Things money can’t buy

Angela (Tongohan) Guiano
Class of 2021

(3/2019) Growing up, my mother loved to remind me how easy I had it growing up in America. I used to think she was so silly. Every single little thing seemed to be absolutely amazing, sometimes to just look at; every small action something I should wholly appreciate being able to do. I didn’t understand.

Sometimes, we’d be eating dinner and she’d tell me just how lucky I was to have food to eat. Huh? Food is so plentiful here in America. The thought of hunger and not eating didn’t strike me as familiar. The thought itself was reserved for the few homeless I saw on the street or scenes of poverty in movies. It wasn’t a real thing for me.

Every now and then, my mother would tell me stories of her growing up in the Philippines. It was a very rags-to-riches tale, but even then, the riches side didn’t seem as great as the ones we enjoy while living here in America. My grandfather was a farmer. He and my grandmother had nine children, including my mother. For the majority of my mother’s childhood, they grew up poor. She told me how my grandparents valued education and would save up money each year just so they could send all their children to private school.

Paying tuition meant they had very little for anything else. Each year, my mother had a total of three shirts and one skirt, and they were hand-me-downs from her older sisters. She also had a pair of shoes, but when they got too old and fell apart, she’d go to school without any. My grandmother was only able to give her 15 pesos for lunch each week. It was a struggle, but she made sacrifices to prioritize her family. Now for us Americans, imagine one American dollar is the equivalent of approximately 50 Philippine pesos. It seems little for us, but even for her then, it meant she could only afford the cheapest food being sold on the street market.

When my mother got older and went off to college, my grandparents had earned enough money to buy some land. They started a citrus farm, and it turned out to be very successful. After that, they were considered "well-to-do."

But my mother and her siblings never forgot the times when they were poor. I didn’t fully understand the extent of what she meant until I visited the Philippines a few years ago. When my grandparents died, their wealth and land was divided between the nine siblings. But despite their wealth, my aunts and uncles appeared to have completely ignored their newly acquired wealth. My uncles’ hands were calloused and dirty and their skin sunbeaten and tan from working on the farms. My aunts would wake early in the morning to head to school to teach and be awake late into the night preparing for their class the next day. They had enough money to live comfortably in the Philippines without having to work, but made the choice not to. I didn’t understand why.

When I asked my mother, she told me it was because of how they were raised. Growing up poor in the Philippines was hard. It was much harder than the poverty we know in America. When you were poor in the Philippines, you had nothing. No food. No shelter. And no government to provide assistance. The jobs were very scarce, even in the provinces, and they paid only a few pesos each day. There were no programs to help those in need, whether they be children, disabled, or veterans. If you were poor, you were poor.

Being poor allowed my mother and her siblings to realize the importance of education and of working hard. Every single one of them graduated from college. They understood that money can come and can go, but more importantly, that money doesn’t teach you anything. Despite their inheritances, they all chose to continue working simply because they wanted their children to learn from their example. It was important to be a good role model.

Life in the Philippines is community- and family-centric. It is about helping one another and learning how to support yourself. It is about valuing things other than money and material things. I didn’t fully realize what that meant until I spent a whole month there without air conditioning. I sometimes forget that the Philippines is still considered to be a third world country.

While I was there, I realized just how much more in-touch the people there were with their surroundings. The streets were lined with fruit-bearing trees, and their cuisine was always cooked from fresh seafood and meat.

The roads in our province were still made of dirt, and cars were scarce. Instead, people traveled in side carriages that were pulled along by motorcycles called tricycles, or decorated open-air buses called jeepneys. It was obvious that the older people were respected more than everyone else because they were always prioritized or being helped.

The streets in the city were always full of people, and street shops were everywhere. But what intrigued me the most was this: although the majority of regular folk in the Philippines were considered poor because of their lack of material possessions or wealth, they always seemed to be smiling. The majority of the people there were happy.

Growing up in America, I was surrounded by the newest technology and the next coolest toy. The streets were too dangerous to roam around without parents and my mother was always at work. I got everything I wanted as long as it could be bought. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. The fast-paced, innovative environment of America helped shape who I am today. But I am forever grateful for my roots in the Philippines for teaching me the importance also of family and community, and self-awareness- the things money can’t buy.

Read other articles by Angela (Tongohan) Guiano