Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Of friendship and pinoy pride

“hi honey. I’m home. Missed you so much.” This was the text I got from therese the day after she got back from a month-long CISV camp in Norway. I know she probably sent it to ten more people but getting that text really made me feel wonderful about my life.

I do have great friends around me. I’de like to think that its because I know how to pick 'em. But I also know that they did some picking on their own too – and I am one of their pickings.

Great pickers these people around me.

Anyways, I had lunch with therese today. It was long overdue. And she filled me in on what happened in camp. Now, I don’t know if its because im about to get my period, or its because I miss camp too or maybe its this general melancholia surrounding me these days, but one of her kwentos literally drove me to tears.

The activity is called “stereotypes.” Camp is divided by delegation and each country has their own manila paper to pass around so that the other delegations can write what they know about that country – good or bad.

Germany will almost always get a swastika and sausages on their paper. The US will most likely get a football, HOLLYWOOD and the twin towers collapse. India will get elephants. You get the drill.

The Philippines, in therese’s camp, got beaches, coconuts, mango. They also got “poor,” “uneducated,” “presidents wife has a lot of shoes (cute),”and “speaks better English than Filipino.”

Therese told me about the speech she gave after that activity. It wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before so i was really surprised that it touched me the way it did.

She spoke of being poor and corrupt and deprived. She also spoke of how, despite all these, we are striving, as a people, to help our country.

After her speech, she went back to her delegation where 2 of her 4 kids were crying, proud of being Filipinos.

For all of ten minutes today, with tears in my eyes, so was I.

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