My Encounters with Ilocanos in Honolulu

Nobody was around to welcome me with the traditional Hawaiian lei when I set foot for the first time at the Honolulu International Airport in late August 2006. But my face brightened somewhat when I noticed that the taxi driver looked and spoke with a familiar accent. "Are you Filipino?" I inquired tentatively and with anxiety in my voice. "No sir, I am Ilocano", he replied while glancing at me with a smile in his rear-view mirror. I smiled back, secretly amused at the reply.

Although born to Tagalog-speaking parents, I learned how to speak Ilocano from my neighborhood playmates during my growing-up years in Ramos Street, San Jose, Nueva Ecija. Not having spoken it since I left home as a teenager, I bravely engaged my taxi driver in the best Ilocano I could muster then.

For the next 15 minutes or so until we reached my destination, Salvador my driver had gotten me to tell him in a mixture of my Ilocano and English the latest news back in the Philippines. He in return told me how he has lived in Honolulu for the past ten years and that he has sent his children, all four of them, to school due to sheer hard work in driving a cab that he already owned.

Succeeding encounters

I thought that that was to be my first and last encounter with Ilocanos. I was mistaken. It did not take long for me to learn that Ilocanos comprise the majority of Filipinos in Honolulu. Most of them are in Filipino-dominated communities like Kalihi (where I stayed) and Waipahu, and to a certain extent, Ewa Beach and Salt Lake.

To my pleasant surprise, I found them in supermarkets manning the check-out counters, in fastfood chains, and in department stores – always willing to help a fellow-Ilocano who was still learning the Hawaiian way of life. Then there were, too, my favorite carinderia (small market eateries) vendors at Maunakea market who served me the best Ilocano dishes such as pinakbet, dinengdeng, inabraw, and broiled catfish whenever I got tired of hospital food or chinese take out and started to crave for the familiar home-cooked meals.

I had very pleasant dealings with Ilocanos too in government offices as when I applied for my social security number and, believe it or not, in churches as priests. I would learn later that roughly 30% of the catholic clergy in the Diocese of Honolulu (covering the whole of Hawaii) are Filipinos majority of whom are Ilocanos on "loan" agreement with the Archdiocese of Nueva Segovia (Vigan, Ilocos Sur) in the Philippines. Some of the more prominent ones I met were Fr. Pascual Abaya of the Cathedral in downtown Honolulu and Fr. Ferdinand Rabaya of St. Therese of the Child Jesus Pro Cathedral along School Street.

Special Encounters with Manong Julio and Manang Rosing

For some reasons, however, it was among the less-prominent and the ordinary Ilocanos in the streets where I found inspiration for my spirit to counteract my longings for family and home. Such people were "Manong Julio" and "Manang Rosing" (not their real names), two elderly Ilocanos I met and befriended in the course of my daily trips to the main bus stop a few blocks away from my apartment.

My first meeting with Manong Julio was at the bus stop; but no, he was not waiting for the bus like me. He was rummaging through the garbage bin for empty plastic bottles and discarded softdrink cans. I understood even then that he would bring these to the recycling center to exchange them for cash later.

Manong Julio looked much older than his age which he claimed to be 60. His face and skin were dark from long exposure under the sun. His salt and pepper hair were more salty than peppery. But he did not look at all like the garbage people I knew back in the Philippines. He was clean shaven, dressed neatly in a t-shirt with collar, denim pants and rubber shoes.

As we talked in Ilocano, he related to me that he came to Honolulu alone at first. He then petitioned for his wife and their three minor children some years back when he obtained his citizenship. Left behind in their hometown of Bangued, Abra were four other children who did not meet the cut-off age when their petition was approved. Manong Julio himself had been petitioned by his older brother, a US army veteran who had fought during World War II.

At first, Manong Julio lived with his brother's family when he first arrived. Having reached only up to Grade six in the Philippines, the only job he qualified for was as a helper in his brother's landscaping business – trimming hedges, mowing lawns, etc.

