Wednesday, February 22, 2006
So: Lovaparuzza
By Jocy So
Unraveling
SHE looked financially stable and educated. Wearing eyeglasses, her hair tucked neatly into place by a prim headband, and dressed in a simple sleeveless shirt and khaki shorts, she sat next to me in a coffee kiosk along Boracay's famous beachfront.
With her is a Caucasian man, possibly European, who looked old enough to be her grandfather. He touched her knees repeatedly, intimately, talking about loving Filipinas above the din of the raucous band nearby. I snuck a peak at her. Is she in love with him? Is that why she is with him?
I once searched "Filipina" in the net and discovered the numerous sites dedicated to "presenting" Filipino women as potential lovers, girl friends, and wives. Mail-order brides. I clicked on a site and saw pictures of young women, their names, characteristics, and vital statistics displayed. This is no ordinary Internet dating service.
Here only the Filipina women are shown like products along a supermarket aisle. The men can browse and shop with their heart's content before making their choice.
The men's info is not available. The women have little to no power to choose. My friend met her in a Connecticut bank. She is a Filipina married to an older American man, a coupling more prevalent than a Filipino man married to an American woman. She found out about the four Filipina students studying in the college nearby and so she invited us for lunch one weekend.
We came into their house and were greeted by the sound and fragrance of sizzling longganisa. She called out her greeting and invited us in. Her husband sat in a Lazy-Boy chair, glanced at us briefly, grunted, and ignored us for the rest of the time, even throughout lunch.
We sat around the dining table stiffly, each Filipina lost in her own thoughts. I looked at our hostess and wondered if she is happy. She had told us she met her husband through "penpal-penpal."
They corresponded for less than a year before he visited her in the Philippines and proposed to her. Was that enough for her to realize she loved this man enough to move across the world and live the rest of her life with him?
My college mentor is a Caucasian Canadian who met his Filipina wife while both were in college doing their graduate studies. My friend Massie and her American husband fell in love in the laboratory where they studied biochemical processes.
My cousin in Chicago is married to an Irish-American dentist. I know many happy, successful, and affectionate interracial marriages and I know that many interracial marriages between Filipinas and foreign men are born out of genuine love for each other.
But as I sat eating longganisa in that uncomfortable dining room, watching our hostess wiping sweat off her brow, her husband seated at the head of the table hardly acknowledging our existence, I wondered if this marriage began out of love, is held together by a sense of partnership, and sustained by mutual respect.
The bespectacled girl and her foreign companion in Boracay stood up to leave. He handed her bills to pay for their coffee and helped her carry her plastic bags filled with newly purchased items. They walked off into the dark. Is it love? Or something else? And if it's not love, is it impractical, silly, and hypocritical to even believe that two people should not come together because of anything other than love? While watching TV last night, I heard a guest on a talk show stating that Filipinos abroad will be treated by others, and will see themselves as second-class citizens as long as the Philippines remains poor.
I think back to that girl in Boracay, to our hostess in Connecticut, and to the many faces displayed in many Internet sites dedicated to Filipinas looking for foreign husbands and hope that for them, it is love or that there would be love.
(Jocy L. So teaches at Davao Christian High School)
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (February 22, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
