We had several guests at our place recently. The first gathering we’ve hosted since the cautions of the pandemic. In essence, there were two parties. One at our house, with western style food, for our local expat group. and another, with Filipino food at our big communal kitchen, for our ranch workers and their families. Over time, we’ve found that neither group is overly fond of the others’ food styles. We expats had our usual confab, cussing and discussing the world at large. Our Filipina wives similarly sat together and engaged in tsismisso, Filipino style gossip and chit chat.

Some of the expats, enjoying desert.

Some of the expat wives.

One of our Filipina friends, who has been a great help to us over the years, had brought a large contingent of her extended family. They had enjoyed the meal with the ranch crew. Afterwards, our friend wanted to show her family around our house. The visit illustrated to me the wide cultural divide between the mostly egalitarian working class westerners and the deeply stratified culture of the working class Filipino

The family, a dozen or so of them, adults and children, huddled together outside the front corner of our house. Their postures, all of them, were hunched and meek. Younger ones stayed close to, or behind older ones. They froze when I invited them to join us on the veranda. I repeated my invitation a couple of times to no avail, so I rejoined our group. Eventually, our friend used a combination of scolding and cajoling, combined with an entreaty from my wife, Marlyn, to convince 3 or 4 of the matrons on to the veranda. Still, they sat apart from the expats and our Filipina wives, refusing food or drink. They sat, hands on laps, with the deer in the headlights look, finally excusing themselves and rejoining the rest of their family at the big kitchen. We’ve experienced this multiple times. Still, we haven’t yet come up with a way to overcome the deeply ingrained feelings of inferiority exhibited by so many of the laboring class Filipinos.

After our expat guests had left, we had quite the opposite experience over at the communal kitchen. The large family of visitors had left. The folks we hire as day laborers were still there with their families. All were winding down from the big meal with beer and snacks. We joined them at the big covered yard swing. These folks, from years of familiarity, are comfortable around us, though not with the larger expat group. We relaxed there together for a while, chatting and joking. There was music playing softly from someone’s I-phone. Eventually, the Cordilleran song, Sissiwit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AIsB5UCkvY, began to play. It is a relatively new song, written and recorded by a fellow from Kalinga. It is wildly popular among the Cordilleran folks.

One of our visitors was Pacita, a relative of one of our primary workers. Most of our workers are of the Ifugau indigenous ethnic group. I have come to call Pacita “the matriarch of the mountain”. All of our Ifugau neighbors defer to her. When the Sissiwit song began to play, Pacita got up and began dancing the familiar social dance of the Cordilleran people. She, and others, convinced another matron to join in. My wife, Marlyn, also joined. The young, preteen daughter of one couple did not join the dance, but she watched Pacita closely and imitated the hand and arm movements. this youngster is an indication to me that the Cordilleran traditions will continue.

There is quite a lot to unpack while thinking of the two different groups of Filipinos that day. The first group were lowlanders. They were admittedly pushed into an unfamiliar situation in an unfamiliar place.

The second group were highlanders, and our neighbors of several years. They have already welcomed us into the local community. So there, I think, is the primary difference, though, there are other, more subtle things at play. I will leave those thoughts for another time.