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Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Networking Kagay-anons
By Roy C. Gaane
From the US
LOS ANGELES, California -- In 1977, Benigno Aquino Jr. was still in prison. Raul Manglapus was still in exile in the US. Joseph Estrada was Mayor of San Juan. Ferdinand Marcos by virtue of the declaration of Martial Law was still the President of the Philippines. Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States.
Jerry Brown was the Governor of California. This was the year that I immigrated to America.
There was already an exodus of Filipino immigrants to the US. Job opportunities were at their best. The Filipino population was less than a million but rising fast. Filipino workers were in demand.
Filipino credit was well respected. When a Filipino applied credit to buy a car, an appliance, a furniture or a house, he would be granted credit simply because he was Filipino who was then known to be an excellent payer.
But we had our years of hardship. In fact, in many social gatherings we would compete and brag who had the most difficult times in our early years of survival in America.
Although the Filipino had the pleasure of Disneyland and Universal Studios, although he had access to the best shopping malls, although he had the convenience of playing golf, tennis, go fishing and other sports and recreation, he still had one thing missing.
He did not have his friends. They were in the Philippines. He was lonely. I was lucky to have my entire family and many relatives with me.
Six jobs and three residences later in two years, and having adjusted well to the life in the United States, I was prepared to reach out to my Kagayanon friends then already living in the US.
I knew Bert Quisumbing, Eddie Liloc, Vic Gabor and many others were in the US but I had no idea where I could reach them.
Luckily, my wife is a good record keeper. She had the addresses of her former high school classmates and a few of our mutual friends.
I started writing to my wife's classmates and to our common friends. Forty in all. I asked for names and addresses of their friends from Cagayan de Oro.
To communicate with the growing list of friends, I started a newsletter called "Kagay-anon International".
I used the letter "K" for Cagayan and appended "International" because I had included those in Canada and a few in Europe.
Towards the end of 1980, we had a list of over 500 friends, mostly alumni of Xavier University and alumnae of Lourdes College.
The directory was printed and made available to everyone. We called it "Kagay-anon International Directory. Most were eager to meet.
Because the great majority of Kagayanons were and still are in Southern California, I organized a gathering in the residence of Lando and Nenen Luminarias who were very generous in offering their home in Laguna Niguel, County of Orange.
For the first time, a huge crowd of Kagayanons met. This was 1981. The gathering was not mainly social.
I asked my fellow Kagayanons to bring clothes and shoes they no longer needed so we could ship them to the poor in Cagayan de Oro.
That was our first charitable deed. The gathering was a preview of all Kagay-anon International Tapoks that would soon follow in Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Houston, San Diego, and Honolulu. In 2007, it will be in Las Vegas again.
Through the Kagay-anon International newsletter and directory, we started organizing ourselves independently in Southern California, Northern California, Washington, Texas, Hawaii, Toronto, British Columbia, East Coast and the Midwest.
The directory was used to contact fellow Kagayanons in their respective areas. Since then every Christmas, Kagayanons all over the US and Canada hold Christmas parties.
We always celebrate the feast of St. Augustine every August in our respective regions.
Every weekend in most major cities there are pockets of social gatherings to celebrate a birthday, an anniversary, a baptism, a wedding, and sometimes for any reason just for the fun of getting together.
The loneliness that we Kagayanons experienced 10 to 20 years ago is now a thing of the past except for a few who choose to be alone. There are always exceptions.
Every time there is a charitable program or donation intended for Cagayan de Oro from a group of Kagayanons in the US and Canada, its implementation is made possible because of the Kagay-anon International Directory and newsletter that started it all.
(June 7, 2005 issue)
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