How to spot Pinoys at international airports

Nothing can be more interesting than taking the flight back home to Manila. It’s not so hard to identify a Filipino among passengers weaving through Zaventem, Schipol, Heathrow or any other airport abroad. If a Pinoy sees somebody who looks Southeast Asian, he’d flash the latter a smile. If the latter smiles back, the Pinoy would exclaim, "Kabayan!” Pinoys always find home in other Pinoys.

At the terminals assigned to flights bound to Paris, London, Brussels, Frankfurt, etc., it is usually quiet. Waiting passengers read, e-mail on their mobile phones or laptops, or just sit still. Upon reaching the terminal for the flight bound to Manila, I feel a shift in climate -- there is only sun and dust and Tagalog noise outside and no snow. Am I home already?

Ceres Terminal?
Blame it on the Pinoys’ bouts of homesickness, but the terminal looks like it's a Ceres bus stop. With their leather jackets, baseball caps, gold chain necklaces, you can tell that these are seamen lying supine occupying four or five terminal seats. Beside them is an African who takes care not to spill his legs beyond the margins of his seat.

In another corner, a group of Pinays fuss over their luggage: shuffling tickets and passports, resealing bottles of Tesco coffee and lotion with brown packaging tape, making inventory of their pasalubong. Unsatisfied, one of them, a woman in a jean jacket and velvet beret, unzips her trolley bag and begins operating through its innards of winterwear, towels and intimates. A curious Juan quietly probes through the trolley, too, eyeing cups and lace and strings. A nanay breastfeeding her European baby examines her new, ridiculously clean fluorescent white Nike trainers. Another is plugged to his iPod, blurting out erroneous lyrics -- making mondegreens--to an 80s love song you hear at 12 midnight on Philippine FM.

In contrast, the terminal to Frankfurt is full, but still, and steely, and quiet.

Back at the terminal of the Manila-bound flight, it is always abuzz and restless. People talking, walking around, snoring, twitching as if every breathing moment has to manifest sound and movement. A brass band, banderitas and lechon would complete the scene.

The boarding announcements are finally aired. Everyone gets up. Fast. Like bundles of renewable energy. The rest of the announcing steward's words after "board the plane" trails off swallowed by the buzz.

Even when traveling alone, a Pinoy would always end up talking to another Pinoy he/she just met there. Two of our women here have started a conversation that has become delicious as roots are traced, relations and connections forcibly made. Because of this they believe that they were fated to be standing next to each other in the queue. You can't cut short stories about a family tree that has just been reviewedm can you. So then these two perch on the seats that would be the best place for discussing their genealogy. Now here comes the blond flight attendant in KLM blue, cross this time, worrying about the seat plan that fate disarranged.


It is very amusing to watch. The plane, before taking off, looks like a Day Care classroom, with blond teacher-attendants chasing a lot of straying middle-age kindergarten passengers to their seats.

Applause!

All this fiesta is then capped during landing with an emotional gesture of the Pinoy passengers’ uncanny love of country.

Most of the passengers are OFWs—domestic workers, nurses and caregivers, seafarers and skilled workers—who work to the bone not only to send home money for renovating the house, for Junior’s tution or Baby Girl’s debut. Most of these passengers, too, had toiled extra, foregoing comforts, saving hard for this expensive return ticket to the Philipines.

And so, as the pilot announces the Manila arrival upon the plane’s glorious touch down, the Pinoy passengers burst into wild, heroic applause, and cheers blended with tears.

This is all so unreal, even quite embarrassing with the lack of decorum, I thought. But hey, after years of enduring language barriers, cold, lonely Sundays, and no saucers of patis to dip in, at last these Pinoy heroes are home.