Creating Space

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home 

wherever I find myself.”

– Maya Angelou

After meeting Elsa's parents and celebrating at the San Roque fiesta, we drive on to Montevista where Elsa's daughters and grand-kids are waiting to meet me. It's less than a half hour drive from Mawab down the National Highway. Ten minutes out, we pass Nabunturan, the provincial capital where the mountains seem to disappear – ironic, since the name Nabunturan means “surrounded by mountains.” (In truth, they're just receded into the background.) Elsa worked in Nabunturan for nine years, serving as women's organizer for the provincial government, educating women on domestic violence, gender equality, and health care issues. We drive on and pass Golden Valley Cemetery, where Elsa's first husband is buried. A sign announces that Golden Valley is “a garden for the living and the dead.” A few minutes later, we see another billboard with the smiling face of Ramil Gentugaya welcoming us to Montevista. We pass it and immediately turn right down a rocky, dirt road.

Elsa's house lies about 100 feet off the main highway. As we drive down the road, two children come running toward us – Chan Chan, the four-year-old daughter of Bernadine (Elsa's daughter working in Dubai), and Fem Fem, the seven-year-old daughter of Risa. They're both yelling and screaming with delight. Chan Chan beams at us with the most beautiful smile I've ever seen and melts my heart instantly. We stop in front of the house and get out of the car. The two of them run up to us and grab hold of Elsa and Risa. I've never seen such pure joy in children's faces. 

Rich and Elsa with daughters and grandchildren in Montevista

Croton shrubs hide the three foot high cyclone fence that surrounds the house – a cement hollow block home with no finishing and no paint. The faded metal roof looks in need of some repair. Elsa takes me through a front gate built of cyclone fencing and coconut wood. The gate post is a slab from a tree stump tied to strips of bamboo with a piece of wood nailed to the contraption to hold the gate closed. To the left there's a larger tree stump sitting on a small mound of sand and gravel, the remains of a coconut tree damaged by Typhoon Pablo. Next to the mound sits a bamboo bench with a hammock tied between two trees alongside it. There are tropical trees and flowers and shrubs everywhere, many of them medicinal, and almost all planted by Elsa – durian, papaya, avocado, lanzones, rambutan, cacao, guyabano, gumamela (hibiscus), many bamboos, and bunga (betelnut palm tree). Elsa is an amazing gardener. In the front yard, clothes hang on three wire lines tied to trees and bamboo poles – no one in the neighborhood has a dryer, few even have a washer and most people hand wash and wring their clothes, a laborious job for anyone who has ever tried it.

We walk up to the front porch, a cement veranda with an attractively designed cement and tile balustrade entrance supported by two cement balusters at each side. We walk through a handsome, although faded and damaged, nara wood door into a house filled with women and children. Elsa introduces us – there's Hairy Lynn, the unmarried youngest daughter, so named because she was born with thick, coarse hair; Krisna, the middle child, and mother of one-year-old Chrivyan, and of course Risa. All three daughters are about the same size as their mother except Risa who has put on much weight in the last year. Hairy Lynn and Krisna get up to greet me. The grandchildren remain seated on a faded, flower print sofa with the stuffing come out of it, all six of them – four-year-old Chan Chan, seven-year-old Fem Fem, nine-year-old Cedric, eleven-year-old Crem Crem, and the one-year-olds Chrivyan and Zion.

One other daughter, Bernadine, mother of Chan Chan, is working overseas in Dubai and the oldest, Jaret, mother of Crem Crem and Cedric, is living two hours away in Pantukan with her boyfriend and six-month-year-old daughter Serenity. The boyfriend does not want Jaret to spend time with the family. Unfortunately daughters who separate from their husband often find that a new boyfriend* will not accept their children. Welfare doesn't exist here, so single mothers become financially dependent on their domestic partners and find it difficult to question their demands. Too often this dynamic, as well as the need to work overseas to support the family, means separation from their children. Fortunately, these children have many aunts as well as their grandmother to look after them.

There is one more daughter – Pag-Ibig, which means “love.” She is hiding in her mother's room. We push aside the drape and go inside. Ibig is lying on the bed. She is the smallest in the family, about 4'8” and weighing only about 80 pounds, but also considered by the others as the strongest. Elsa introduces us, but Ibig says nothing and does not get up to greet me. Elsa says she is shy. That may be. She also speaks much less English than Elsa's other daughters and probably is uncomfortable attempting to communicate with me. But most importantly, she is not happy about her mother remarrying. None of the children wanted Elsa to remarry after her former husband's death, but it has now been four years, and the others have accepted Elsa's need to move on with her life. But Ibig is having a harder time accepting this. Also she is largely responsible for managing the household and Ibig fears her mother will leave her solely responsible for the household tasks and expenses.

The entire family depends largely on the 3,000 peso a month pension Elsa received upon her husband's death (a pension she will lose if she remarries) and an 8,000 pesos a month stipend sent by an American priest from New York who Elsa worked closely with in Mawab before he returned to America. The grand total from these two sources comes to about $250 a month. Risa lives with her boyfriend in Andalade near Mawab and Krisna lives on a farm with Marvin, but both often stay at their mother's house while providing little to no financial support. Bernadine sends some money home to support her daughter, but that stops soon after I arrive.

We sit in the sala and talk, and I survey the room. The floor is tiled, but the hollow block walls remain unfinished. There's a narrow hallway, only about a yard long leading to the three small bedrooms. A linoleum-floored kitchen lies behind us. Elsa gets up to show me the house. The kitchen has small clerestory style windows – or rather wooden frames – the windows were never purchased. The ceiling throughout the house is made of two foot by three foot plywood panels. Some need repairing. The ceiling in the kitchen was totally destroyed by Typhoon Pablo and is damp and falling apart. Elsa's bedroom in the back of the sala has no door, only a cotton drape separating her room from the others. Elsa sleeps in her bedroom and Fem Fem often joins her. The others sleep in the two small adjoining rooms, many sleeping on the floor. The kitchen and bedrooms have old linoleum floors that are peeling away. There's a wet kitchen off to the side of the main kitchen, a lean-to with a cement floor and a hollow block wall capped by slanting sheets of galvanized steel.

The comfort room (bathroom), a three by five foot room with ten foot tall walls that need painting, stands in one corner of the wet kitchen. The toilet is flushed with water from a big garbage can and smaller pail,sitting next to it. The shower consists of a dipper and a pail of water. It's dark inside, the light bulb needs changing and I'm afraid I will pee on the floor.

Back in the sala, I hear some grunts and squeals across the road. The smell of ammonia and rotten eggs wafts through the windows. There's a pig farm just 30 feet away.

“Doesn't the smell ever bother you?” I ask.

“Oh, we just close the windows,” says Elsa.

After the tour and the introductions, she asks me if I would like to live here or in Tagum City. We had discussed this previously and she had told me it is all right for a parent to live separately from her children if she remarries. At this time, there's no question in my mind.

“Let's rent in Tagum,” I say. Elsa sighs and looks down at her feet.

* Divorce is not recognized in the Philippines, and so no one can remarry unless widowed.