When his family arrived from the Philippines, he rented a room for the whole family. Only when the older children got jobs did they decide to rent a small two-bedroom apartment in Kalihi.

The last time I saw him, Manong Julio was still working for his brother's landscaping company together with his eldest son who was supporting himself in college. With his salary and his wife's income from selling fruits in the market plus the additional income from the recyclables that he was collecting daily after work and during his off days, Mang Julio has been able to send a maximum of 300 dollars a month to his other children back in the Philippines.

Manang Rosing's Ilocana accent gave her away when, one late afternoon, she replied to my question whether the bus going up to the valley has already gone by. "Yis, serr", she answered. Too tired to walk up through five blocks or so away to where my apartment was and faced with the prospect of just sitting there for another 40 minutes or so, I decided to engage her in conversation.

Manang Rosing who hails from Ilocos Norte in northern Philippines was probably also in her 60's. She came to Honolulu in early 2006 after spending some three years in South Carolina with a daughter and her Caucasian husband who had petitioned her to come to America to care for their children with a promise to remunerate her. Upon seeing an opportunity to work and help her other children in the Philippines, she agreed. Her plan to help her other children, however, did not materialize. Almost in tears she narrated to me how she had slaved herself caring for her grandchildren and doing all household chores for her daughter's family, but all she got in return was leftover food and hand-me-down clothes.

Manang Rosing's ordeal fortunately ended when a close friend from Honolulu convinced her to come over and gave her a cleaning job with one of her clients. She turned emotional again when she said how agonizing it was for her when she decided to leave South Carolina as she had become close to her grandchildren. The thought of her other children and grandchildren back in the Philippines, however, overruled whatever concerns she had for her American grandchildren.

At the time of our meeting, she was living in a rented room in her friend's house. She was working five times a week for different clients as a cleaning lady. On her off days, she would harvest malunggay leaves, camote tops, saluyot leaves, okra, string beans and other vegetables from their backyard, tie them up in smaller bundles and then sell them in the sidewalks in Chinatown for a dollar or two dollars each bundle. At the end of the month, she would hie off to the remittance center and send a hundred or two hundred dollars to her children in the Philippines. "Narigat ti biyag ditoy ading ko, ngem nasiyaat met" (Life is hard here, my brother, but I'm happy), she concluded her story.

Some last words.

I stayed in Honolulu for some nine months in all until I cut short my stay due to my open heart surgery. And during that period I have had the opportunity of hearing again what Salvador the taxi driver told me when I asked him whether he was Filipino or not: "No sir, I am Ilocano!"

Come to think of it now, they (Salvador and the others) actually meant that they speak Ilocano not Pilipino or Tagalog (spelled with a P, "Pilipino" is how Tagalog is commonly known in the Philippines). Thus, I do not think they meant to deny their Filipino roots or nationality at all as others have concluded.

You see, I have never met a group of Filipinos in America who are more Filipino in their values, culture, and love for family than the Ilocanos I have encountered in Honolulu.

Tales From a Vietnamese Refugee Camp

One of the second chances in my life that I like to recall now and then happened in late 1984. While working with an international hospital management group as a Senior International Representative, my position was declared redundant when the group’s clients began to dwindle in number. As a result I was jobless for more than a year during which I went through a lot of depressing moments, feelings of hopelessness, insecurity and loss of self-esteem. Thelma, as usual, continued to inspire me and stayed with me even as she single-handedly carried on earning for our growing family as a university professor at De La Salle University in Manila .

Then came the second chance Thelma and I had been praying for. In 1986, I got hired as a Resettlement Counselor with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at the Philippine First Asylum Camp, also popularly known as the Vietnamese Refugee Camp, at Puerto Princesa City, in the island of Palawan in southwestern Philippines.

