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Meeting at Starbucks
They are renovating the Starbucks on Katipunan
Avenue. Well, one of them. But never fear, there is a sign out front,
where the guard usually stands, reminding us that there are two
alternate locations within a few blocks, so we needn't be deprived
of our morning latte. And of course, there is a Seattle 's Best
Coffee a few doors down. While no one is likely to shatter the illusion
of competition, that's technically also a Starbucks. The rest of
the street is not much different.
This conglomeration of food and beverage chains
is not quite the mental image that I'd had of the Philippines. But
this is Katipunan Ave.,, the traffic-choked artery that connects
three of the most prestigious universities in the Philippines. One
of these is the elite, Jesuit university, Ateneo de Manila. One
of Ateneo's neatly manicured corners belongs to the Institute of
Social Order (ISO). Despite a decidedly '70's obsession with concrete,
ISO's two-story complex is green and open, with courtyards and planters
surrounding the dorm, the conference center and the shared office
building. This immaculate oasis in the sprawling, advertising-packed
Metro Manila feels very distant from the poor fishing communities
that ISO is striving to help. The four field staff members overcome
the distance by splitting their time between Manila and their respective
sites, which I imagine can be a very disorienting pattern. For the
rest of the staff, though, the program sites are more illusive.
They are places that they know all about, rather than places that
they actually know.
For those of us in the office, our world is that
of modern—or aspiring to be modern—Metro Manila. While the high-end
glitz of Katipunan is hardly a uniform expression of Manila , it
is a pretty accurate picture of what most of the city is trying
to become. The newly opened Mall of Asia, the third largest in the
world, offers another rather overwhelming example. Manila is a remarkably
commercialized place. It is sprinkled with towering, building-sized
advertisements, every point of reference seems to be a different,
ever-larger shopping mall and every restaurant seems to be a fast
food chain—in equal parts Pinoy and American. Especially at first,
it all just made me want to get out of the city and into the program
sites. Now, after a month and a half, that impatience to go to ISO's
yet unvisited field sites remains, but I have also begun to come
to terms with Manila and with all the complicated reactions it has
elicited.
I don't think I'd ever explicitly thought about
it this way, but I came to the Philippines somehow expecting to
suspend judgment as completely as possible. It seemed to me that
the way to fully take in a place was to release myself from whatever
biases or comforts I clung to at home. My daily patterns, all those
little moments that represented how I chose to live my life,
I thought, had too much potential to narrow my vision. At all costs,
I wanted to avoid becoming an insular ex-pat, self-consciously separate
from the place where I was living. Never mind the strong and often
critical social opinions that I held in the U.S.; in the Philippines,
I would eat what everyone else ate, listen to what everyone else
listened to and do what everyone else did. “When in Rome …” was
the unofficial motto that I had imagined for the coming year.
But as I pass by the renovated Starbucks, that
attitude seems too easy, too black-and-white, and even a little
dishonest. And what happens when the Romans try to do as you do,
and end up emulating the things you like least about yourself?
As many of my Pinoy acquaintances have noted, often
somewhat ruefully, “American” here is automatically popular and
cool. So in the growing—if extremely unbalanced—affluence of Manila
, I am surrounded by commercialization that seems very familiar.
In this context my opinions seem worth maintaining, or at minimum,
at least considering.
In the States, I was a strict vegetarian, but I
completely rejected it when I came to the Philippines. I didn't
feel comfortable imposing my ideology on a culture and place that
I did not know or understand. And as a sort of personal confirmation,
my willingness to try everything has made it easier to adjust. Food
is major part of Pinoy (and really any) culture, and my co-workers
seem to take special pride in the strangeness of some Pinoy food.
Within my first few days, they excitedly had me trying Balut, a
fertilized, boiled, duck's egg, with the embryo still inside. Ging,
one of the field staff, even congratulated me on my lack of culinary
reservations. My willingness, even eagerness, to try things has
created cultural goodwill that clearly overshadowed any ideological
qualms I might have brought with me.
On the other hand, joining my co-workers at a McDonald's,
or even Jollibee, the Pinoy counterpart, seems like a noticeably
different situation. I'm still a guest and still out of place, but
it seems strange to support a McDonald's here when I refuse to support
them—or even eat a burger—in the United States. Along the same lines,
following the hordes to massive shopping malls feels equally unnecessary.
“This is my cultural territory too,” I want to say, “and I don't
have to like it any more here than I do in America.”
