Reflections on Nationhood

Father Goose's Nursery

In my father's house, there are many rooms.

After spending my first five years here in the Philippines, I left for Bangkok to join my father and stayed there for seven years. He placed me in an international school and it is only now that I've had a chance to re-assess that experience in this light.

Every morning we'd line up to listen to the Thai national anthem. I still remember the tune and can probably muddle through the words. (I'd even be asked once in a while to raise the flag and the "standard" we'd have to follow is that the flag should be at the very top only at the very last note). In contrast, I remember coming back here to the Philippines and fumbling through the Lupang Hinirang (I think I still slip every once in a while) and having to take private tutorials from my Mom to memorize the "Panatang Makabayan". (Come to think of it, I always took it for granted that the "Glee Club" that sang the anthem every morning wasn't even made up of Thais. Ms. Mars, the moderator was a Filipina and I bet the Glee Club was mostly made up of Filipinos)

            But none of us in school seemed to mind. Maybe we were too young to be "nationalistic".

            In Grade 4, we studied world religions (do they also do that here?). By then, I knew about Buddhism, Islam, Shintoism, Hinduism, and all other religions. (Not that I'd associate particular religions with particular persons: Ek is a Buddhist, Sanchai a Sikh, Paolo a Catholic)

            I distinctly remember when we were in grade 5, we studied American History, probably because the school was being run by the American Redemptorists. I remember being fascinated by the stories of the American Revolution and for some reason, I particularly liked John Adams. I even made a crossword puzzle whose answers were drawn from American History. In music class, we sang "Erie Canal" (from Albany to Buffalo...) and "Paul Revere" (I see a horse man there, his name is Paul Revere, can do, can do) and "America the Beautiful" (and I still memorize that until today) and "Glory, Halleluya".

            In retrospect, there never was any occasion for us to sing the Philippine National Anthem or any other National Anthem for that matter (I don't even think they taught us the Star Spangled Banner although I think they did teach us a song that sounds like the national anthem of Great Britain (which I still memorize) and songs like "Sakura") We never won contests as Filipinos that merited that our National Anthem be played. We won contests as the "Blue Team" or the "Green Team" and these teams didn't have any "anthems".

            My friends were from all nationalities and were all sorts. Thais, of course but there were Chinese Thais and Malay Thais and Thai-Indians. Indians with turbans and Indians without turbans. Filipinos, Filipino-Thais, Chinese, Taiwanese, Koreans, Japanese, Americans, Viet-Americans, Thai-Americans. Muslims who had to bring a spit cup during Ramadhan (probably fundamentalists), Catholics who had to be separated for religious instruction, Buddhists and everyone else who stayed behind for values class.

            We were brought up in an environment where differences were the most natural thing in the world, and in fact, were taken for granted. Fundamental differences could not be ignored, of course, such as girl / boy, short / tall, big / small and fat / thin but all other differences were taken for granted.

            I don't know if it's just me and I was just naive. But back then, I had a keen sense of "international" and absolutely no sense of "nation" and the funny thing is that it really didn't matter. (Written in 2001)

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