Right between our 2nd and 3rd week here, we had a cultural night which is the coming together of different cultures as represented by the volunteers from Bosnia, Greece, Indonesia and our country, the Philippines. Each of us were to make a short presentation about our countries to share with the locals.
It was a really interesting night because you get to learn about different cultures first hand –not from Google or from the history books. Here we had one person of each nationality to talk in their beautiful accents, (and the Indonesians in their costumes) about the things they know about their country, personally. To me this is the most interesting way to learn about the world. It’s amazing also because I’ve met many different people of many different nationalities but these guys were actually the first Bosnian, Greek and Indonesians I’ve met in my life.
It was also challenging in a way –I’m sure for all of us, to have to reduce our histories and cultures into a 15-30 min. talk. It was difficult to decide which part of our culture to highlight as I believe that our country has one of the most complicated cultures and mentalities. I know this because I’ve lived in a very touristy island all my life and whenever I talk to tourists from anywhere in the world, I get a consistent question: “But why?” -they really find it difficult to understand why we do the things we do. It’s one complicated mentality shaped by a very twisted and manipulated history. This was very challenging (and I personally think we didn’t do a good job at it so we’re thinking of doing a rerun).
Each of the nationalities presented a short video from Youtube about their country and gave a short talk after. I learned so many interesting things about them, our similarities and differences. Their videos also showcased the beauties of each country and they were stunning!!! But of all the things they presented, one that struck me in particular was when Alen, the volunteer from Bosnia showed us a video of the great flood that happened in his city. It was devastating. But even more devastating to me was the thought that this was something we experience in the Philippines on a regular basis –every single year, thousands of people die or lose their homes and livelihood because of flood and typhoon, because of our poor drainage system, garbage disposal, climate change, etc., on top of all the other hardships Filipinos experience on a daily basis. And I remember how resilient Filipinos are –which I am proud of, but at the same time, also makes me feel sad that we have to go through all that to begin with, why our resilience have to be tested over and over again. I suddenly felt even more unprepared for our presentation as I think I was not able to cover the essence of Filipino life and characteristics of the Filipino people.
We ended up showing a promotional video by the Department of Tourism with the tagline: “It’s More Fun in the Philippines”. And although it does not show everything that is true about the Philippines, like the traffic, crime, corruption, etc., everything good shown there also happens to be true. Our country is as bright and sunny and as beautiful as shown there. And the people are as festive, happy, hospitable and loving as portrayed there. And they were also stunned at how beautiful our country was. Some of us brought some snacks that we prepared that is typical in our country and passed them around. We brought sweet potato fried in brown sugar.
I learned so much from the presentation of each country that I would otherwise never have known or would have never looked up if not for this. I also learned some new things about our country and learned to appreciate it even more, how strong we’ve been as a people. Learning about these has really sparked my interest and opened my mind to traveling more places, learning more and understanding the world and its people more.
Chanieli, Filippino volunteer in Kud Plac, Slovenia