Manilamen: the ‘Outsiders’ within

By Deborah Ruiz Wall

Awakening…
with a touch of the soul of a race,
wave of mariners washed ashore to Broome and the Torres Strait,
who never returned from their homeland.
It wason the Island Continent from where their souls departed,
where their tawny remains were buried, mingled with the crimson soil and the turquoise sea in an alien place that they fully embraced and adopted like their own, for in the distant past,
they rode on the tide of fate that blessed them with generations of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander offspring; and two hundred years hence, two more waves of Filipino immigrants arrived onshore, yet the ancestral lines of those who dived in the depths for the pearl of the ‘west’ to explore a new life and livelihood had not been broken, their ‘lulu’ turned into fisher folk, food garden growers, missionary helpers, handymen, even pearling masters, who in the emerging new nation, broke new ground, explored new trails, acquired new knowledge and new language, absorbed Western thought; their descendants subliminally felt the seductive glow of the pearl, imbued with traces and remnants of Filipino heritage implanted in Australia’s homeland from where they heard soft melodies from the songs of
their forebears, like a tingling whisper in the wind reminding them
never to forget their islands of old from where their forebears
had sailed away.

* lulu – grandfather (Broome Filipino term for grandfather; lolo– Tagalog for grandfather)

(Tagalog version)

Manilamen: istranghero sa kalooban ng bansa

Damdamin ay nagising sa haplos ng kaluluwa 
ng lahing itinangay ng agos sa Broome at Torres Strait.
Namumunong agos Pilipino’y lumitaw sa pampang
at dina bumalik sa pusod ng pinagmulan.

Dito na rin sila yumao, inilibing ang kanilang kayumangging alabok
na ngayo’y kasalimuha ng lupaing pula at karagatang bughaw,
lupaing lubusan nilang inampon na wari’y 
sariling lupaing magulang.

Sila’y Pilipinong ikinupkop ng kapalaran
at binigyang biyaya ng marami pang mga anak
ng katutubong Ostralyano.

O inang bayan!

Ang kanilang awit ay naririnig pa rin
kahit nakaraan ng mahigit na isang siglong
pagdating ng dalawa pang agos galing sa Pilipinas.
Tandaan n’yo, huwag kalimutan
ang ating mga ninunong sumisid sa karagatan
upang makamtan ang perlas ng kanluran—
nakamit nila’y panibagong kabuhayan.

Naging mangingisda, magsasaka,
at katulong ng mga Kristyanong misyonaryo 
na nagbukas ng mga bagong landas,
bagong kaalaman, bagong kanlurang
kinagisnan, bagong wikain, bagong kaisipang
napulot sa mga ibayong lupain.

Subalit anuman ang naghahari sa kalabasan,
ang kalooban nila’y tila perlas na patuloy ang ningning
ng pagmamahal sa tradisyong Pilipino
na itinanim sa panibagong lupain.

Tumatagos sa kaibuturan ang mga awit
na ibinubulong ng ating mga ninunong
huwag kalimutan magpakailanman
ang bayan nating pinagsimulan.
.

[A book about the Stories of Manilamen descendants from Broome & the Torres Strait compiled by Deborah Ruiz Wall and her team will be published shortly.]