Leaving - Part Two

We were hired. It sounds crazy, right? But other than meeting with a board member, a distinguished, well respected member of an international conservation organization, who happened to be in Washington DC shortly after receiving the phone message, we spoke to several people over the phone, gave some references and were offered and then accepted the jobs.

Peter would be the park manager and I would be marketing and involved with the education center.

We began to say good bye to friends and family, pack and planned to sell our home.

I would say it was bittersweet but it wasn’t. The move was perfect in so many ways. How many people get to follow their passions and live their dream? Not many.

OK, so it wasn’t my dream, but it seemed ideal for all of us.

And in many ways, this proved true.

But considering our children would be 8 and 3 when we moved, I had no qualms about uprooting them. I had no fears about bringing them into a foreign country. Afterall, my parents uprooted our family and emigrated to the United States from the Philippines. And unlike my parents, who left three toddlers in the care of their parents while they set up a home and became acquainted with their jobs in the hospital, our children would be coming with us.

I remember my parents leaving us, even though I was the same age as my son. At the time, my sister was only a year old, I was three, and my brother was four. Apparently, our parents were only supposed to leave us for two months, in which time, my mom’s parents would bring us to the USA. But my mom’s father didn’t want us to go. He thought we’d be raised disregarding our culture. He felt we’d become “wild” as American kids.

So, when he was supposed to bring us to New Jersey, instead, he stalled. He resisted and only after nearly a year of holding out, my mother’s threat to board a plane and come for us was the impetus my grandfather needed to finally concede.

Pre-Botswana Life in Cold Spring, NY

Our life pre-Botswana, was in Cold Spring, NY.

We moved to Cold Spring when Macallan was only a few months old. Peter didn’t want her growing up in Manhattan and so I agreed to the transplant. It would only take me a few months of commuting to realized I wasn’t willing to have a stranger raise my child while I worked at my dream job that took me away from her for 11 hours a day.

So, I quit my job at Scholastic in order to be a full time mom and a freelance writer. Afterall, isn’t that why I became a writer in the first place? I had agreed to my parents’ stipulation that they give my siblings and me a great life and in return they required us to finish college. They would support us through any school we wanted (and could get into) but we had to finish school. They encouraged me to go into journalism because that would allow me to “work” but not keep me away from my children. They were still very old school, even though my mom was far from domestic and her mother even less so. Growing up American, meant I would have to cook and clean, unlike in the Philippines where there were servants to do that. I needed to know how to make my husband happy. So, my interest in reading and writing led to their fostering my career in journalism – just as long as I remembered that my place, eventually, would be in the home.

All of my life I fought against this double standard. I had arguments with my parents, both my mother and father, asking why I had to go to college if they insisted my only option was to be a housewife? Their response was that I would eventually understand. But I didn’t.

I even spent ten years in therapy trying to decipher the hidden message. My mother hated being a housewife. Resented being thought this was all she was worth and reminded her children that she was the smart one in the family. She did not pursue her medical career because she had met my father and gotten married. From that day on, she was his wife and even as a traditional Filipina, she resented it.

Something she inadvertently passed onto her daughters. My sister and I were encouraged to pursue our hearts’ desire in terms of schooling. But our brothers were forced into distinguished careers - my older brother was forced into medicine. At some point that ‘wild’ American influence would get the better of all of us and we all rebelled, just as my grandfather had said.

The girls didn’t want to be subjugated. The boys didn’t want to follow in our father’s footsteps.

And here I was, a journalist so that I could be a good mother to my children. And as much as I resisted, I realize today, this was the very best profession for me. This form of expression turned out to be my calling and being a stay at home mom is the best blessing. My parents were right in their assumptions. If only I hadn’t resisted for so long. I would have lived  a much more grateful life.

But I digress.

I gave up MY dream job and my life in Manhattan because my husband didn’t think his kids should be relegated to the concrete jungle. OK. Fine. We lived in Manhattan for many years and because we were new parents and I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, I agreed.

But if I were to live in a remote village away from the greatest city on earth, I would go and make the best of it. And so I did. I made good friends and created that  sense of home that I had always wanted. I was involved in several play groups, was an active member of the community, and over the years really made the most of our suburban life. And we still went into the city. Macallan and at one time, Markham were models and we would go into the city for go see’s, auditions, and shoots.