It did not take long for me to realize that my work in the camp would oftentimes be disheartening. Mournful tales of family separation, of incredible afflictions during the escape at sea, of lives of misery in communist Vietnam, and many yet unheard of stories of woes were daily fare at the Resettlement Office where I was working.

But one can also look at these stories as tales of courage, of hope, of the will to live, of the strength of the spirit. They can also be sources of inspiration and strength to go on as they have been to me then like the stories of Xuan and Hung.

Xuan, the unaccompanied minor

I did not know who she was at first. She used to play just outside my office with her playmates. One day, I suddenly became aware of a pair of bright chinky eyes peering through the wooden sheets of my office window. “Good afternoon,” she greeted me. I asked what her name was. “My name Xuan, Nguyen Thi Xuan. I am ten-years old,” she countered with a memorized line in her halting English.

Since then, Xuan has become my constant visitor through my window as I was doing my paper work. After her class, she would come running to update me on the latest about her lessons and other happenings in school in order to practice her English. She would tell me about the gossips in her neighborhood and just about anything she had heard recently in the camp. She would also talk occasionally and with longing about Vietnam and the family she had left behind.

Children in the camp

Ten-year old Xuan is what we classified then in camp as an “unaccompanied minor”. The camp grapevine had it that there were many unaccompanied minors in camp at that time because some heartless parents in Vietnam would deliberately let a young son or daughter join a escape group by him/herself knowing that unaccompanied minors were given first priority in resettlement. When the minor had been resettled, then he/she could reasonably request for a reunion with the parents and other siblings, a request easily granted for the minor’s sake.

Whether or not Xuan belonged to this group of unaccompanied minors was something I could not tell. Until one day, Xuan came to see me when she should be in class. I knew right away that something was wrong. I did not have to ask further. Xuan volunteered the information. “I am very sad”, she said as she began to speak, then started to sob and told me the story in her usual ESL English... She just learned from a group of new refugee arrivals that her parents, one brother and two sisters did not make it when their boat capsized in the middle of South China Sea during their escape… I did not, could not, say anything. Before she could see me crying, I just embraced Xuan tightly while she wept on my shoulders. I then brought her to the Social Worker’s office for counseling.

We later resettled Xuan in the United States after we had found a foster family for her. Today, I understand that she is happily married to another Vietnamese and successfully runs a Vietnamese restaurant somewhere in California.

Hung, the long-stayer

Nguyen Thanh Hung had been in camp for more than a year and was considered a “long-stayer” when I met him. He was considered “single” in the camp having left his wife and two children in Vietnam since he could not afford to bring them along. He joined an escape group where each one of them arranged to pay some $1,000 worth of gold to an escape organizer. Fortunately, their escape went without a hitch. They reached Philippine shores easily in Pag-asa island only after seven days of sailing. The Philippine military immediately brought their group to the refugee camp in Puerto Princesa for processing.

Hung is well-educated having finished four years of law studies at a university in Saigon. He immediately involved himself in volunteer work in the camp. His spoken English was above average so he was assigned to help in English classes to act as interpreter for his fellow refugees.

In April 1986, I started the Special Enhancement Program I designed for long-staying refugees and Hung was one of those picked to join the program. He had been rejected twice by the U.S. representatives since a brother-in-law was his only link in the States. Thus, we decided to place him on the list for Canada.

My close relationship with Hung began when he became my interpreter in the program. Hung and I immediately developed a friendship when we found out how much we had in common. We were both born in January, we both have children of about the same age, and we were both away from our families.

Hung never told me but I have been suspecting it all along. He was having a relationship with Mai, another lone refugee in camp. Mai left behind a 7-year old daughter in Vietnam. Her husband left her when her daughter was only 2 years old. She considers herself then as divorced.

Mai, unlike Hung, was a rescue case. Their escape boat was rescued at sea by Cap-A-Namur, a German rescue vessel. As such, she and the members of her escape group were automatically guaranteed resettlement in Germany.