The irony, though, is that whatever my attitudes
may be, there is little I can do to alter the initial impression
I create. As Ferdie, my Tagolog tutor, noted, in the Philippines
, every westerner is a Kano , (from Americano )
and that's a term that comes with quite a bit of baggage. The Philippines
have been dominated by American soldiers, American debt and now
American companies, and our confused cultural footprint has long
outlasted the military bases in Clark and Subic Bay. I am a Kano
. I am defined by my reliance on English, a language that is
widespread, but still very consciously American. For all my ambivalence
toward technology, I am defined by my electronic stuff—my computer
and cameras and iPod. Rather than justifying their excess, explaining
that they are from Duke only further marks my place in a world of
expensive consumption.
Even if I could separate myself from all that is
seen as “American” and declare that my frustrations with consumer
culture were just as valid in Asia as at home, more complicated
issues lie below the surface. The partial translation of my own
attitudes also tends to reveal the complexity of issues that I have
framed in simplistic terms. Here, I don't know how to react to conspicuous
displays of wealth. Part of me is maddened at the inequality and
wastefulness, especially in a place where shantytowns surround gated
communities. But another part wonders if I shouldn't also be encouraged
by the presence of a booming economy in a country that has been
so poor for so long. While many people are being left out, there
are also many being made better off by this growth. And moreover,
it seems incredibly hypocritical to protest the emergence here of
wealth and luxury that so many Westerners already enjoy.
My confusion about applying my values in Manila
has a mirror effect as well, forcing me to reassess the assumptions
I make in America . An instinctive reaction to an issue in the Philippines
can crack through my layers of complacency about things in the States.
Inequality, again, is the most poignant example. Here, I blanch
at the sight of huge shopping malls being built next to squatters'
areas, but to some degree, the unfamiliar thing is the proximity
of the polar extremes of wealth, rather than their existence.
In the U.S., we just seem to be better at sweeping poverty out of
sight. Or perhaps I have just become numb to its manifestations.
So, perhaps surprisingly, the squatters of Manila have made me more
interested in and conscious of U.S. poverty. In conversations with
acquaintances and co-workers, I find myself not only discussing
the shocking poverty of Manila, but “defending,” in a sense, the
legitimacy and severity of poverty in America . America , it is
assumed, does not really have poverty in the way that the Philippines
does. And while they are right that it is not the same, I feel a
need to explain how it can be just as devastating, and in light
of American wealth, even more tragic and unnecessary.
For me, the real value of Metro Manila's bewildering
development is to show that I cannot draw a bright line between
my world in America and that of the Philippines. While there remains
an almost unbridgeable gulf between my life and that of a village
fisherman or urban slum dweller, my Filipino co-workers are facing
a world that is, in many ways, very familiar. They are struggling
to find their place in the modern world. They are well educated,
and choosing between non-profit work and law school, or grad school
or the well paying corporate jobs of Makati City. They have the
opportunity to travel, and to enjoy a life of relative comfort.
They are privileged in a strikingly unequal world, and are trying
to figure out how to respond. We are facing many of the very same
issues.
We are working through many of the same challenges,
and we are doing so as equals. When I have traveled to other countries
before, my identity has been primarily as an American, and my opinions
didn't matter aside from whether or not I agreed with Bush's policies
(thankfully, “no” is a pretty safe answer everywhere). But in the
context of ISO, where much of the staff has even been to America,
there is room in the conversation for much greater detail. We can
get to know each other as people, rather than cultural caricatures.
Our similarities not only give us a common place
to work from, but also allow me to see deeper cultural differences
more clearly. For all of their upward mobility and independence,
nearly everyone I work with still lives with their parents or a
sibling. Even when dislocated between Manila and the provinces,
family ties hold a supreme level of importance. Religion too, is
different and ubiquitous. In the middle of a shopping mall, crowds
gather for mass, and social events—even some parties—start with
public prayers.
There is plenty of value in releasing one's own
biases, but the problem with my initial approach is that it treated
Pinoy culture as a monolithic entity for me to consume. I wasn't
thinking of Filipinos as equals in an exchange of culture, sub-cultures,
ideas and attitudes. For that to occur, I had to be ready to share
my own attitudes, and that includes being ready to filter and to
criticize, rather than merely to accept.
Culture shock can be incredibly valuable, but sometimes
the finer details are lost among the more obvious contrasts. Ultimately,
the deceptive familiarity of culture in Manila is just enough to
set me off balance and sharpen my senses. It is pushing me to truly
assimilate my experiences, rather than uncritically absorb them,
and to consider the broader, more complicated implications of my
beliefs.
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