They were equally comfortable hiking as they were hailing a cab. Best of all worlds.

And when we told our many friends in Cold Spring of our decision to move, they were like, ‘well of course!’

Some acquaintances would respond with, “Wow! You are so brave!” “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” “You’re nuts!” But obviously, they didn’t know us.

The Beginning: Part 3

This picture was taken by LoHud to accompany
an article written about us just before we left for
Botswana in 2003. This pic was lliterally taken
amongst our 13 boxes and our dog. 

I was working at NYC Parks that day and took a moment to check our messages at home. As I punched in our passcode, the static on the other end should have given it away. There was a man with an “accent” rambling on about having lost our phone number, and apologizing for the delay. Were we still interested in the job, and…that’s when I realized the call was from Botswana.

I half listened to the remainder of the message. I hung up, looked at Mary with whom I shared an office and squealed, “That was Africa!” Only Mary knew of Peter’s letter, but in a few minutes, everyone would know.

I called Peter who never checks our messages. Call home I told him. Why? Just call home. OK, but why? Listen to our messages. I don’t know how. I had to walk him through the process because he’d never checked our messages before today.

More than a few excruciating minutes went by. Mary said, 'He probably forgot the password. He probably forgot and did something else. He probably couldn’t understand the message' 

…when finally, he returned my call.

What should I do? he asked. Do I call them back? What do you want me to say? Who would of thought they’d actually accept us? Wait, does that mean we have the job or do they just want to talk to us? What do we say? Can we really do this?

While our minds and mouths were racing, we both knew. This was really going to happen. We were going to Africa.

We scoured the website of the reserve we had applied to with a different eye. This was for keeps, not just for fun. We looked at the list of employees – pictures with names and their titles. We looked at the list of animals, activities, comments from guests. We read page after page and committed it all to heart.

We were moving to Africa to run a game reserve. It all seemed like a dream – Peter’s dream.

With very little reservation, quite honestly, none, I went along with the whole idea. I believed in my heart that this was a move we all needed to make. We would be the family Peter wanted, living the life he could not have even imagined.

The End of Aparthied?

On the anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, let me share an excerpt from my memoir with you. 

When I was in high school, the summer before I left for college, my mother took my sister and I to the Philppines for the first time since we’d moved to the United States. It wasn’t anyone’s funeral. Maybe it was just because I would be leaving home soon enough.

My sister and I were so Americanized, we didn’t enjoy much of what we saw or what we had to do while we were there. It was very hot but we couldn’t wear shorts or short skirts. We couldn’t wear halters and we couldn’t wear the color red.

While we were staying at our grandfather’s house, there were two girls who lived there as his maids. They were around our age and were from a distant province, living away from home. They went to school for part of their day and then worked for him. It wasn’t very difficult, I think, to care for him – cook, clean the house, do his laundry, that kind of thing. And while we were there, they took care of us. Cooked for us, cleaned for us, even did our laundry. I felt badly that they had more work with us there. I wasn’t comfortable with asking them to do things for me, like ironing. I wouldn’t let them, but they insisted. They said, “Please, your grandfather will be angry with us if you do it.” I confronted my mother who explained, “We have the means to give people employment. It is our responsibility to do that. They get to live here and go to school here. Then they send their earnings to their family in the province. They are lucky to have this arrangement. Many people would want their jobs.”

I didn’t understand at the time. But living in Botswana, I did. But the inequalities would not come easily for me, for my family. We had much to learn.

We insisted our sitter/housekeeper eat with us. At first, she would, but if someone came over, she would jump up and run to the kitchen. I told her not to do that, she said, “Yes, ma’am.” But did it anyway. One time, we went out to eat at a local fast food chicken joint, “Chicken Lickin” and she sat at a different table. When I asked her to sit with us, she declined. As we got to know each other, she told me, “It’s OK that you ask. But people will not like that. It’s not proper for me to sit with you.” And after I pressed it and she ran out of excuses, she would said, “I am not comfortable.” One time, I think another housekeeper confronted her and told her to sit separately. I let it go. I didn’t want to cause trouble.

She was embarrassed by what she ate as well. She dipped her fries in mayonnaise. Our children didn’t like mayonnaise so they told her that was gross. It wasn’t that she was gross, but that the food combo was. Turns out Germans eat French fries and mayo, so it’s not just her.