Refugee billets in PFAC, Palawan

I had met Mai several times before whenever I would go to Hung’s billet to look for him in connection with work or just to chat and I had promised her a treat downtown when the time would come for her to leave for Germany.

One day, Hung came to me with a long face. He just learned that Mai’s departure had been scheduled. She was leaving for Germany in a few days. He wanted to give a party for her, but he had no money. I remembered my promise to Mai. So I arranged for the three of us and some of Mai’s friends to have dinner at Edwin’s, a Chinese restaurant downtown and a favorite of the refugees. That night at the restaurant, I noticed how close Hung and Mai were to each other. I knew then that Mai’s departure would affect Hung very much.

The day of departure came. At the airport, I volunteered to be the photographer and took photos of Mai, Hung and their friends. I left immediately after my last roll of film run out. I know I would not be able to stand the departure scene…

I learned from Hung later that Mai kept crying on the way to her plane that would bring her first to Manila before boarding another plane to Germany. Hung followed close to the tarmac and saw her waving from the plane’s porthole until the plane took off. Hung stood there till the plane disappeared from the horizon.

The day after Mai’s departure, Hung came to the office and requested to be absent from work for a few days. He said he needed to rest as he had not slept and ate for days before Mai left. “First and last time. No more girlfriend. Very difficult,” he said. Then he showed me the boat in a bottle that he had made for Mai but was not able to give to her. He had named the boat “Cap-A-Namur”, Mai’s rescue boat. “From now on, I’ll just make boats in bottles,” he said smiling.

A fishing boat used by Vietnamese refugees to escape from South Vietnam

Because of Hung’s ability to speak English and his likeable personality, we were able to submit his name for consideration by Canada for its refugee program even if he had no links there. A month later, I received the interview list for Canada. Hung’s name was on the list. Hung eventually was accepted and was resettled in Toronto. Last I heard, he already had filed a petition for his wife and children to join him.

Today, a replica of a refugee boat in a bottle is prominently displayed in our home’s living room. At the base of the boat reads: “To: Mr. Danilo Mendiola and family. Thank You. From: Nguyen Thanh Hung, PA #1179, 1986, Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines.”

Refugee Camp in Bataan

I worked with UNHCR until March 1987 and then moved the following month to the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan to take the post of Director for Social Services for the U.S. Refugee Program and later as Administrative Manager for World Relief Corporation (one of the implementing agencies of the program) until the USRP program ended in 1995.

Thus ended too one of the second chances in my checkered life and career.

Walks of Life

“Have you heard the latest?” my wife Thelma asks me one early morning. Without waiting for me to answer, she continues with a hint of excitement in her voice, “Nicole has just taken her first steps. She is now walking!” Nicole is our first grandchild who lives with her parents in California. As I lace my Saucony walking shoes, I can imagine the excitement of her parents, my son Nico and our daughter-in-law Cecille, at this new development in the life of their first child.

I stand up from my easy chair, clip my Omron Pedometer on to my shorts, and drag my still-resisting body out into the still deserted streets of our quiet neighborhood for my first activity of the day – walking. You see, I am recovering from an open-heart surgery last April 2007 (“My Open Heart Surgery”). And walking briskly for one hour each day has been part of my daily regimen since I came back to the Philippines last May.

I reap countless benefits from walking. Today, I feel much better, my heart stronger, and much younger than my 65 year old body. I have maintained my weight at 140 pounds from 155-160 pounds prior to my surgery. My waistline also stays at 32 inches down from 33-34 inches. More important, I have more zest for life as I have learned to stop and smell the flowers.

Unlike before, I have also learned to smile and greet people I meet in my daily walks. People who teach me what walking means to them. One of them is an elderly gentleman who is also my namesake, Danny. “Ah seen the whole world. Ah gone to many countries,” he tells me in his uncharacteristic English. “Ah eat the best food – American burgers, Italian pasta – name it, ah tasted it,” he continued. He would even mimic the Italian way of speaking with hand gestures. As a retired seaman, Danny has money in the bank, a modest house in the suburbs, and children in America who sends him money.

