Two friends of mine, both of whom live in Canada, recently wrote articles about life in different countries. These articles piqued my interest, so I’m pointing you their way.
Germany, after the second world war, really tried repentance and it
succeeded in a way. But I think the price is starting to show. You
don’t realize it when you live in Germany or grow up there, but there
is a deep seated negativity about oneself, about the things that we, as
a nation have done. I think this is seeping even further into it. Hey,
Hitler wanted to create a superior Master Race, so anybody who is
better should not show this, we are just a good group of simple people,
no harm ever came from those, right?
I think that’s the biggest
problem, there is a lot of good things in Germany but Germany is really
building itself into a brick wall. Looking back now to my own school
time and work there I come to realize it.
I did realize a
different attitude when I moved to Canada, how intelligence is rewarded
not punished (at large), while in Germany everybody just tries to fit
in and “not stick out”.
Now,
let it be said that the Philippines is perhaps physically the most
beautiful country I’ve ever visited. Volcanos, beaches, rice terraces,
rainforest, seascapes and hilltops, misty mountains and steaming flat
plains… the quality of light is incredible. It is rich in natural
resources, and it’s been said by more knowledgeable Asiaphiles than me
that if the Philippines ever got its shit together (i.e. elected
officials of an ilk different than the
stream-of-nightmare-consciousness thieves and bandits they’ve elected
for generations who’ve used the national treasury as a personal slush
fund… anyone else, how ’bout?), it could take enormous advantage of
the fact that it’s the only large English-speaking country in Asia.
Could capitalize on its relationship with the United States to push for
preferential trade relations. Could host UN agencies, multinational
corporations, and NGO headquarters. Could supply translators and
executives to the whole region. It’s a shame, really, the wasted
potential and all the grab-the-money-and-run consequences of poor
government and brain drain: urban decay, traffic like nowhere else on
earth, the worst air quality I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve lived in
Delhi), bureaucratic corruption and paralysis. It’s tragic.
And
every born-and-raised-in-the-Philippines-Filipino I’ve ever met outside
the Philippines has a tragic story. I mean, we all have tragic stories.
But they’ll tell you their tragic story inside of five minutes of the
first hello, I guess is the difference. The culture of
immigration-into-servitude among lower-middle class Filipinos has
created a kind of widespread normalization of long-term seperation of
parents from children, wives from husbands, families from clan, that
I’ve never been able to fully wrap my head around. It is not in any way
unusual to meet Filipinas who have spouses, children, families, houses,
jobs, and whole lives waiting for them in stasis back in the
Philippines – while they toil away as domestics, nannies, and
entertainers, in isolation and obscurity and at very low rates of pay,
in Hong Kong condos and Dubai highrise compounds and faceless Canadian
suburbs. There is this “what can I do? I must do this…” flap of the hands, sorrowful upturning of the face, when you talk to them about their situation. Why
are you so far from your family? Don’t you miss them? Isn’t there
ANYTHING you could do back home? When are you going to see your
children again? Don’t know, bahala na. By no means are
Filipinos alone in being migrant workers working terrible jobs far from
home and sending remittances back to keep the family afloat, I do
realize this. It happens all over the world. I think it’s these
Filipinos’ incomparable propensity to communicate the difficulty of
their circumstances, and somehow plead for assistance while seeming
entirely unable to act on their own behalf, that really gets to me.
I’ve highlighted the Tagalog phrase bahala na above, because I think it’s a telling indicator of the Philippines’ number one problem. It’s a Filipino expression that’s kind of hard to translate — think of it like the Arabic word en’shallah, or perhaps the English expression “whatever” when used as a Gen-X dismissal. Perhaps P.J. O’Rourke’s translation of bahala na in his book Holidays in Hell is the most apt: he interpreted it as “You must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit.”
Bonus reading: Get Real Philippines, a site that points out what’s wrong with the Philippines and what can be done about it.
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Bahala na = meh?
Hehehehe.
Hey Joey. Thanks for picking this up & posting it. I'd thought about this stuff for so long that there was a big seal on it, in my mind. I really don't think it's all that appropriate to criticize a country or culture that isn't my own, but I certainly had something to say - I woke at 2:30am the other night, bolt awake, and couldn't get back to sleep. Thinking thinking thinking about this nanny situation, trying to figure out why I was so consumed with anxiety when it came to the prospect of hiring one of the many Filipinas who'd expressed an interest. I started this post then, in the dead of night, as a sort of catharsis of that stress, and I thought it would be an email to Turner, but it exploded and became the post you eventually read. I guess it was going to come out eventually, might as well be like that.
Anyway, thanks. If you're up for the 2007(?) election, we're in. Just no visits to Trinity College, kita na lang tayo.
-A
'bahala na' is derived from the tagalog word 'bathala' --- the supreme god.
'bathala' is a derivation from the word 'babae' and 'lalake' -- the 'ha' was the expression that they uttered when the 'babae' saw the 'lalake' for the first time.
thus, 'bahala na' is the “will of the god”
http://www.bughaw.com
Hence my stating that it's roughly the same as the Arabic en'shallah, which also means "It is the will of God".
It's just that the way people use bahala na in the context of the situation in the Philippines is more like "You must have me mistaken for someone who gives a shit". Saying that it's the will of the Lord is taking the easy way out.