Roosters Before Sunrise

Author: Tan Le Yao

I had this feeling I wasn’t doing enough. During my first week at Jagna, I barely knew my host family which consisted of two rambunctious sisters - Paz and Lydia. I only knew fragments of their lives, pieces of conversation I picked up amidst the Tagalog that they naturally slipped into as English was not their first language. I didn’t know their birthdays, but I knew Paz’s husband, Junior, used to own a kitchenware store. I didn’t know their hobbies and interests, but I knew Lydia was a widow. Every time I brought up a question to get to know them better, they would either look at me, perplexed, and ask "What?’ or just start laughing hysterically. At first, these moments felt endearing and comical. But eventually it just started irritating me, which made me feel an overwhelming amount of guilt, because who was I to expect perfect communication in English in a small Barangay within Jagna? 

Along with the communication barrier, my agitation was compounded by the incessant rooster calls and dogs barking at odd hours, the unrelenting heat both during the day and the night and the aggressive mosquito bites that left big and itchy welts on my face and body. I remember looking around my room during the first night of my stay, noticing the unfinished walls with rusty nails poking through the cement and thinking: I cannot do this for another day - let alone for 3 weeks. Of course, first-week Angel did realize that this trip would inarguably become one of the best and most important trips of her life. 

But what confused me most was how completely unbothered, or at least outwardly optimistic, Paz and Lydia seemed about things that overwhelmed me. Without going into too much detail, Paz would occasionally share the financial struggles they had faced a couple of years ago. And without fail, the stories were always punctuated with bursts of laughter and casualness. With animal noises commencing at around 4 a.m. (yes, I woke up and documented this), Lydia would simply laugh it off while recounting and said she’d instead wake up earlier to tend to the garden. 

I wasn’t sure of what to do with their reactions. Of course, their lives were not unproblematic, and their optimism was not the absence of adversity, but it was the way they carried their problems without them getting in the way of everything else. Regardless, that epiphany led to subconscious changes in my attitude after the first week. It made my irritation feel less significant and more manageable. I started looking at things in a new light; the same noises that rudely disrupted my sleep gave Lydia reason to start her day early; the same heat that drenched my clothes gave life to Paz’s very own backyard of papaya and guava trees. 

Somewhere in between the sunburns and bug bites, I started noticing the colossal beauty I was surrounded by. The sunsets (not to sound cliché) were absolutely show-stopping. I had genuinely never seen sunsets as vibrant and harmonious as the ones I saw on the way back from a kayaking excursion in Loboc. Not to mention the beautifully saturated emerald ocean that sat just minutes away from Tubod Mar, which I had missed out on simply because of my pessimistic attitude. The complaints dulled when the nature around was what mattered. 

I noticed a similar resilience with Graymon, my business owner who had slowly become one of my favourite people to talk to. Being an openly gay man in a small, conservative, and Catholic society is a pretty self-explanatory experience in and of itself. Despite this and the various other problems he faces in his life that I will not disclose, he is still so incredibly kind. He would always treat my business partner and me to Filipino delicacies, sometimes cooking up an entire table of food, and he even invited us to a fiesta hosted by his close friend in Garcia Hernandez. Perhaps the best thing about Graymon is how he somehow always feels like the levity in any and all settings. His other close friend, who manned the cookie store down the street, said: How could I possibly feel a moment of dullness when I’m with Graymon? Needless to say, Graymon not only unknowingly taught me many lessons about tolerance, but he’s also taught me a plethora of snarky comebacks that I will be using in my day-to-day conversations. 

At the same time, I would never want to romanticise their struggles and personal troubles or pretend that their laughter made everything easy. Many families carried responsibilities that I could not even fathom carrying. Many women in Tubod Mar - including my host family’s daughter - had husbands who worked as seafarers who would spend months, sometimes years, away. Families were used to worrying, waiting and continuing on with this chasm in their lives. Their happiness was not correlated with the problems in their lives. 

It’s been three weeks, and I still don’t know the rudimentary facts about Paz and Lydia. But I realised the connections I’d formed with them did not have to come through long, extensive conversations. Sometimes, they came from just being with them! For every elaborate ‘oi’ Paz directed at me to get my attention, I learned how she felt most comfortable communicating. I also now know Paz absolutely detests balut but devours calamay at the speed of lightning. I know Lydia could laugh off almost anything, even the roosters and barks at unconventional hours. These silly details may not be the facts I thought I needed, but that’s what makes this trip even more memorable and unique. Most importantly, through the people in my life in Jagna, I learned to stop fighting the unknown.