You would probably think that Danny now lives comfortably enjoying his retirement. But no, Danny is walking a different way of life.

He lives alone and not in a house. He calls home an old six-wheeler truck he has kept spic and span and maintained in excellent running condition in a small corner vacant lot owned by his family in our subdivision. His bedroom is the rear cab of the truck where he keeps his belongings of a few set of clothings in a back pack that also contains his valuable documents such as his passport, bankbook, etc. His living room is an open space beside the truck with a table made from old planks of wood that also serves as his dining table. A large umbrella mounted on top of the table is his only means of protection from the sun and rain. He depends on his next door neighbor for water and his other necessities.

Danny’s truck is my first stop after my warm-up and before I start my brisk-walking. We have become good friends (soul mates?) since then. He is friendly and sports an easy smile for everybody. But he says he reserves his biggest smile for me. He would open his arms welcoming me like a long lost brother each morning as he sees me coming. We would then talk for a few minutes regarding anything under the sun. We have since discovered many similarities in our lives; that aside from our age and names (his full name is Danilo Mendoza, mine is Danilo Mendiola), we also both come from the province of Nueva Ecija. He comes from Munoz, the town next to my own hometown of San Jose.

I have tried to know more about Danny from our daily conversations, why he prefers to live this way -- uncomfortable, inconvenient -- when he can leave more comfortably. And isn’t he lonely? Is his life not boring? He says he has never known comfort in his life. He started poor and wants to end living poor. Lonely? He says he has a lot of friends. Boring? He keeps himself busy doing all kinds of things in his truck or cleaning his surroundings, or helping out in the neighborhood doing odd jobs. I tell him that I worry for his safety and his health as he is exposed to the elements all day and night. He says God is taking care of him. Ah, yes – he is ready to face Him anytime, he says when I ask him about his thoughts on dying. He then turns misty-eyed as he talks next about his dear mother and brother who have passed away. He says his brother owns the truck and that is why he is keeping it for his sake and not selling it.

Neighbors will probably think Danny is weird and foolish to live this way. Some of my neighbors laugh when I tell them about Danny. But I know he is just taking a path seldom taken by many as he walks life’s ways.

There also are nameless people from different walks of life that I meet daily.

There is the young mother, barely out of her teens who walks her eldest son to school about a kilometer away from their rented room in one of the houses in the neighborhood. She is like a mother hen who keeps her chicks in tow. She carries in her right arm what must be her youngest child and holds with her left hand a second child, while her eldest carrying a school bag follows them.


I often wonder how this young mother must be coping with life. I suppose she is saving whatever she could, so she walks her son to school instead of riding a tricycle to and fro. In the process, she also gets to take care of her other children and assure them of her protective love. That is her walk.

The taho (soya food), puto (native rice cakes), and fish vendors; the newspaper boy and the junk trader who collects plastic, paper, and scraps from garbage bins -- they are the other walkers with me. These are people who like me take to the streets before sunrise. But unlike me, they walk as a matter of survival; I walk for my health and even for fun. They walk in order to earn a few pesos or else their families won’t have anything to eat for the day. They walk with a burden literally on their shoulders as they carry their wares of puto, taho and newspapers or, in the case of the junk trader, as she pushes her wooden cart, in their walks of life.

Someday, I dream of walking with my granddaughter Nicole to tell her how I walked not with celebrities, not with heroes, but with ordinary and simple folks from many walks of life who, come to think of it now, also walk their talk.

What is your life’s walk?

