When I was nine, I experienced my first culture shock.
In my childhood, I lived two lives in two countries.
I was vaguely awake when I was shaken by the rumblings and vibrations of my car seat. The road had a broken jaw. It had most of the characteristics of rough terrain. Soil, potholes, and cracked concrete. The truck I was in blasted through the road. A heavy-duty Isuzu that was supposedly able to withstand any environmental hazard on its way. The windows were pulled all the way down. And they were low enough to stretch your whole arm out. The ACs were on max, blowing, while dangling car fresheners swing with the entering winds.
It was 2011 when we finally arrived in our hometown Calubcub. Rainy was the weather staple in those months; mud was the terrain trend. We rested our car on a hill atop. And the crowd of tall-standing trees were blowing mist from their place to another. I recall hearing loud cricket noises that night. Nowadays, you can barely hear them. Clustered bamboo plants jostling at each other whilst winds blow them in whichever way. These were the facts of the midnight.
They offered me a plate of sumans— those rice cakes cuddled with banana leaves — with sugar on the side (apparently they weren’t sweet enough). And when I was done, I was guided back at the kitchen to be poured cold water, I drank from a metallic cup. My grandmother (Lola) called me “utoy” — it’s a word you use to call a young boy. And they used “ga” in sentences just as natural as we say “hello”. Already, I encountered multiple foreign concepts within the first sixty minutes. And I was hearing foreign slang from languages I thought I was acquainted with.
In my childhood, I lived two lives in two countries.
In Dubai, we mingled with local Filipino communities where we found them: Baptist churches and Philippine schools. I can’t really recall meeting any other Asian than Filipino. Skycrapers and commercial activity filled the cup of empty cities. Cities that were all-grayed out by modernism and were mundanely-shaped. You also see trees but you don’t really feel them. They are too straight, tall, and too architectured — I don’t know, that’s how I remembered the place. It lacked humanity. It felt more like a giant commercial park, a workplace in lieu of an honest human settlement.
I came from that place. I was a pale-toned, English-speaking nine-year-old. A fucking Sheldon Cooper. I was encultured by the Filipino diaspora of the Arab world; and I brought it here in the Philippines. It brought me positive perceptions with horrible repercussions. Positive, because the “Abroad” to them is affluence, stability — and that glitzed up the reputation of any homecoming family from the West or the Middle East. We left the country for reasons I can no longer recall. However I reckon that it was because of some “crisis”. Perhaps the Arab Spring which had just begun scared my father. Or was it some financial housing crisis back in 2008 that caught up to him.
Like I said, it was rainy season and typhoon Falcon had just barraged the province. Falcon kicked down entire branches of trees, flooded the insides of our home, and caused much leakages throughout the house. We had to wait for days before the soil absorbs all the floodwater. We had to deal with the mud, slipping by the mud, and tires being stuck in the mud. I never saw that much mud in my entire Dubai resident-cation. I wasn’t used to this tropical, wet weather. I was used to sandstorms and sand. We lived in apartments, in condominium units, a shut balcony door kept the desert out. There was rarely a need for shovelling mud or draining floodwater.
I remember riding my first jeepney ride — a Philippine cultural staple. They were the vehicles that Americans left after the war — which we repurposed for public transit. In the night, I would hear the loudest crickets outvoicing the next one. The same goes for the 4-inch girthed lizards noising their mating calls at night. The wastes of goats, cows, and horses were littered about the pavements. And I was regaled with stories of the Philippine folklore and mythologies. Lots of first times and first sights during those times.
I was not potty-trained for this idyllic, rural culture — this was a shock to my middle-eastern brain. I was accustomed to the grays and modernity of the Arab world and the Filipino petite-bourgeoise culture abroad. I was the limping person walking without a stick. I didn’t know what a sari-sari store was, and paper money looked different. I didn’t know what a “fiesta“ was. I didn’t know about the dialect and linguistic customs. I wasn’t aware of anything Filipino.
I was speaking the same language but we couldn’t understand each other. I spoke too fluently perhaps to a long-time local and certainly to my peer-cousins. I couldn’t dumb down my parlance either as I didn’t know how to speak any other way. All I knew was the spoiled boy Taglish language (combination of Tagalog and English), and even then they’d look at me with a mortified but patient confusion. They treated me accordingly. And since we were the nouveau riches in our poor province, we were treated like the Don Juans in the neighborhood.
