05.29.08 kulturnatib

Frankly, a most difficult call

Frank Sinatra is, by talent, a great singer. By association, he was known to be a hobnobber with mobsters and, by a sure bet, would have made a lousy immigration official.

I normally don't think of Frank Sinatra even if I belong to that generation when the way to a girl's heart and other body parts was lubed by syrupy love songs of the harana – though no longer in the classic tradition of holding forth under the girl's window and no longer even called that unless we were being facetious. We called it folk singing.

A song or two by Frank Sinatra was a mainstay in the repertoire of those haranas. And, why not? His songs were heart rending enough to rend more than the heart in what the Tagalogs call 'laglag panty.' That, of course, was never the intention of the Sinatra nor ourselves, earnest haranistas that we were.

Anyway, during the week, looking over the newspaper rack at my favorite library, my favorite newspaper jumped out at me. The headline of the Globe and Mail read, “Ottawa dispatches secret teams in bid to crack down on phony foreign weddings.”

Just as soon as I read that, out jumped Sinatra, too. While in the news story the Canadian government is grappling with what it says is a growing concern for fraudulent or phony marital alliances – indeed, in another level, these marriages are facilitated through the phone – whose ultimate outcome is immigration of one of the partners and sometimes members of their family as well to Canada, Sinatra has no such problem.

Listen: Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage . . . You can't have one without the other . . . Try to separate them, it's an illusion, try and you will only come to this conclusion . . . .

After mulling wryly on Sinatra and proceeding to read the banner story, I sensed a creeping defensiveness. And then, the guarded need to look around to see if there was anyone to pick up the first stone and throw it so I could join them, even if there was also the growing awareness that, like most defensive gestures, it wasn't clear where to throw the stone at and why.

In any case, the news item proceeded on about 'clandestine', 'fraud' teams 'fanning out to foreign countries to gather information about elaborately staged phony weddings aimed at duping Canadian immigration officials.' And, then, presumably, nipping the problem at the bud.

Like any well-rounded news story, some experiences and contrary viewpoints were presented. An Ontarian man gained some fame in 2005 by suing the government, alleging that "the bureaucracy is destroying my family,” and expressing his outrage at Canada's immigration system for refusing to allow his new wife to immigrate to Toronto.

He won the suit, spending a lot of money in the process. His wife was allowed in. She brought along her mother and a daughter. Soon, he was back badgering the government. This time as an officer of the group called Canadians Against Immigration Fraud.

The government was right the first time. His wife was into the marriage just for the lure of immigration. She was in. He was out.

But does these happen only in advanced, immigration lucrative countries? No. This happens also in the Philippines. Only it is tacitly encouraged by the government in the guise of retirement havens or investment opportunities.

A cursory look at pockets of resort developments in the country and you will find an odd couple separated in age and even more distant in cultural disposition who owns a development in the name of, usually, the Filipino wife.

This is the open secret of many 'countryside developments.' Or, even in urban Cebu where foreigners get to own chunks of property prohibited by the Constitution but bypassed through a wedding certificate with the Filipino partner standing in as dummy owner of the property.

This leads to a lot of problems, least of all those of love and its more sublime manifestations.

This reminds me of a foreigner friend who has been in the country for some time now. He marries a Filipina who bears him a child. He leaves the countryside, more or less abandoning the wife and child for the city. But, for all this, he becomes, in language and behavior, even more Pinoy. Even in his relative poverty.

Just as Sinatra, in the face of this love-cum-immigration problem, sounds so crushingly corny, we often fall back on the neither better, pat explanation of the bad eggs always being with the good, which, as we know, is a most difficult call.

05.15.08 kulturnatib

Tulips

Everybody knows about tulips and Holland. But not about tulips and Ottawa. I certainly didn't. Not until last year. But I heard something about it only in passing. I arrived for a vacation a month too late for the annual Canadian Tulips Festival, held every May in Ottawa and Gatineau.

This time, however, I arrived when the tulips would have already been planted in autumn, in time for their spring bloom, which is right about now.

The story of this festival dates back more than half a century ago. When the Nazis ignored the pleaded neutrality of the Dutch and invaded just the same during World War 2, the Canadians sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters.

During this forced exile a daughter to Princess Juliana was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, the maternity ward of which had to be temporarily declared Dutch territory so as not to have any citizenship problems for the just born royal. At the war's end, in a gesture of gratitude, the Royals gifted the city with 100,000 bulbs of tulips.

Being the beauties that they are, the tulips soon earned an enthusiastic following in the city among whom was the photographer, Malak Karsh, who in 1953 suggested the festival. Years later, this festival has grown to be what the organizers claim as the biggest festival of its kind in the world.

The point in this history that I am interested in started only last year. As festival organizers are always looking for something to make their festival more attractive they hit upon the idea that should have been thought of right from the start. After all what was the welcome extended by the Canadians to members of the Dutch Royalty if not a gesture of international friendship?

So, they added an international component through a pavilion, the International Pavilion, involving the diplomatic and immigrant community. This was deemed successful enough in its inaugural year to merit a repeat performance.

Naively I thought that somehow the Philippine participation would be related to tulips, as I thought the same with the other participating countries. Or, perhaps something about flowers. After all this is a tulips festival.

I remember a few years back while working on a local television program, on a segment about the flower industry in the mountain barangays of Cebu City, I was told by one flower grower that there were current attempts to grow tulips locally. He pointed to a somewhat hush-hush greenhouse tucked in one of the neighboring hills where this experiment was being carried out.

