A Daring Adventure

“Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.” - Helen Keller

“Am I being crazy,” I asked my best friend Jack.

“Probably,” he said. Jack never sugarcoats the truth. We had served in the Army Medical Corps together before he had emigrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada. He later married a

Taiwanese woman, and lived in Taiwan for a year, so he knew of which he spoke.

I was telling him about my decision to move to the Philippines and marry Elsa. I knew it was a quick decision and had concerns. I also knew it was foolish to make a decision before I had even visited the country. But I was ready for an adventure and had no family and no longer a domestic partner, nothing to tie me down. 

Elsa cuts coconut from tree on parents' Mawab farm.

“Just buy a return ticket and think of it as an adventure,” he said. “Don't think of anything as good or bad – it's all just an adventure.”

An adventure. Somehow that made me feel a little more at ease. This would be an adventure – the journey that I had always wanted to take.

I met Elsa online only ten months after my domestic partner of 27 years had left me. Initially, I signed up for the dating site because I wanted to develop some friendships and find out more about the country. But Elsa and I clicked right away. She was generous in spirit with a sweet and loving nature, thoughtful, smart, and well-spoken. I loved her smile and her laugh. Furthermore, she had taught English in University as I had; she had worked as an organizer for an NGO serving poor tenant farmers; and she had worked as a woman's organizer in the provincial government, visiting all 248 barangays (districts or wards) in the Compostela Valley, speaking to woman and gays about domestic violence, gender equality and women's and children's health issues. I was duly impressed.

“I think we have the same principles in life,” she told me. She was right. “Maybe God permit us to meet because we have the same principles like helping other people.”

I admired her bravery. “I am Ilongga,” she said (peoples from the Central Visayas, including Iloilo). “We are the most brave people. The most romantic.” I believed her. She once took on an entire assembly of landowners and banana plantation executives, speaking out against their plans to force local tenant farmers to vacate their land. She earned much enmity that day, but her farsightedness later won the admiration of the landowners when the low standard production of the banana plantation drove it into bankruptcy.

Many younger women on the dating site had expressed interest in meeting me (Elsa was much closer to my own age), but none appealed to me like Elsa. And my heart melted when she sang to me a cappella over Skype a beautiful rendition of “And I Love You So.” In her youth, she had won many singing competitions, sang on a local radio station and had been invited to audition as a singer at a radio station in Manila, but gave up a budding career to serve her family – a very large family by the way with six daughters, seven grandkids, six siblings and hundreds of cousins, nieces and nephews.

It was a bit overwhelming, and I had some concerns. Elsa lived on the island of Mindanao and the U.S. State Department had issued travel alerts about the area, identifying local rebel groups as security threats. I was worried about the kidnappings, the mosquitos, malaria, dengue, and the spitting cobras.

“I'm friends with many muslims,” she told me. “And no malaria, dengue or spitting cobras here in Montevista.” Furthermore, she said, the rebel New People's Army only posed a threat to the Philippines' Army – not to the Philippines' people or their friends.

I was also a little wary. I was told some Filipinas regularly asked for money never intending to meet the foreigner with whom they corresponded. But Elsa never asked for money or help of any kind. She asked only that I bring myself and maybe some chocolates and grapes. And so the adventure began.