My Open-heart Surgery

“Mister Mendiola”, an unfamiliar, American-accented voice wakes me up. I open my eyes slowly, wondering for a moment where I am. Ah, yes I remember now. I am in a room at a hospital in downtown Honolulu. They brought me into this procedure room from the Emergency Room to undergo an angiogram about an hour ago to find out what is wrong with my heart after I called 911. I can only make out in a blur the faces of my doctor and his assistant as I lie there in a hospital bed surrounded by tubes of all kinds, an oxygen tank, and what look like TV monitors with what seem to be simply white lines in the midst of gray space. “We did not proceed to do an angioplasty”, my doctor mumbles. “We found four major arteries in your heart that are blocked.” And then he continues, “With your permission, we will have to do an open-heart surgery at the soonest possible time”.

I do not know what to say. I do not know how to react. An open-heart multiple by-pass surgery! As far as I know, this is highly invasive and one of the most delicate procedure in medicine today. This never came to my mind at all when I called 911 some eight hours ago early this morning.

Little by little the events of the past eight hours came back to me. Today is Monday, April 16, 2007. I woke up early this morning as usual to prepare for the day’s schedule of activities at the hospital where I am a participant in a program on Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) run by the Pacific Health Ministry in Honolulu. I did my spiritual activity first followed by a check in my computer if I had any email. I then had my early breakfast of fresh banana and cereals while surfing the internet on the latest news back in the Philippines and the weather here in Hawaii. I then proceeded to take a shower.

Some fifteen minutes later, I was coming out of the bathroom when I felt an unusual heaviness in my chest. I toweled myself dry and got dressed in seconds, fumbled for my digital blood pressure monitor and took my blood pressure. The monitor registered 260/140! This was the first time my blood pressure churned out such numbers, I thought. My hands were shaking as I sat down and popped a blood pressure pill into my mouth. Despite being newly-showered and even with the nippy Hawaiian Spring morning, I noticed that I was perspiring as my chest continued to feel heavy as if 100 pound weights were pressing against it. I was gasping for breath and my arms were beginning to feel heavy and weak. “My God, these are the classic signs of a heart attack! What am I going to do now?” I mumbled almost in tears. “Should I call 911? That would be too expensive and I cannot afford it. Should I call a cab and go to the emergency room? But I have been there yesterday and they told me my chest pains are just muscular,” I debated within myself. “My God, please help me, I am all alone here,” I implored. Mother Mary, pray for me… now and if this be the hour of my death,” I whispered.

As soon as I said these prayers, lo and behold, I picked up my cellphone from my bedside table as if being prodded by an unknown force and dialed 911!

What happened next looks like a scene straight from a television series. The 911 operator calmed me down while talking to me and taking the details where I am, my age, my complaint, etc. She then assured me that an ambulance was coming shortly before she got off the phone. Sure enough, an ambulance and a firetruck arrived within five minutes after I turned off my phone.

Next thing I knew I was in the emergency room of a hospital and getting worked up by the ER medical staff. They did all kinds of tests first and then decided to do an angiogram, then finally, a quintuple bypass (they found a fifth block after opening my heart).

I am now home here in the Philippines recovering from my surgery in the loving care of my wife and three daughters. Sometimes, in my quiet moments, I am still marveling at the fact that I am still alive today. “You could not have survived the massive heart attack that would have come from the multiple blocked arteries had you dilly-dallied even for a minute”, my cardiologist had told me. “You should be thankful to 911!” he continued.

Yes, I am grateful to 911, but little did my doctor know that I have someone else to really thank for making me pick up that phone despite my doubts and fears. It is Our Lady of Annunciation (patroness of our parish back in the Philippines) whose novena I have been trying to propagate among Catholic friends and patients I meet in the hospital. I thank her for the numerous friends and acquaintances who prayed for me and my family during those difficult moments. I thank her too for bringing my wife Thelma from the Philippines and my son Nico from California to be at my side during and after my surgery in Hawaii despite many obstacles.

Truly, she took care of me at that crucial moment of decision-making and at the hour of my close brush with death during my open-heart surgery.