The Displacement of the Probinsyana
May 24, 2023 - May 29, 2023
I think about home often. And when I do, I am transported to the shade of an acacia tree where I believed a kapre resided but chose not to pick me up and roll me into a cigar. I think of a clump of mango trees where people in white flowy dresses set up tables for a feast (or at least that's what my lola's mother said). I think of heavy plastic sandals with mud stuck on the heels after walking in gowns pretending like we were part of the local sagala.
When I think of home, I am compelled to think of the first place I ever lived in, San Miguel, Bulacan. It is a part of the province where people had an entirely different Tagalog lexicon paired with a strong accent that can be comparable to 'country'. As someone with a non-Bulakenyo family (they moved before I was born), I had to assimilate in school. When my friends started saying words like "taban" and "panik", I asked them what they meant and took a mental note that I tucked away in my brain so I didn't forget. The accent came naturally the more I talked to my classmates.
Whenever I went to conferences of Paulinian schools where students came from literally the entire Philippines, I found myself trying to use the conyo lexicon and neutralizing my accent. I pronounced my friends' names differently-- "Machu" became "Matthew", "Rayana" came with a soft R instead of a rolling one. I remember desperately wanting to impress students from Manila. Maybe if I talked like them enough, they would finally acknowledge me. I was not new to being shoved aside because I was a probinsyana. Manileño students would probably deny this because they didn't notice, but in the congresses, they would form cliques and lead the group without a consensus. I found myself wanting to be like them, but also hating them for being dismissive.
I'm sure a part of this was projection, but a part of it was true. And so I hated them and I hated myself a little bit too.
I wanted to be them so bad that I wanted to escape to the city. Maybe if I lived in Manila long enough, I would be like them. People would notice me and listen to me and count me in.
I did get all of that, I still do. Except I lost a lot in the process. I lost the deeper vocabulary and the strong accent and I missed them as soon as I did.
The probinsyana with 'big dreams'--of being heard, seen, known--is destined to move to the city and cut parts of themselves in the process if they want to survive. Don't want to get held up? Lose the wonder and sparkle in your eyes and replace it with grim determination to yank your bag out of someone's hands when they try to snatch it.
I have always wanted to be 'a creative', whatever the fuck that means. I wanted to be writer, a filmmaker, someone respected in the arts. I wanted to make things for a living, and that in itself necessitated moving. While I'm sure it's different now with the revolutionary work-from-home, there are simply more opportunities for the kind of livelihood I want in the city. When I look back on what my classmates' parents jobs were, at least those who stayed in town, they were accountants, nurses, municipal workers, dentists, or business owners. While I do not have anything against those jobs, I do not want those jobs. I could have been a teacher there, but I would have been yelled at by nuns, paid in peanuts, and forced to teach a subject I knew nothing about.
I was having lunch with Mita, my lola, earlier today. She told me how when she moved to the city for college, she would think of the food she got to try and dream of earning enough money to buy the same food in the province for her younger siblings. When her dad would introduce her to his compadres, he would say, 'Panganay ko 'tong babae, nag-aaral sa Maynila!' Simply getting inside the city was an accomplishment, it was a promise of better lives.
I don't know if I'd still say that now with the inflation and rising heat, but at least, it promises having a job--and even then, not to everyone.
The first week I moved to Quezon City with my mother (after forcing her for a semester to finally move here because I was desperate to get out of the town and get the town out of me), I started learning to commute to school. And not the baby-commute I knew from San Miguel which was taking a tricycle and telling the driver where you wanted to go like they're taxi cabs. This was the big-girl-commute. After four grueling jeepney rides to school and three grueling jeepney rides going home, I asked my mom if we could move back to San Miguel again. The city has chewed me and was spitting me out.
Of course, my mother said no. She said that I just needed to be strong and adjust. Because what I said was stupid. She was right, after all. After getting my black shoes sopping wet during a rainstorm, chasing countless jeepneys, falling off of a jeepney and scraping my knee on the road, getting taken advantage of by a taxi driver by not giving me change, losing my wallet to snatchers, losing my Bulakenya accent and the vocabulary I worked for my entire life, I finally adapted. Survival of the fittest, as Charles Darwin believed.
I am thankful that my mother let me experience all the shit things because I would have kept being chewed on by the city if I didn't toughen up. And I needed to toughen up because the probinsyana who 'dreams' (or who wants to be a 'creative', or who wants to 'see the world', or who wants to 'experience culture, or who wants to be 'well-educated', or who needs to pay the bills) has always been destined to be displaced. If you ask your parents or grandparents, you quickly discover that at least one of them moved to the city for a 'better life'. My maternal grandmother was a hardcore Bicolana, my father was Novo Ecijano. Our roots are in provinces where trees grow and magic doesn't seem far-fetched and you can hold the world in your palms, but they are dislodged for dreams and survival. I am reminded of a balete tree when I think of myself clinging to the city like I am a parasite and it is my host tree.
Sometimes, I find my peers not knowing these roots about their families until it comes up, but that's because probinsyanas go through a process of loss (of themselves, their identity) to survive a cruel city. And we barely get to ever grieve over this loss.
How often do you hear people make fun of provincial accents? Of probinsyanas not being 'cultured'? Of being clueless?
The probinsyana camouflages out of the need to survive. How are you going to have a better life or give your family a better life if the city crushes you, after all?
The displacement of the probinsyana is not unknown. I discover that many women I look up to who have really made a name for themselves are probinsyanas. Because we have something to prove. Because what is the point of cutting parts of yourself, of changing who you are, of losing the sense of home, if you do not become good at what you do at the very least?
When I think of home, I am transported to the shade of an acacia tree and magical moments. When I think of home, I think of memories I made years ago in a place I used to call home. The displaced probinsyana rarely discovers their sense of home again after the move. Coming home to the province always feels strange. Like meeting a stranger who used to be a lover. You knew them, but not anymore, it seems. It is never really coming home; it is just visiting. And if you visit someplace, how would you call that your home?
Yet, the city is not home neither. It never will be. It is grueling and cruel and filled with the stench of excessive and exploitative labor and rotting dreams.
The displacement of the probinsyana seems inspiring from the outside looking in, but it is tragic when you think of how much she had to lose to get to the top.