- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 9
-
Sparkle (0)
In 1986, I moved to Angeles City, Philippines. It was spring. I was five months pregnant, already the mom of a toddler. Clark AB, Philippines was the last place in the world I wanted to move to. But, when the US Air Force tells your husband to move to the P.I., you move to the P.I.
The only good thing I could see about my very first PCS was that I would be met by my best friend who had PCS'd to the Philippines six months before us.
When we arrived, we were billeted in a hotel in downtown Angeles City and the culture shock... I cannot describe it. I just can't. The view from the hotel room window was of a very deep, dry ditch that was filled with trash. Filled to overflowing with trash. Little did I know that the rainy season would come and that deep, dry, trash filled ditch would flood to overflowing. Dirty water and trash combined.
We didn't last a day in that hotel. I couldn't handle it.
We moved to a smaller hotel, on Friendship Highway, with no window at all. I liked this one better. It felt safer because I couldn't see anything scary outside. I could coccoon myself and my daughter in the safety of that dark room and we'd be just fine. Hah.
When we arrived, Corazon Aquino had just been installed as the country's president by the Yellow Revolution, the People Power Revolution or the much more boring EDSA Revolution. They called it peaceful but it was anything but peaceful in my eyes - the eyes of a very young, pregnant mother who had never lived outside of the Carolinas.
We couldn't get base housing when we arrived in the Philippines. We lived in a very high end Angeles City neighborhood called Carmenville. It was a beautiful neighborhood with armed Filipino guards on every street corner. Nerve-wracking, but I couldn't have asked for a nicer guy to carry my 2 year old down the street at 2am when I was in labor with no car, a husband at work, and no telephone.
That's right. It was like that. Exactly like that.
The most frightening, frustrating, amazing experience of my life.
Getting to know the Filipinos who lived and worked in our neighborhood (and our home) was an experience I am thankful for every single day.
Listening to them talk, with pride, about the People Power Revolution and their President who they almost always called "Cory" as if she was their neighbor or their best friend was fascinating.
They weren't walking around with blinders on, they knew she wasn't going to change their world in any big way, over night. She simply brought them hope. Even when there were shootings in the neighborhood. Even when jobs were scarce and money was tighter than tight. She was their President and they were proud.
I was proud for them.
This third world country had elected a woman president. They had fought the corruption of the Marcos regime and they chose her to lead them after her husband's assassination. In this country where men were MEN and women were definitely WOMEN, they had a woman president. A country acting president said this about his opponent, Aquino.
...perhaps because he grew uneasy calling me the widow he had made, President Marcos turned to calling me "just a woman" instead, whose place was in the bedroom.
I saw it. I watched it on Filipino TV. I listened to it on Filipino radio. I was proud for them. And I was jealous. I'm still jealous.
The Cory doll Jenn is holding in this photo has lived on a shelf in some room of my home every since 1986. All three of the children have been known to pick it up and hold it... just to hold it. All three of the children have fought over who should have it when I let it go. All three of the children are connected to Cory Aquino and to the people of the Philippines, whether they remember what it was like to live there or be born there or not.
I cried when my husband's commander refused to allow him to extend our tour again. Apparently six years was enough and we had to go home. The Philippines felt like our home. President Aquino felt like our president. It was harder to leave the Philippines after almost