It was an intriguing lead but there was no time to reschedule the airing of that segment and not enough verifiable facts to even warrant a rescheduling.

Why I expected this story to make its way to Ottawa when Philippine embassies and missions everywhere are known for their just-so service and just-that levels of initiative baffles even myself.

Still it was with enthusiasm, fueled by a beautiful spring day, that I walked the two kilometer distance to the pavilion where for that day the spotlight was on the Philippine participation.

I should have known better. I should have expected the usual. What else would we immediately think of when showing off to foreigners? Mount a fiesta. At least that was what I think the Philippine booth was trying to do judging from the banderitas or plastic buntings that were hung about. Yet, what would have conclusively clinched the fiesta theme conclusion I missed except for some tell tale remains: scraps of food. That's what makes a fiesta, right?

Still, I was just in time for the song and dance. For sure another Filipino mainstay. Then again, it was the usual, including how you can always tell without fail that it is a Filipino that has come up on stage and taken up the microphone. They always, always knock on the microphone twice and say hello, hello!

I have no problems with the fiesta presented as the window to the Philippines. It is that it has to be accompanied by renditions of old folk songs that annoy me. There is nothing wrong with old folk songs. I like them as much as my dear departed father. But why is it made to sound that there are no other songs other than those? Can't somebody sing something by the Eraserheads? Or, Junior Kilat?

To be fair, my father would not sing Eraserheads. Neither, I think, would those good folks who made up most of the chorale who look about the same age as my dad when he passed on.

But there was this fairly young Pinoy, with had a more practiced voice though not necessarily better for singing Eraserheads. Then again, he sings 'Dahil Sa 'Yo,' botching it so thoroughly that it would have Imelda rolling in her grave even if she is not there just yet.

If the chorale cum dance troupe didn't do too well on stage, they did better at the booth in a kind of harana where they did a repeat of what could only be a limited repertoire. Even Imelda would agree.

The young Pinoy redeemed himself well enough in the end. As I think the entire Philippine effort did for whom, as with most of us, there is always next time to try better. So, until next spring. Inshallah.

05.08.08 kulturnatib

Moringa

When I went to Riyadh many years ago one of the most astounding sights I saw was a most humble one. It was one that was totally missed by the thoroughly unproductive and expensive, compulsory introduction to Saudi life seminar all OFWs going to the Kingdom had to go through a week prior to departure.

By the time I saw this I had already integrated fairly well into the Bisaya community there through the Bisaya organization who would regularly get together to talk, reminisce, network, play, take care of the business of the organization and, most importantly and most often, eat. Or, that should be feast.

It was in the course of one of these feasts when I spied it first on the table, looking very familiar and delicious, as it invariably is. I immediately thought, of course with such a huge Pinoy, even Bisaya, population here these could be shipped over easily and probably fairly cheaply as well.

But, being the curious amateur journalist -- I was also by this time editing the organization's newsletter -- I could not stop at that thought and had to ask. “Oh, that?” our host answered. “We have a steady supply of that from the backyard.”

I had to see to believe. I saw and believed. Clumped together in a corner of the backyard garden were two or three robustly leaved moringa oleifera trees. As we all know these trees answer more readily to the name malunggay or kalamunggay or even better, kamunggay.

Our host had brought a cutting back from one of his home leaves. He had no idea whether it would grow or not. He just liked malunggay soup especially with a vanquished cock from a cockfight.

You don't know OFWs if you should wonder how the vanquished cock from a cockfight can be managed in Saudi where even to keep a pet is haram, forbidden or somewhat of a crime. Don't bother about seeing it. Just believe it. It can be managed and kamunggay can be made to grow there.

My father and most of his generation loved and lived on kamunggay. Until his death at the fairly ripe age of 75 he always insisted that a kamunggay dish should be among those on his dining table at every meal except breakfast.

Neither he nor my mother, who both insisted that we eat what they did, often whether we liked it or not, made a big deal out of kamunggay as being some kind of miracle plant that it is now made out to be. They just knew that it was good for us. No ifs or buts. Period.

Turns out that they are right. Science has caught up to the lowly malunggay. Only recently when botanicals are capturing a segment of the worldwide health and healing market has malunggay come into its own.

Also, recently word has it that malunggay might even make a bigger dent in the growing though controversial biofuels market, reportedly edging out the Indian Jathropa. Malunggay cultivation supposedly solves the nagging problem that biofuels represents of taking food from the mouths of the underfed to fueling cars of the overfed.

These are nice thoughts to dwell on. But not mine, not now. I'm thinking about two recent letters. Both reminding me two things about the same thing. One tells me I shouldn't forget to give my partner malunggay soup for general health and quick recovery from a recent delivery. The other encouraged me that malunggay soup is good for lactating mothers and not to be discouraged by challenges that breastfeeding often presents. Breastfeeding is the way to go.

Like we need to be told.

Unfortunately, we don't have a backyard. Even if we did, unlike our Saudi host years back, I'm convinced an experiment in growing malunggay here is a doomed proposition. Unless it is some Frankenfood experiment.

Still, fortunately, as mentioned above, the malunggay has come a long way. It is now available in a capsule. Probably, coated in a flavor of your choice and none of them malunggay. I just need to find it.

But, if I had my way, I would have them the way my father always had them. Maybe not like my friend in Saudi, cockfighting is surely illegal here anyway, but in a piping hot regular chicken soup with the tinge of bitterness of malunggay, the flavor of faraway home.