Magdaragat, p.21
Magdaragat, page 21
This was filmed in 2007. One of the kids is Jamshaid Wahabi. The other is Dagmawit Fekede. We wanted to run an after-school filmmaking program. At this point, I had made a lot of music videos for some big-name clients across Canada. Lots of my work was featured on MuchMusic at the time.
Ervin had just come off of making a music video for our good friend Wab Kinew, the current leader of the Manitoba NDP. Wab was a rapper and wanted to teach the youth how to rap.
Newcomer gangs around the Immigrant and Refugee Centre of Manitoba, or IRCOM, were at war with Aboriginal gangs. As a former gangster, Ervin knew bridging his culture with the newcomer could help bring better understanding.
Here are two extreme opposites. Dagmawit was a girl who wanted to make a better future after leaving poverty in Africa. Jamshaid’s father was killed in the war in Afghanistan. He was ostracized at school for not being able to speak the language well. He joined the African Mafia gang.
In the end, we were able to make the music video, and the kids were able to watch the video screened at the Mayor’s Luncheon for the Arts. The city also played their video and documentary during moonlight movies at the Cube, which meant so much to these kids.
Dagmawit went on to get a full scholarship to Ryerson University. She studied journalism and went into the world of publishing. That was a success! She told me that our program taught her the possibilities of storytelling.
Jamshaid Wahabi was shot and killed outside the Citizen nightclub in November 2019. For years, Jamshaid tried to steer himself in the right. Every time he got out of jail, he asked if he could put me as a reference for jobs he was applying for. I said yes.
It just goes to show what kind of impact you can have on someone. While I’m not a teacher per se, I taught these kids. I have no idea what it’s like to be a refugee, but I know what it’s like to be poor and to struggle. I had a bond with these kids, so much so that they trusted me years later to help guide them with their futures. That’s an example of the difference you can make in your students’ lives.
While I was helping these kids with their lives, my own life was out of control. My addictions were getting the better of me. Because of drugs and alcohol, I put on a lot of weight. I had lost all connection to my family and my culture. I was in freefall. That’s when I got into boxing and met Roland Vandal. He was a person affected by addictions and trauma. I made a documentary on him at the time that I was sorting out my own trauma and addictions.
His parents were alcoholics. He had been sexually abused by a boxing coach. His brother also abused him. He turned to gang life.
He had lived an extremely hard life. But you know who he thanked to get him to the other side? His school principal, Mr. Bodding.
Roland now spends his time giving back to the community. He’s on the board of the Red Road Lodge, a shelter for men in downtown Winnipeg. He’s running two foster homes and teaches boxing to many at-risk youth and champions at Stingers Boxing Club. I’ve been helping him with that for many years.
Roland got me clean and sober. After I finished shooting the documentary, I binged and ended up in the hospital. Roland convinced me to go to rehab and straighten my life out. As of this year I’ve been six years clean and sober.
But I’ll say this: I’ve had a strange relationship with alcohol and drugs. I ended up in the hospital and my doctor told me to stop, or my body would start shutting down. Plus, it was bad for my mental health. I was a mess for a while. I was a high-functioning alcoholic and drug addict.
Lots of it stemmed from feeling like an outsider. I joined the punk rock / music scene because I wanted “family.” For a long time, that puts you at odds with your culture. I felt like I wasn’t “Filipino” enough for my family and Filipino friends. In reality, they always accepted me. It’s something that I got over and I’m glad I can have a conversation about this now with my mom.
In my experience, Filipino culture doesn’t talk about addictions or mental health issues, but they should. My family might not want to ever talk about it, but they know it’s there and they’ve come to terms with it, and that’s put my heart at ease.
So that’s the road that led me to this podium today.
When people hear that I am a filmmaker, they say, “That’s great! As a person of colour, you get so many opportunities presented to you and you’re killing it.” It feels like a backhanded compliment. I want people to understand that, despite my race and background, my work is just as good as anyone else’s.
Yes, I want to give voices to many diverse cultures and people. But that entire argument fuelled the “me-against-the-world” argument. I was so convinced that I had to fit in that I forgot what it’s like to be a Filipino living in Canada.
Because no matter how much I try to fit in, all I have to do is look in the mirror and see that I’m not like everyone else. I’m Filipino. I am BIPOC. I forgot the very essence of what it was to be BIPOC. My voice in the community matters. That disconnect to my culture fucked me up. I was constantly trying to be just Canadian. But I’m a Filipino-Canadian.
The road back to my Filipino culture has been the journey I’ve been on since I got sober.
My first stop was trying to understand what bakla (roughly translated into English as “gay”) culture was through my friend, the talented photographer Ally Gonzalo.
Growing up, friends and family members from my community made fun of baklas. As a straight man, I wanted to educate myself about being a gay Filipino in a homophobic and racist society.
As a storyteller, my agenda is to give voice to people from diverse backgrounds. This was perfect. I knew a lot of people in my community would be prejudiced toward this film. Some would cite their religious beliefs, while others wouldn’t want to talk about anything to do with sex.