As she got to know us, she took liberties to help us fit in. At first, being “the Americans” was a cool oddity, but after a few weeks, she was anxious for us to fit in. Funny. Our friends from Zimbabwe would tease her that we hadn’t learned any Setswana, but with each passing day, she spoke more and more Amerikan English. She had assimilated to our culture.

Because I moved to Botswana, Southern Africa, the entire continent, clueless as to the history of blacks and whites, this entire situation blindsided me. I was born in the Philippines where there were economic class differences but not racial – we were all essentially the same race. Moving to America when I was four years old in 1967, segregation was pretty much over, although equality for blacks and whites would be a concept, not a reality. Oh, there was racism from my family. Black people were looked down on by Filipinos both in the Philippines and America. And while I saw plenty of racism in the mostly white upper middle class community I lived in, had experienced it first hand, I wasn’t ready for Africa.

Shortly after we arrived, I was invited to join a book club. Unaware of even prejudice within white communities, I drove to the hostess’ house with the office manager. She was an Afrikaner which meant she had a Boer background. Several of the other women were white South Africans who had English backgrounds. Apparently, quite different attitudes, or so they would claim. Then there was the white American who had married a white South African whose family raised him in Botswana. Did you get all of that? I think there was also a white woman from Zimbabwe, I’m not sure. While it was supposed to be a book club, no one mentioned a book. They pulled out wine, some snacks, and served up endless hours of gossip. Maybe they hadn’t meant to initiate me into the whole race issue, but I felt trapped and so I lashed out.

After a few glasses of wine, they recanted stories of how they treated their maids and told me how I should be with mine. Two years ago, when I saw The Help, I cried and cried. That’s what it was like at this book party. A bunch of spoiled self indulgent, insecure, bored housewives spewing venomous shit that repulsed me to the core. Who were these people and what had I gotten myself into? When I couldn’t take it anymore, I delivered what I recall as a soliloquy of epic proportions! One woman said that her maid wasn’t allowed to put her food anywhere near that of the family’s. One said, she did let her put some perishables on a shelf in the fridge, but she had a separate shelf just for her. One woman said there as a bathroom outside where they could use the sink, the toilet and the shower. Another one, who is not so bright and probably way too drunk to know what she was saying, exclaimed that she would beat her maid if she ever found out she had used a bathroom in the house! The way they spoke of the people who worked for them escalated in viciousness and repulsion. As I said, I have seen racism, but not like this. The majority of the women there didn’t just dislike black people, they wanted to see them dead.

And there I was. After years of being a rebel, I had learned to be tolerant. I had learned to keep quiet. I had learned to remain silent rather than divulge myself to people who wouldn’t understand. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be quiet. I wouldn’t be quiet. I didn’t agree with them and wouldn’t be a party to this type of hatred.

I blurted out “Ofentse is part of our family. She not only shares our food, she sits at the table with us. She uses our toilet. She takes a bath in our shower, and sleeps in our beds. She is a human being that we employ, but we don’t own her. She has as much to contribute to our lives as we do to hers. I have experienced the racism you all are talking about to a degree”(because like it or not, these women may have seen an equal because I was educated, from America, and hired to do a particular job) “but I am not Caucasian or did you not realize that?!?”

I was horrified by their deep hatred for black people. I chastised them and I brutally called them out. And when I was done and we all sat in the heaviness of my wrath, I realized, I was stuck there. I hadn’t driven myself. I had gotten a ride from one of the worst of the bigots. And I was going to have to stay at this bookless book club and then ride home with the more ignorant of the group. Ugh! Horrible way to start a new life and yet…I was very proud of myself for not letting them think their way of thinking was how everyone thought and not letting them believe I was going to succumb to their peer pressure.

There were several incidents like this that made me into a full-blown self-righteous race-avenger.

I will take the stories I share here and reflect on my participation and on my self-aggrandizement. I think I need to see myself for who I really am and these stories may help me do that.

But today, on the day that Nelson Mandela was released, I learned how new apartheid was to South Africa. His imprisonment would last 27 years but his release was only 13 years prior to our moving to Botswana. That’s not so long ago, so I guess I can understand the mixed feelings, the resentment that lingered and the awareness that needed to happen.

