hey again everyone,
how are all of you? thank you for your kind words. I have always been attracted to the cause of justice most of my adult life and I had the privilege to be a part of a bigger movement. The more I reflect back though, I know and unseen Hand continues to help guide me.
I preface this whole experience in saying my first intent was to go back home, but it came down to a trust issue with the networks I made in the Philippines, ironically, I was more comfortable heading out to Viet Nam with familiar faces, a people with a culture I got introduced to in the Gulf...
by the time i get to our homeland, I might be more Vietnamese than Filipino! (but if you ask me, our creative hybridity, talent to adapt and flexible identity is very Filipino too)
I share with you a reflective snippet:
"Do not mix up knowledge and language!"
I teach a group of social service staff in Saigon. I was talking to my supervisor after one lesson. Since my teaching methodology for English has been catered for college students who have a strong command of English, and noticing their English skills were below previous students, I asked "Did most of the staff attend a University?".
My supervisor, strong-minded, battle-tested Sister D shoots back in English: "Do NOT assume they are not educated because they do not speak English! You are mixing up knowledge with language ability, some studied English some did not, all of them have a bachelor's degree in their fields of work. Remember to not make that assumption, remember how smart our grandparents and the generations that came before them were, and they didn't know how to speak one word of English!"
I could see how ignorant my question was, I assumed some attended college, some did not, but didn't know they all went. It's unfair to make that assumption, and that last statement, "how our grandparents" didn't know how to speak a foreign language....for us Filipinos, we have an asset in our English language command, but I remember, my grandfather just shutting himself off from the world in America. Once the honest, charismatic popular superindendent in South Cotobato who spent the last years of his life in a Florida home watching the Price is Right, talking to no one, taking care of us bratty kids...I never had a full conversation with him. He never knew enough English, I never knew enough Visaya. I'll never assume he wasn't a man of great knowledge.
Living Miracle
There is this woman, we call her Chi Hoa. She is a patient at the HIV Center I teach in. A seminarian said, "doesn't she have the most beautiful smile?" She was playing with a newly arrived 1-year old baby patient. "She was once 20 kilograms (around 40 pounds) and lost her 2-yr old child, you could see her bones, she is a living miracle." Chi Hoa, who regained all her weight helps out everyday taking care of the other children and other adult patients.
Each time I enter the center, the kids are usually outside playing and shout "HEL-LO CHU LEH-OH! (hello uncle leo!)" There's something more holistic I see in patient care out in this Center, it's not a sterile, all functioning hospital, but a serene environment with a children's house, an adult house for men and woman, a moat where it has a place to pray, fruit trees and a mausoleaum where they pray over their friends who pass. Chi Hoa does have the most beautiful smile.
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Topic: Greetings from Việt Nam! Boholanos in Saì Gòn/HCMC? (Read 1637 times)