Reading my way through Luzon

Tomorrow I’m going to the library to return the book Dusk (Schemering) by F. Sionil José. A beautiful novel describing the history of his ancestors. Simple farmers who had to leave their village of Cabugao in Ilocos Sur, fleeing the Spanish rulers. A year-long journey full of hardship through the inhospitable region in the north of Luzon. Over mountain passes and through fordable rivers that, halfway across, turned out not to be fordable after all. The carts pulled by carabaos got stuck, family members drowned, and most of the household belongings disappeared into the waves. What resilience and perseverance those people had. A new village was built on the plain of Pangasinan. Barely recovered from the tyranny of the Spanish, it was the Americans who made life hard for these people all over again. Now that I've finished Dusk, I'll have to read the last part of the Rosales Saga in English, because unfortunately it hasn't been translated into Dutch yet.

By now I've pretty much read all the major Filipino writers translated into Dutch, and with every book I feel more connected to that fascinating country and its people. It started with the Noli, as Filipinos affectionately call the book Noli Me Tangere (Latin for "Touch Me Not") by national hero José Rizal. After that I read his "Fili", officially titled El Filibusterismo, published in the Netherlands under the title "The Revolution". Reading these books, I'm getting deeper into the history and culture of the Philippines. I keep learning more about the many peoples and tribes that make up the country, each with their own language and culture. And speaking of the country, of the Philippines, I realize that so far I've mainly read about Luzon, the largest of the more than 7,500 islands that together form the Philippines. But well, you have to start somewhere, and of course it makes sense to start in the place your daughter-in-law is from: Manila!

In 2023, besides Luzon (mainly the Metro Manila area), we also visited the island of Boracay, which I always call the Terschelling of the Philippines when I tell people about our holiday there. Do I have enough years left in life to visit all the islands? I don't think so, so for now I'm focusing on Luzon first. There's still so much to see and experience there: climbing the Taal volcano, picking pili nuts in Bicol, taking a ride in the carabao cart at the Villa Escudero coconut plantation and then having lunch with my feet in the water of the waterfall... After that, maybe a trip to Cebu sometime, to the Chocolate Hills of Bohol...

I copied and saved the glossaries from the books, and I use them now and then to look up everyday Tagalog words. Of course I could also use Google Translate, but I notice it often uses English words for things that actually have a perfectly good original Tagalog word. Although, in Tagalog you also see plenty of words that come from Spanish, like that interesting word tulisanes, meaning bandits, or sigurado, meaning for sure. Well, the colonial rulers certainly left their mark on the language.

My Filipino daughter-in-law sometimes cracks up laughing when I use such an old-fashioned word. "Even my Lola (grandmother), who's 94, doesn't use that word anymore, it's ancient," she tells me. Ancient or not, I enjoy using those Tagalog words and terms. My online AI tutor from the Tagalog app sometimes has to laugh too, when I use those words instead of the more common English ones. I hope and expect that if I run into older people while traveling around Luzon, they won't think my language is outdated. Well, even if they do, I'm sure they won't show it, they'll just smile politely and compliment me on my knowledge of Tagalog!