and search the web for a bargain. This is information that is regular fare of conversation.

Filipino expatriates love to shop. I suppose they hold in the back of their heads a memory of how hard it was to able to afford the things that do come here cheaper. For instance, LCD television or the latest model laptop. The Mac laptop is currently being sold here with the iPod Touch and a Canon printer put in for free, for as long as you can present a student ID. Not a very hard thing to get for a Filipino.

And we work very hard, so we shop to distress. Margie now works as a nurse practitioner doing rounds most of the day for a hospital that specializes in treating patients with eating disorders. There is a bit of irony here when you consider she comes from a country where the greater portion of the population starve not because of a psychological condition. But in between patient calls she would bring us to 99 Cents stores and malls where shops like Oakleys that were doing closing out sales. And there were many. If not that, we look for yard sales, second hand sales and pawnshops. They abound in places like Las Vegas. But you have to be good at it.

In the run of time, Filipino expatriates find their garage too filled with the best intentions the car wont fit in anymore. A filled-up garage is a perennial problem here. It is almost an affliction. And so the arrival of kin from home becomes opportunity to unload. The balikbayan boxes fill up easily. Bringing them home is akin to bringing home "the wealth of the Indies". But indeed, one will have to carry the wealth of the Indies with him even at the risk of paying a fortune on airline overweight charges. And one can take it to a level of absurdity. As when my cousin Jaime slaughtered his whole flock of homing pigeons and stuffed them frozen into his luggage after he retired and decided to spend more time home in the Philippines. To be fair, he did try to keep from having to do this by taking his pets to the desert and once there releasing them. But they were homing pigeons and so got home ahead of him. 

The punch line came finally when his luggage got lost in transit somewhere in Hongkong. It came to Cebu 3 days late. The baggage section at MIA frantically called for him to recover his bag as it was stinking up the place. You have to admit. That is something.