Mapait

My Mama Paz lives in my head, still in her early fifties, dancing around in her bistida, waking up way too early and cooking for her community.

My Lola, or Mama Paz as I would call her, was a prominent figure back in our hometown of Cavite. She single handedly managed a karinderya and a sari-sari store, and provided for her family and the community.

I was only a child when Mama Paz passed away. I vividly remember the day I found out about it. I was playing Cooking Mama on the home computer, in Australian suburbia, on school holidays. I heard a key turn and I rushed to close it up quickly, a trick I’d learnt so that when my parents came home they wouldn’t know I’d been draining the internet again. This time though, it was different — my mum burst through the door straight after work, in tears and in shock.

I couldn’t believe it. It was only a week or so ago when I had to walk to the corner store to purchase a calling card for my family so Mum could call overseas without it being too expensive.

It was 2009. I was in my last year of primary school, encouraged to speak English more and Tagalog less and less.

We were unable to travel back home for her funeral. The reasonings were blurry and my mum and I don’t get to talk about it.

My grandmother was a proud Igorot woman hailing from Benguet. We set up atang and made a shrine for her at our family home altar. We made Filipino food and offered it at the shrine and prayed for her safe journey to her next destination.

At such a young age, I was not sure how to put my loss into words — in English or Tagalog. 

Death has an interesting way of challenging your life.

I know that my mum does her best to understand me, even though our relationship can often feel tense, in part from the generational and cultural differences, language barriers, and nuances.

Perhaps my grandmother’s departure also changed her in ways that I can’t even begin to articulate.

Maasim

Along with bringing up a young child, there is a pressure to succeed in a traditional path, to find stability and success in something safe. Filipino migrants have worked hard to survive in a country that is foreign, away from their island home. Accompanying that is a high level of stress, and a post-White Australia Policy imposed burden to prove their worthiness that they are acceptable in their new society. It is even harder, as a person of colour, because you end up being compared to other migrants.

‘Mara Clara’ is the ideal mythical feminine figure in Filipino culture, ingrained via colonisation. It is something that I was even taught to emulate, and a notion I try to shed, as the stereotype that Filipina women are timid and mahinhin can be reductive and harmful. It is an unfair painting of the Filipina matriarchy, especially as, in pre-colonial times, our nation had strong, fierce Filipina leaders.

In our first and only family home in beautiful Bundjalung country, across the road from the river reminiscent of our ilogs in Cavite, my mum started gardening.

She first planted native plants that thrived naturally in our coastal soil. Bright yellow flowers that butterflies would flock to, called ‘Everlasting’, were scattered across the front yard. River lily, saltwater fern and cabbage palm made the garden tropical and home-like. Kangaroo grass and kangaroo paws would pop in and out depending on the season.

Not long after, she planted calamansi. It didn’t grow right away, but with perseverance and care, it eventually did. I can still taste the first fruits. Plumped, sour and sweet. It became my unofficial role to be the picker of calamansi during the fruiting season.

I imagine how joyful it would have been for my mum to be able to share her love of gardening with my Mama Paz if she were still alive.

Makulay

As I write this, I worry about not being representative of our community. A pervasive worry, no doubt, to young Filipinos in the diaspora.

I have moments when I don’t feel like I understand those who have grown up in the Philippines and have migrated to Australia. I see them as people who are already filled with cultural understanding and are deeply embedded within their Filipino roots.

A tree that has been established, uprooted and now planted on new grounds.

Exactly like my mother. The opposite of me. Someone I may not be able to completely see eye to eye with. I think that they might see me as someone detached and grasping in the dark.

Calamansi fruits start off green when immature, turning a greenish orange, with the distinctive flavour and aroma that most Filipinos know calamansi as.

As it ripens, the fruit turns completely orange, leaving a sweet aftertaste.

I daydream about what it might have been like if my grandmother were still alive and able to migrate to Australia. I have often wondered if it might have been easier for me to connect to my roots, my indigenous ancestry, my matrilineal heritage.

It is incredibly apparent on a day like January 26, how important it is to educate myself on Indigenous Australia, particularly within the context of my postcolonial migration.

Viewing it through the lens of my own Filipino indigeneity, it’s so vital to recognise that Indigenous Australia is not homogenous. There are different nations, different clans, different sets of beliefs and traditions. There’s no singular identity. Indigenous Australia has a rich tapestry of cultural history that has existed for centuries.

The Philippines also has this in common. Our traditions, our beliefs and our ancestry did not start — nor did it end — with the Spanish colonial rule. We have resisted thousands of years of erasure and discrimination. Our island archipelago boasts hundreds of different ethnic tribes, languages and Indigenous survival.

And we’re still here, to this day.

As Filipinos, our histories are interwoven through this land’s history. Did you know that predating European invasion, the different nations in the Asia Pacific have traded and had cross-cultural relationships with Indigenous Australia? Indigenous Australians with Filipino descent exist, offering a precious glimpse into the past and our precolonial connections to this land.

For me, each time I go back to the Northern Rivers, to Bundjalung country, the moment my feet kiss the sandy beach and take my first breath of the fresh ocean air, I remember I am in a special place. This is the very body of water that connects our island homes.

It is important to educate our community, including our parents, about the history of this continent and what it means for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is the time to advocate and push for respect, healing and compassion.

Our past can help us break generational cycles and reconnect us with the many reasons to be proud of our existence.

I am navigating young adulthood not exactly as I thought I would’ve. I am searching for meaning to my various identities… Wanting to reinforce where I came from, and where I am at…

How?

How does one exactly do it?

How does one reclaim an identity they were never able to fully develop?

I’ve been trying though. I started speaking Tagalog more, cooking Filipino food, watching TFC, if that counts…

I ask myself questions that I now see are so fundamental in terms of understanding one’s self, our history, my family, community and culture.

My feelings of estrangement from our culture will dissolve. I have the desire and determination, and I am hungry to reconcile with all the makings of it. I have to remember that everything I do will be Filipino enough, because it is me.

Remembering, that just like our favourite hardy citrus plant with intricate flavours, we evolve and develop.

Matamis

When I was about five, I cut my finger whilst slicing calamansi open to make juice. It stung, and it was painful. But the juice was worth it.

As I travel and connect with more people in our community, I have realised that, like kabute, Filipinos are everywhere. I want to learn more of their stories, how they came to be where they are now, and why.

I may have chosen to be in a creative field, which can be volatile and unstable, but my passion for communicating through my creative expression, especially the food that sustained my upbringing, inspires me to keep going. 

Sometimes, mum still has trouble comprehending what it’s like for me to have grown up in conflicting worlds. Misunderstanding ensues. I need to empathise that my mother, like many migrants, has survived so that the future generations can thrive. 

I love having grown up with the sense of community embedded by my Filipino culture. The fact I can call strangers Tita or Tito, Ate or Kuya is something I value and have deep admiration for.

While walking around a new neighbourhood, I met a Lola who migrated from Isabella. She gave me fresh fruits and a grapefruit drink. “Come back when the calamansi grows back and I’ll give you some,” she says.

Slowly, I am building my own branches of pamayanan.

In true Filipino fashion, I say ‘Bahala na’ and trust in the process that the seeds I have sown will lead to a fruitful future.