Locals perceived me as intelligent, “wow matalinong bata” (tr. wow smart kid) due to my accent. My “abroad” paleness factored in as well — thanks to colorism. So did my thick frames with high prescription. I was the fucking Young Sheldon in the province. The fucking “uhmmm ackshually…” kid. All of these produced a handful of special treatments. Which meant I had VIP-status as a nine-year-old with VIP-access to things I want just because. A pampered prince.
Karaoke-culture is ubiquitous in society, still is. So were beauty paegants, and watching Manny Pacquiao whenever he has a fight. There were drinking sessions: mugs filled with cold beer, and shirtless fat men, rambling, dueting, and occasionally fighting. Fiesta and karaoke culture felt especially prevalent when we arrived. It felt as if there were fiestas every other two weeks. There was always food: cheesed mussels, buttered shrimp, Tilapia, mangoes, and other tropical fruits. There was kwek-kwek and fishballs. There were turons — banana covered in thin lumpia wrapper deep-fried in caramelized sugar. Boiled duck eggs called baluts were also a thing. You eat the whole live-looking duckling with salt on top. You usually eat them at night so you don’t see the “lifeness” of the bird. Trust me it looks disgusting.
There are two hobbies that the adolescent Filipino go through: playing hoop and computer gaming. For weekdays and weekends, boys after class would either beeline for the local computer shops or the local courts. By the time the clock hits 3pm, I’d notice from afar as I ride my bike, a swarm of crude boys — their voices cracking, dropping the meanest profanity, and walking the bad boy gait — just heading for the shops. We would fill up the cybercafes and registered for “open time” which meant we would play without time restraint and pay by rate accordingly. We would bluster the nastiest threats and shit talks against the other team. “Putanginaa moooo!” — that’s everyone’s favorite cuss word. It translates to “You motherfucker” — we abuse it unsparingly, and we weren’t particularly frugal with cuss words. There was no such thing in the Middle East, not in the Filipino-dense communities therein. There was only marked formalism and conformism to the Arab culture, at least when I still lived there.
We would stand on our monobloc chairs and raise our middle fingers to the opposite row of gamers who’re just as doused in sweat, just as vulgar and nasty. I knew this as I was one of the gamers in the mid-2010s, doused in sweat in crowded computer shops. I didn’t particularly belong to the unkempt, smelly, gamer crowd — but I was probably just as addicted with gaming. Yes, this clip was from our country. In 2011, Aikee released his single “Dota O Ako” which became a hit in highschool circles. In the hook, the neglected girlfriend had her boy to choose between her or the game — the fact that this single existed reflected the marked addiction that befell the typical male adolescent.
Basketball-culture is likewise ubiquitous, still is. We have a thing here called “Ligas” where local youth-led government councils sponsor games. Either after winning their elections or during their electoral campaigns. These ligas could last up to a week. And typically, these were ended by paegent shows; another cultural staple. They lasted longer culture-wise than Dota 2 or the community-based local computer shops. The old computer shops that were once packed especially in the evenings were now closed. They died out. I don’t see black school shoes and slippers before the shop anymore. Nowadays people only go there when our local ISPs stop providing internet.
As cliche it may sound, culture at home was vibrant compared to the ones in the Emirates. There’s a pervading sense of community and humanity here that the modernism of the Emirates could never emulate. There is a huge social discrepancy between my home country and the Emirates. They do not smile and laugh as much as in the Emirates compared to the Philippines. They were etiquettely conservative. And they got good beard game. Damn Arabs! (for legal and diplomatic purposes, this is a joke).
In restrospect, I realized that the Filipinos migrating to the Emirates were probably just as culturally-shaken as I was. From jeepneys to taxis. From the wetlands to the dry deserts. From churches to mosques. From East Asian values to Western individualism. Such cultural products elemental to being a “Filipino” gradually vanish as soon as they landed in Arabian soil, or whichever soil they expect will bring them opportunity. They risk the eventual loss of their Filipino identity. Some of them become arrogant and now refuse to identify with the “poor” or “uncosmopolitan, unsophisticated” Filipinos.
Despite being born in the Philippines, I was not old enough to experience the world as it was. Not old enough to develop a strong identity and develop beliefs in the country. Thus I developed them abroad, only to be shaken when I arrived back to the Philippines. I was among the lucky few who were able to experience both shades of different worlds. Lucky enough to have lived an experience unique to most — the most who will never get to step outside their home country. Whatever reason my father had to return to our town and province, certainly led to such a turning-point in my life I’d love to relive again.
I was the limping person walking without a stick, but in the end, I learned to walk between two worlds.
