Even before I make it to my apartment door, I smell adobo from down the hallway and my stomach grumbles. I also hear a few lyrics of OPM music. I didn’t grow up listening to songs in Tagalog, but now it’s comforting to hear it once I’m back home.
Tita Vangie* and Tita Beth* are in my apartment with their children. Two of the four kids attack my legs at the door, while the older two (one in grade 9, the other in grade 10) are in the kitchen helping their moms set up the halo-halo station. On this night, Tita Vangie and Tita Beth are leading a Bahay Kubo storytime for 15 Filipinos. 6 of the attendees are former Tagalog Time attendees; the remaining 5 are new individuals we’ve met in-person/online and the remaining 4 are through word-of-mouth. At least 4 other people would have come tonight if they didn’t have commitments. They all texted our group chat to say that their kids were sad that they weren’t seeing us that day. One parent said she would try to join us through video on Facebook messenger. Tita Beth said that this parent dropped off ube ice cream before her hospital shift started.
I ask the two older kids what they need help with. They task me with rearranging my living room and setting up the food and utensils. In a corner of my living room, Tita Vangie and Tita Beth are setting up some of the prop that they and some of the kids made for the skit and discussing the main lesson points. I can tell they’re a little nervous, but I’m so excited for them to lead their third session of Tagalog Time. Initially they resisted and told me it should be me or someone else, but I told them that there was more that attendees would learn from them. Also, at this point they were naturally leading the sessions with their own ideas, while I gave suggestions and encouraged former attendees to share their feedback.
Our biggest challenges were 1) fitting 20 attendees (including myself) into my living room, but we always managed to make it work and 2) recording the storytime/lessons for those who weren’t able to attend. Tita Vangie, Tita Beth, and myself all work full-time and it was already hard for us to schedule a set day each week to host Tagalog Time; we and the current participants couldn’t commit more time to editing and uploading videos. For this summer, we decided to keep Tagalog Time to in-person sessions till we found 1 or 2 people who can lead video editing.
This summer, Tagalog Time met once almost every week starting from mid-June until mid-August. I’ve felt the spirital nourishment from sitting in my dining room till 11 pm with Tita Beth and Tita Vangie’s families, sharing stories with the older kids and letting them mock me for my terrible Tagalog, and doing karaoke till sunrise during a summer long weekend. As someone committed to fighting for an equitable future, the people I have met through Tagalog Time have saved me at my lowest and reminded me of the power that the most oppressed and dispossessed wield in changing our exploitative, capitalist world.
*At the request of the participants, names were changed and no photos were taken for privacy.
