Blog celebrating sisterhood throughout the Philippines
Please Donate
Rona and Roane
Rona (left) and Roane (right) sitting in La Peita Memorial Park
Originally written July 2016
Originally from Olongapo, a coastal city in Luzon’s Zambales province, Rona and Roane are single mothers who presently reside in the northern Isle’s landlocked province of Pampanga. Rona,29, and Roane,28, are two of six children. Throughout childhood, they grew up with their youngest sister,18, and two brothers, 27 and 17. As teens, they welcomed a new addition to the family as their mother, just shy of her fortieth birthday gave birth to their youngest brother, 10. Other than Taglish, a unique hybrid of English and the commonly-spoken Tagalog, a language they would often hear on television talk shows and dramas, Rona and Roane had minimal exposure to English. Growing up, Tagalog, and Kapampangan, the region’s indigenous language, remained their main means of oral expression.
As teens, their father, 49, invested money earned delivering gravel in relocating their family closer to Manila and the purchase of a motorcycle with side cart to pursue a new venture as an independent city tricycle operator. At the age of sixteen Roane decided to move in with her boyfriend, two years her senior. They rented an apartment together and soon became pregnant, carrying her first child. Like her father, Roane’s boyfriend earned a modest living as a tricycle driver while Roane found work weaving rattan furniture in a home-based business. She worked up to twelve hours daily, six days of the week except Sunday – her day of rest. After three years as a weaver, Roane found a position working as a machine operator at a Clark Field light fixture assembly plant. Roane noticed a night and day difference en route to and from her job. The wide open green space and air conditioned, multi-bed-roomed houses synonymous with Eisenhower-era suburban Americana inside Clark contrasted starkly to the drab tin-roofed cement tenements of the neighborhood which she and her coworkers lived, only a short jeepney ride away. The former US airbase eludes locals such as Roane. Seemingly, Clark’s parameters remain well-defined and isolated from the immediate area as it was prior to US military withdrawal in 1992. US servicemen that once patrolled the boundaries are replaced with security guards who check identifications of wage earners who flock daily through the entrances on their morning commute to the hotels, restaurants, call centers, and manufacturing plants within Clark’s present-day Freeport Zone. Unlike younger sister Roane, she works outside the confines of Clark in a wallet and accessory factory in neighboring San Fernando…
Originally from Buffalo, New York, an area situated in America's former rust belt, like most Western New York natives, I am partly of Polish decent. I grew up immersed in the American football and hockey frenzy that often consumed the community. It was a great diversion from the socioeconomic problems that began to plague Buffalo in the end of its industrial heyday. It gave the people of Buffalo, often called "the city with no illusion," an escape from the mundane as they vicariously lived through sports figures, celebrities and dramas seen on television and the covers of magazines displayed on the checkout counters at supermarkets.
From a very young age, settling in a particular school or area was difficult. The instant I made friends and acquaintances, abruptly, it was time for me to move on and start over again. With minimal time to make lasting impressions, my encounters with people were like brief stops on a tour. Their memories of me as I had of them were not mutual, remembering them for the roles they played as film characters, viewing them from afar as merely an observer. Unlike many of the people encountered, whose path in life seemed definite and set out before them, I had had the privilege, sometimes at other’s expense, of living my life almost day to day, void of any commitment or obligations. Subsequently, my lifestyle has caught up with me. Trying to play different roles to different people and not being able to follow up with an end result has left things open ended.
However, all my travels on my seemingly limitless, open-ended journeys were not in vain. In retrospect it has given me a better understanding of the human condition everyone must inevitably face. Regularly transplanted from one setting to another, filled with different people and different places have given me a broader perspective in life, which has made me grateful for the friends, family and resources at my disposal.
After nearly a decade of living and working abroad throughout Asia, I presently reside in my hometown in suburban Buffalo. Though it has been wonderful to catch up with friends and family and have a taste of the local cuisine eaten since childhood, there is a void that can only be filled by memories abroad in countries such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Memories of long-standing wooden shrines underscored by ever-changing electronic billboards, April cherry blossoms, and riding around in jeepneys will endure.
Returning to the USA was as though a claw from above forcibly lifted me by my shirt collar through the atmosphere across the Pacific, dropping me onto a bed of cold ice-packed snow beside an airport parking lot, making my long-awaited homecoming after visiting in the tropical Philippine Island of Boracay seem like a slap in the face. Unsure of how to exit the premises, agoraphobia set in. Overwhelmed by the vast and expansive landscape common in the US, momentarily, the airport car park seemed like an Arctic tundra during a calm after a storm nearing spring. It was a quite a contrast from Korea where within the same time taken to exit the airport, I would have been sitting comfortably on a train, enroute to my studio apartment.
It has been over a year since my last visit to Asia. Since my return, I have been diligently searching for a means to have one foot firmly planted in Asia and another firmly planted stateside. With the help of a dedicated staff and willing participants in the Philippines, Pinay Sisters celebrates the beauty of sisterhood. With a photo-journalistic approach, from the province villages to the urban neighborhoods of Manila, Pinay Sisters takes you throughout one of the world’s largest archipelagos with unique photos, stories and profiles featuring sisters from many walks of life updated monthly. Please enjoy. Positive criticism and feedback are greatly welcomed.
View all posts by admin
