I never had to come home for medical care but I did experience a number of treatments for amoeba and was once hospitalized in Cebu for same. That one turned out to be lucky since David came down with Dengue fever on the first day I was there and ended up being put in the room next door for over a week! We did emergency leave about a month later to see his father who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. My worst culture shock was on that trip, August 1972:
First: finding out that he was dying and ending up leaving with only a day's notice (it was decided to go home when he was still alive on a conference call from the PC office in Cebu, Manila, D.C. and Mom in Minnesota at the hospital)
Second: leaving Tagbilaran on a DC3 and connecting with a Filipinas Orient Airways (now defunct) flight to Manila from Cebu, it was a dinner flight; there were no tray tables, just drink holders; the dinner was a hot dog and a glass of pineapple juice.
Third: the flight back to the states on PAL (Philippine Air Lines) because NW (Northwest Orient Airways) was on strike; having SanMiguel (beer), pancit (noodles), chicken adobo (garlic chicken), and rice for the meal on the plane; landing in Hawaii to go thru customs at 2am, then landing in San Francisco.
David, "Look at all the white people!"
Arlene, "and all the black people!"
D, "none of the girls are wearing bras!!!"
A, "and all the tall people!"
Then walking along the concourse came a group of very tall black men in high heels and tall hats, I concluded that they were either a basketball team or a group of pimps. After overnighting in a motel near the airport we went back to catch our next flight. In the waiting area I saw a family(??) of people who looked like they had stepped off the pages of a 1950's "Archie" comic book. We boarded our flight to Denver on "Western Airlines, the only way to fly!" [do you remember their commercials with the bird on the tail drinking champagne?] Once we were airborne the stewardess asked us if we wanted a Bloody Mary or a Screwdriver before breakfast! which consisted of real eggs etc. and champagne over the Rockies!!
Fourth: Jeanne, David's sister met us a the plane in Denver with her ex-husband. (We had only found out a few months earlier about her divorce.) Then we got on the Western Airlines puddle jumper to Sheridan.
Take-off Denver; champagne;
land Cheyenne take-off; champagne;
land Casper take-off; champagne;
land in Sheridan where we staggered off the plane to be met by David's dad, Harry. At that point, weighing in at 119 lbs. after the dengue, suffering from jet-lag and Western Airlines' champagne flights, David looked worse than his dad!
Fifth: my next shock came when I went into a store to buy my favorite Peppermint Lifesavers (I had been addicted to them in college). The price had gone from 5 cents to 25 cents in the two years we had been gone!
Sixth: We spent Labor-Day weekend up in the mountains with Jeannie, her ex, David's mom and dad and his aunt Leia. Another evening we went to a local bar with David's friend and someone played "Knock Three Times on the Ceiling if You Want Me" on the jukebox. It had been much overplayed on every cariendaria juke box in Davao and Bohol the previous year.
Seventh: I flew by myself to Minnesota to see my new-born niece. Birth and Death was a very strange concept. It was great seeing my mother, sister, brother-in-law and other niece.
Eighth: Then Harry flew back with us to Seattle to see his other sister for the last time.
Ninth: just one week after our return we were in Cebu with a new Bohol PCV when we were stranded for several days with the beginning of Marcos' martial law
when he over-threw his own government. All-in-all, the whole incident was bizarre. I didn't have as much culture shock when we got to the RP or even when we went home two years later, after the end of our extension of 1 1/2 years and our trip around the rest of the world which took most of 1974.
We traveled overland across Asia and into Europe, gradually returning to the industrialized West. After being there, where even tiny pieces of broken glass were sold for a few centavos to be sent back to the factory to be made into new glass, and math homework papers may end up being wrapped around the evening's fish for dinner, I saw lots of waste here and find it hard to not recycle or reuse things.
Sometimes it seems that the 3 1/2 years spent in the Philippines was not part of this life but a dream. Then we went "home" to Davao and discovered our "family" and friends there and it seemed impossible that 29 years had passed since we were there the last time.
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