Some of the people featured in this project were coming out to their families and friends for the first time. And what this project helped me do was start a path to discovering my own culture and identity.
At this time, I was teaching film at the University of Manitoba. I was an instructor. The fact that I was teaching filmmaking at a university blew my mind. I had been at the job for a decade. But when the pandemic hit, I lost my job and was forced to find work elsewhere.
That’s where CBC came into play. Although I’ve made many documentaries for them in the past, I’ve never been a journalist working in the news department. I was also in a medium that was new to me: radio.
I had long been struggling with the fact that my lola, or grandma, called me a bad Filipino. Now, not only are Filipinos digging the show, but people from all backgrounds are telling me how much they relate to it. It’s starting a dialogue, which means a lot, because I know I was the unlikeliest person to wave the flag of Filipino culture.
Recovering Filipino has had over a million listeners on CBC Radio One. It’s been downloaded around the world thousands of times. It’s the first time a Filipino host is hosting a show on Filipino culture on Canada’s public broadcaster. It’s brought my family and I closer, and it’s made people from other cultures want to ask questions they might have been afraid to ask, both about Filipinos and their own cultures.
We live in a world where things have become so black and white, but it doesn’t have to be that way. My podcast is a way to encourage people to embrace differences. It’s also offering audiences — especially younger Filipino-Canadians, who may feel disconnected from their heritage — a history lesson.
And it’s exactly what you teachers do for so many students. You give them important lessons. You get the opportunity to mould the minds of young people everywhere.
They’ll spend more time with you than most people in their lives. So do me a huge favour: please teach your students how to empathize with people who are different from them — different for whatever reason.
I applaud all of you. You have one of the hardest jobs out there, but it’s also, I think, the most rewarding. Thank you.
Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio
Seven Steps to Reuniting with Your Teenage Daughter
Welcome to this self-help guide for mothers reuniting with their teenage daughters!
My name is Ginette, and as a sixteen-year-old daughter of a Filipina caregiver in Canada, I’m definitely an expert in this subject. When I was three, Ma left me in Malolos, Bulacan and worked in Hong Kong and Taiwan before ending up in Waterloo, Ontario, where she finally sponsored me to be with her.
If you’re wondering what to do when you finally reunite with your teenage daughter after thirteen years apart, let me show you in seven easy steps. There are multiple choice exercises in each section to test your knowledge. Don’t forget to check your answers at the end!
Step One: Do Not Tell Me I’m Fat
When you met me in the airport, I was about to hug you for the first time in thirteen years, but you held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down. “Oh my gulay! What happened?” you exclaimed, pinching my belly. “You’re so fat!”
I could have said many things back: Why did you dye your hair an unnatural shade of black? Why do your eyebrows look like they were drawn on with cheap markers? Why are your lips so wrinkled and thin?
But instead, I just looked away with tears in my eyes as you led me toward the airport exit, shaking your head in disappointment.
Please select something else that you could have said to welcome me:
“You’re finally here! How was your flight?”
“I’m so happy you’re here! I love you so much!”
“You look so grown-up now! We have so much catching up to do!”
“I’m so proud of you for flying across the world all by yourself!”
All of the above.
After we got to your little house with the cupboards stocked with weird Canadian things like kale chips (chips made of salad?!?) and gluten-free cookies (what the heck is gluten?!?), I excitedly unzipped my carry-on to show you that I’d filled an entire suitcase with my favourite snack: boxes and boxes of Hello Panda.
“Look, Ma!” I exclaimed. “I brought the whole sari-sari store with me!”
You looked horrified. Zipping up my suitcase, you declared, “If I let you eat this Filipino junk, you’ll get even fatter.”
“I wasn’t going to eat them all at once,” I protested. “I didn’t know if they sold Hello Panda in Canada and I —”
You shoved my suitcase into your closet. “No more snacks,” you said, narrowing your eyes. I could feel you judging everything about me, from my thin black hair to my greasy brown face to my zit-covered cheeks to my soft stomach that spilled over my leggings. “Since you like this Hello Panda junk so much, you know what I’ll call you? Panda.”
My eyes filled with tears, and I wanted to argue that you could call me Ginette or Ginnie or Gin-Gin or Gigi but never-not-ever Panda, but before I could say anything, you pulled out your phone and video-called Mama-Lola in Bulacan.
Mama-Lola’s old face filled up the screen and crinkled into a smile. “Is Gin-Gin there? How was her flight?”
I jostled for the camera. “Mama-Lola! It was so long and scary and —”
“Baby ko! How are you?”
“Ohmygosh, February in Canada is sooo cold and —”
You pushed me aside. “What did you do to my little girl? She’s so much fatter than I was at her age!”
Mama-Lola laughed, showing the gaps in her teeth. “Hay naku, Gina! You were probably malnourished from your tired yayas. Remember how all of your nannies hated you? They said you were so maarte. I remember when the last one quit, she yelled, ‘That Gina is the most dramatic girl I’ve ever seen!’”
