My Manila Homecoming

In front of the Ninoy Aquino (Manila) International Airport

It was March 28th 2008, when I rolled into Manila.  I was expecting the exit process out of the airport to take a long while, but in fact I breezed through.  I stepped into that dusk, for the first time in 40 years, and it was an odd feeling of foreign and familiar.  

You see, I was born in Manila, and my family and I left for Chicago in September 1968.  My parents took a trip back in 1999, but no one else in our family had traveled back.  

When I moved to Dubai in 2006, I learned from new Filipino friends that some of them took "annual leaves."  Dubai was about 80% expatriots, who often used their yearly vacation time to head back home.  If not annual, I know other friends made a point of returning to the Philippines every few years or so.  

I attended a gathering at the Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi, and the Ambassador asked a crowd of us who had been away the longest.  One lady promptly raised her hand, and said "20 years."  I was sitting way in the back, and smiled to myself and politely kept quiet.  

So the idea - and the plan - of returning were very much the mindset among overseas Filipinos.  How unusual, then, was the case of our family.  We had virtually turned our backs on our home country.  

Among my two sisters, and brother, I was the one who walked opposite the flow of the crowd on that March dusk.