Pinayka ba? - by Bugsy
ViaPapemelroti
(The author is a CPA and an NPA (Non-Practising Attorney. She may not have kids of her own but she had thousand of children, her former students. Read her profile)).
You remember that TV ad where a young boy was about to sweep dust out of the door at nighttime and somebody stopped him by shouting “Ibalik ang swerti!”? (SwerTI, as it was pronounced in that ad, instead of swerte meaning luck.) That was based on the Filipino belief that it is bad luck to sweep the floor at nighttime and especially if you sweep the dust out of the house.
It is also believed that if you are getting married, you are not supposed to see the betrothed a day before the wedding (because you might change your mind?), that you must put a coin in a shoe (I forgot what it was for) and that when you rise from a kneeling position at the end of the wedding ceremony, you must make sure to step on the foot of your spouse to ensure that you will be the “commander in chief” of the household. If a family member dies, siblings must not marry within the same year. Malas, bad luck. Are these purely Pinoy traditions or superstitious beliefs or are these also practiced in other countries?
This is getting to be a post on superstitious beliefs but I cannot help but write about the practice of pinning on baby’s clothes a small piece of ginger supposedly to drive the evil spirits away.
What is so Pinoy is our concept of family - one big happy extended family. I guess we’re not unique when it comes to this because I know that the Spanish and Italian concepts of extended families are almost like ours. It’s not surprising for us to have someone in our household who is the granddaughter of your dad’s third cousin and no matter how “financially challenged” we are, we always want to accommodate a relative, especially one who “comes from the province”. Of course, when the relative’s relatives come to visit, they bring all sorts of gifts - live chicken, fresh seafood or vegetables, a homemade jam … our distinctly Pinoy way of paying utang na loob (a debt of gratitude) which I had been taught since childhood is “a debt that you will never be able to repay.”
Our “hiya” is also legendary, perhaps as well-known as our sense of humor and our hospitality. I remember when I attended a teacher’s seminar in Manila. Our resource speaker was a multi-awarded teacher from a Catholic university and she talked about a student who was a valedictorian of a public high school in a remote province. The student was given a full scholarship in the university. Unfortunately for him, he performed so poorly in math that the teacher was worried that if he continued on failing his quizzes and exams, he would lose his scholarship. The student begged the teacher to help him because he said he could not go back to his province if he lost his scholarship. When the teacher asked for an explanation, the student narrated that when his small town learned that he was going to college in the prestigious university, the townsfolk were so proud that they gave him a big send-off party that was almost like a fiesta. So typical of the hospitable Pinoy!
I like best the Pinoy sense of humor. I like the joke about the TNT in America who made an operator-assisted call and when he heard the operator say, “AT&T, may I help you?” He put the phone down, shocked - “How did they know that I’m a TNT?” Or take this one: a friend warned her cousin - another TNT in the US - to better come home because the immigration officials were getting stricter. Her cousin’s reply: Don’t worry about me. They won’t find me … ni hindi nga nila makita si Saddam, ako pa kaya? (Roughly, how can they find me if they cannot even find Saddam?) Of course, when Saddam was arrested, the witty Pinay changed the name in that statement to Bin Laden.
Who, but only the Pinay, can come up with that kind of humor even when she is in dire straits?
All this make me very proud and happy to be a Pinay.
For more articles of the author, visit her webpage.
