For health reasons, I prefer flying to Manila via Tokyo. The layover gives you a chance to stretch your legs. It is said that prolonged sitting can lead to arteriosclerosis. What is interesting with this route compared to what PAL offers as a straight flight from SFO, is that it picks up a motely bunch of Filipinos in Tokyo. They are mostly OCW’s flying in from locations outside of the United States, some from the Middle East, a few are merchant marine crewmen whose home port is Japan and are now returning to Manila for the next ship assignment. On other trips, I swore I saw some Japanukis towing a child or two with features obviously from a Japanese father.
It’s become obvious to anyone who’s been outside the Philippines that quite a few Filipinos are “out there”, traveling, earning money, getting married and then returning to their hometowns for a brief vacation and replenishing of their cultural batteries — the sounds, the food, the relatives, the smells — memories that gets written over when one spends any amount of time overseas. The return of the native is therefore wrapped around many such rituals of revitalization.
Beyond the obligatory visits to ninongs and ninangs, reunions with the old barkada, perhaps over some duty-free Johnny Walker and smokes, the one that struck me most as a vision of the future Philippines was the Duty-Free shopping ritual. The Duty-Free shop is a huge warehouse conveniently located close to the NIA, just a short drive away. Balikbayans may be able to use their duty free privileges within 48 hours upon arrival. Its location therefore is very tempting to the newly-arrived with additional pressure from relatives who came to NIA to make salubong but did not get a gratitious pasalubong for some reason or another. This was the last chance to make it right and spread the expected goodwill all around. It takes only a few minutes to get to the Duty-Free shop, especially on a Sunday. The Filipinos make a holiday of it with the hapless balikbayan in tow. Only valid passport holders are allowed shopping numbers for which they must line up and register. From an obliging cashier, I discovered that they register some 1100 shoppers per day! An average horde of shoppers per one passport holder would be between 5-10. So figure the math: that’s between 5000 to 11000 people! Say each balikbayan releases an average of hard-earned $500 of purchases, the gross purchases would amount to $550,000 per day ! That means that this largesse will have been shared at $50 per head or P2800. The government from Marcos on have long recognized this gold-mine and have devised various gimmicks to tap into it. So far, it is the Duty-Free shops alone are able to capture both the pent up consumerist urges of the Filipino and the hard-earned dollars of the OCW. Thus, the Duty-Free experience is one single revitalization ritual that draws upon the many urges of the Filipino. Filipino rituals center on the concept of sharing and the spreading of good will or commensuality as anthropologists would like to call it. Sharing a meal, paying for friend’s jeepney fare, giving gifts — all of these actions are keyed to the notion of sharing. Before colonialism and westernization corrupted this primordial urge, many communities observed this ritual. Manipulation of this traditional political economy evolved into the insidious patron-client and utang-na-loob economics, which have become the long lasting foundation of Filipino society. Politicians have mastered this ritual and advertisers have exploited it to sell products. It goes to say that the cultural value is intrinsic in the Filipino psyche and sociology.
The new politics will have to veer away from the corrupted version of this ritual but it will require self-less leaders and followers, the very same qualities that propelled the revolution of 1896. How does one measure this qualities? Just ask anyone in the know. The opposite of sharing is greed. That’s easy enough to spot.