“I wasn’t maarte — I was opinionated!”
“That’s the same thing, no?”
I tried to grab the phone but you held me back.
“Mama, I can’t believe you let Ginette get this fat. You spoiled her!”
Before I could tell Mama-Lola how much I missed her, you hung up the phone.
Step Two: Accept That I Have Two Mothers
I was used to the kind of parent who always told me that I was special. Mama-Lola filled my world with a warm, unconditional love.
You were the exact opposite.
“Aren’t you going to give me a house tour?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Don’t fall down the stairs,” you replied flatly. “You can’t break any bones because you don’t have your health card yet.”
I thought you were joking, so I tried to hug you. “I love you too, Ma.”
You backed away. “You smell like airplane. Go shower.”
You went upstairs to your room and left me standing in the hallway alone. I didn’t know where the shower was.
At this moment, there are so many other things you could have said. Please pick the best one:
“Thank you for the hug! I’ve been wanting to hug you for so long!”
“Let me show you around so you’ll feel at home.”
“Shower later! We have so much to talk about!”
“Let’s call Mama-Lola again so you can actually talk to her.”
All of the above.
After you left to work abroad, Mama-Lola put your graduation picture up in our bedroom and told me that I could talk to you whenever I wanted. But since I was just a three-year-old, that didn’t make any sense to me. Why would I want to talk to a piece of paper when I could just turn around and talk to Mama-Lola instead?
We shared a bed up until the morning I left for Canada.
In Waterloo, as I lay in my strange new bedroom, I missed her body next to me, the smell of freshly cooked rice on her clothes, her warm breath in my hair as she snored. I missed how she would let me wear her loose cotton dusters to bed after I had a growth spurt and none of my clothes fit me anymore. I missed the way she made me a bedtime glass of Milo mixed with filtered hot water and extra powdered milk, just the way I liked it.
I missed everything about her.
She was my mother and grandmother rolled into one: Mama and Lola.
You were just a stranger.
Step Three: Do Not Constantly Tell Me I’m Lazy
During our first days together, you yelled at me all of the time. I left my clothes on the floor, my hair in the bathtub, my dishes in the sink, my bed unmade. At Mama-Lola’s house, we always had maids to clean up after me. I never realized how messy I could be. “Linis, linis, linis! Clean up, clean up, clean up!” you’d yell.
I tried to make my bed, but since your Canadian blankets were so unbelievably thick, I had the hardest time folding them properly. Mama-Lola only used a cotton blanket that was so thin that it was practically tissue paper — nothing compared to these huge, heavy quilts that you bought at some local Mennonite market. Maybe you forgot. But you didn’t have to yell at me and say, “Even a Mennonite baby could fold this better than you!”
“I don’t even know what a Mennonite is!” I cried.
I could feel myself getting sad, and so I thought of one place that could cheer me up. “Can we go to the mall?” I suggested.
You kept doing the dishes. “Too busy. Working double shifts today.”
I didn’t want to stay alone in your freezing, empty house. “Can I come?” I asked.
You kissed your teeth. “While I’m gone, you can clean. Clean your room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. And when you’re done, do it all over again because you didn’t do it right the first time.”
“But I don’t know how to clean,” I protested.
You angrily dropped a pan into the sink, splashing cooking oil and soapy water everywhere. “I just bought you the latest iPhone, didn’t I? Look it up on YouTube!”
I wanted to make you proud of me, but I was so jet-lagged that, the minute you left, I fell asleep on the couch. I didn’t wake up until you came home fifteen hours later.
You were so mad.
“Anak ng demonyo! Ang tamad mo! Hayop ka!”
“Ma?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. “You’re home already?”
“It’s already ten thirty!” you yelled, throwing your cracked imitation Louis Vuitton purse onto the floor. “You slept all day while I worked back-to-back caregiving and cleaning shifts so I can support you? You’re so lazy! You really are a panda!”
“But Ma, I’m still jet-lagged, and my head really hurts, and —”
“Your head hurts? You didn’t do anything but sleep all day and you’re complaining that your head hurts?”
There are a few things you could have said instead of yelling at me. Please select the best option:
“That’s true, there’s a thirteen-hour time difference between Waterloo and the Philippines right now. No wonder you’re jet-lagged! Here’s some headache medicine.”
“It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Let’s catch up; that’s more important than cleaning.”
“I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just had a hard day at work. I’m so sorry.”
“When you feel better, we’ll clean together, and I’ll show you how to do everything.”
All of the above.
Ma, I really wanted to tell you about my boyfriend because I was feeling lost without him. All I could think about was how, on the day I was leaving, Janno showed up right as the driver loaded my suitcases into the van. He held my hand up until the last minute, saying, “Promise, Ginette! Promise you’ll sponsor me so we can be together forever!” I sobbed so loudly that the annoyed driver yelled at Janno to go away before he ran him over.
