When Strangers Feel Like Family

Author: Lorenzo O'Rourke Mojica

During my short stay in Bohol, I have experienced many events which catalysed my personal growth. However, none compares in impact to how Bohol’s pervasive culture of trust has fundamentally shifted how I think of human behaviour. In my world, the world of big cities, across cultures and continents, London, Bogota, Hong Kong, the approach to trust is the same. Having grown up in a mix of these three cultures, it was instilled in me that vulnerable trust, that type of trust that if betrayed would cut deeply, was reserved only for a minuscule group of people in my life who had proved themselves worthy of it. Trust, to me, was inevitably conditional. The default approach to others was wariness, not openness. 

I first noticed this culture of trust on my first evening at my homestay. It was a quiet late night, and my roommate Alejandro and I were relaxing in the living room with the front door open when suddenly, a group of neighbourhood guys walked in without knocking and seemingly without permission. These guys then sat around us in the living room and casually attempted to strike up a conversation. My first reaction to seeing them walk in unannounced was a mixture of confusion and unease. Naturally. I assumed they were extended family, perhaps cousins or close family friends. However, after asking my host mother who they were, she simply said, “I don’t know, they’re from the village” I was immediately taken aback when I heard this. It was clear that my host family was not particularly close to these guys; they perhaps knew their names and families, but there was no tight bond between them and my host family. Yet they were welcomed so freely and warmly, without any invitation or hesitation.

Hanging out with one of the guys who showed up at our house on the first night

Contrastingly, in my home, even if my dearest friend arrived unannounced late during the evening, I would certainly let them in, but only by checking who was at the door. Only after assessing that the situation was safe. In my world, the burden fell on the visitor to prove they were safe, where a closed door “who is it?” followed by a “why are you here?” is considered standard prudence, after all, the instinctive assumption in large cities is that everyone but a few might pose a threat to your safety. This experience on my first night in Tubod Mar exposed me to a refreshing new approach to trust; it made me imagine an alternate reality in which inhabitants of large cities trusted each other as much as small communities do. Would such trust survive in a world of strangers?

Engaging in this thought exercise excited me with the possibility that inhabitants of a large city could, maybe one day, trust each other just as much as the residents of Tubod Mar do. Sadly, however, exploring the question at hand more deeply quickly crushed my hopes. Structurally, high-density urban life creates anonymity, and anonymity erases accountability. Take an invisible person who runs around a city causing destruction and chaos, that lack of an identity is precisely the factor which makes assigning accountability for this antisocial behaviour impossible. In a city of 7.5 million people, such as Hong Kong, the people whom we walk past on the pavement every day might as well be invisible. The strangers which briefly exist in our lives before disappearing forever have no name, no background and no redeeming qualities. This reality dramatically lowers the barriers which inhibit would-be bad actors from hurting others in their community, therefore making such behaviour more likely.

 In sharp contrast, in Tubod Mar, gossip travels quickly, and reputation becomes a currency. The entire village is in sync. I learned this firsthand as I often found myself hearing stories of my HKU classmates from the locals before my HKU classmates even had the chance to tell me. In Tubod Mar, everyone knows everyone’s business, and as a result, any form of betrayal carries real social consequences. Break trust once in the barangay, and everyone knows. In London, you disappear into a sea of millions where your betrayal is forgotten.

Ran into one of the Tubod Mar guys at the supermarket in Jagna 

Additionally, the absence of accountability in large cities is worsened two-fold as people become less likely to act in a way which would benefit other members of their community. This is due to the prevalence of self-serving behaviour; anonymity is the killer of the potential self-serving benefits of engaging in charity and helping others. In a dense city, those who wish to help others only to gain social status and to appear more virtuous face the demotivating reality that the vast majority of city residents simply do not care. City folk are above all busy and self-serving, being perpetually engaged in the rat race. Let’s take the example of a hypothetical city dweller who has saved a stray cat by taking it to the vet, paying for its health treatment and providing a forever home; the city dweller may share this act with some in his social circle and receive a couple of flattering compliments for this compassionate act, and the ramifications end there.

 On the other hand, this same act of saving a stray in Tubod Mar would result in the gossip of multiple family homes, endless compliments received on the street and a reputation that has been collectively elevated. I chose the example of the stray cat to elucidate this point because it is the exact experience which I had in saving a stray cat during my last week in the business immersion. Although I only shared what I did with a handful of people, word spread quickly and in a couple of days, there were whole groups of locals asking me about the cat and congratulating me for having saved it. With complete honesty, I can say that doing good in small communities like Tubod Mar feels more encouraging because the entire community rewards you for your perceived virtue.

Feeding the stray cat which I found near Jagna

Stray cat (named Glory) is recovering at the vet. He has since moved into his forever home 

Arriving in Tubod Mar, I carried with me all the caution and scepticism that growing up across London, Bogota, and Hong Kong had instilled in me. The only approach to trust which I knew was conditional; to withhold my trust unless I considered someone had proved themselves worthy of it. But in Tubod Mar, I witnessed a fundamentally different perspective on trust. Trust was not something to be earned; it was a default courtesy extended to all strangers, just as it was extended to me. The structural difference of trust in cities of millions and small communities is found in accountability. Where anonymity allows people to evade the consequences of betrayal, close-knit communities ensure that actions carry lasting reputational weight. Experiencing this firsthand made me realise that trust is not simply a reflection of individual character, but a product of the social environment in which people live. Bohol did not simply change how much I trust people; it changed what I believe makes trust possible in the first place.