When we were in Botswana, we often felt the social climate and the attitudes of the residents were those of teenagers. Well, with only 13 years of social reform, racial unity, they had just turned into teenagers, but still prepubescent in many ways. I see now that I could have been more tactful. As a journalist, I had a wonderful opportunity to see the world from many different perspectives and I failed. Instead, I got on my soap box. How many times have I done that? And to what avail? I could have learned something and in turn, shared my feelings as well. I took a seemingly safe environment for these women and exploded a ticking time bomb!  Mandela promoted peace, but I declared war. What I hadn’t taken into consideration was that the battle is one they face moment by moment and has changed the course of their lives forever. I, on the other hand, had just entered the mix, taking out all of the injustices I felt as a woman, as an Asian, as a Filipino and right then, as an outsider, an American in Africa.

What I wouldn’t appreciate until we had returned to the USA three years later was that there were so many people who lived in Africa and they were displaced, they were forced to live in Botswana. None had chosen their new life, but my family had. And we had the choice to leave any time we wanted. Something they couldn't do. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/11/nelson-mandela-25th-anniversary-release-from-prison_n_6661646.html

The Beginning Part2

I’m in the living room surrounded by boxes, old newspapers, and things – lots and lots of things. It’s hard to move because nearly every square inch of floor space is covered with books, toys, clothing, packaged food.

I can’t believe this is the sum of our existence. At the airport it will turn out to be 13 boxes filled with necessities, nothing more. I tear up. This whole move has been a whirlwind.

Just four months back, in October of 2002, Peter came home more animated than I’d ever seen him.

“Just hear me out.” He started what would obviously be a well-rehearsed speech. “I found the perfect job.” He began. Great, I thought. He hates his job. Being an engineer has been the bane of his existence and as a result, a drain on our relationship. Being the breadwinner doing a job he hated was truly paying its toll on us. This is good news.

He continued, “I found jobs for both of us.” Hmmm…I didn’t know where this was going. At the moment, I had a pretty good gig at New York City Parks helping them to create conservation lessons for school children.

The job would utilize Peter’s managerial skills and allow me input in environmental education. Yes, the salaries were quite a bit less than we were used to, but it offered subsidized housing and gave us a car…the job is in Africa – Botswana to be exact which is the only place in Africa Peter would ever want to live.

Turns out, for years, Peter had been logging onto www.findajobinafrica.com. This month, he found a job, the perfect job, and it was in Botswana, his country of choice when he applied to the Peace Corps. The country he had left me for in 1983.

“Now hear me out”, he began again. He wouldn’t take our family, which at the time consisted of our 3-year-old son and our 8-year-old daughter, plus our dog, Oz, anywhere there without good schools, hospitals, safe water, blah, blah, blah. Not that I wasn’t interested, but my mind clouded over, short-circuiting for a bit. I listened without interrupting, something that has proven rare in our relationship which began a few months before he would ship out for Botswana in 1984. And here we were – full circle. Nearly twenty years since he’d left me the first time, he was making plans to return. I had to wonder, is this what his restlessness has been about? Is this what he’s always been missing? Were our fights and his lack of commitment to me, to this relationship, to our home because he longed to be in Botswana? Would this be the answer to saving our marriage?

As he spoke passionately about the game reserve, the animals, the accommodations, the international schools, the city, the country, our life, I saw in him the spark that had been missing since we first fell in love. This was the man I fell in love with. This guy looking for an adventure. Looking for a “way out of Jersey”. Looking for a way to define himself outside of his mother’s insistence that he be an engineer. This was the perfect job. This was a perfect solution to alleviate our problems, or so we thought.

Sure. I said. Write the letter. Apply for the job.

And so he did.

I read it over when he completed it a week later. I hadn’t spent most of my career as an editor not to have some sort of input. I tweaked his impassioned pleas. I filled in my bio. I read it and reread it, making sure it was clear and concise and well-crafted. It was a great letter.

Off it went. As he tells it, he went to the post office where directly in front of him, a nun was sending a letter to Botswana. What are the odds? In any case, he said he'd handed the parcel to the postal worker, dusted his hands off and said to himself, "Well, that was fun!"

But several weeks later, we got a call.