OFW sa Africa

The Spirit of Giving

I once told by my mother about the distinguishing quality or character of Filipino, the spirit of giving.

My father who was a full blood Chinese was very much disappointed with this kind of trait and he considered it bad. He expressed that anything that is too much is definitely bad. During the celebration of fiesta in Quiapo, my mother of course cooked a lot of foods for those invited and uninvited guests. This is a yearly big festivity; even in a situation where my mother had no money she will still find a way to celebrate this fiesta with fashion.

The aftermath of the celebration was mother will normally ended up broke without any centavos in her pocket. As you see, my mother’s relatives will come to our house to have fun in celebrating the fiesta. Not only they will eat nor take some remaining foods as pabaon, my mother most of the time will also give them money for their transport or for any other reasons. This irritated my father. He reasoned out that this is far too much.

It is normal for us as Filipino to give money to those in dire needs even this money is allocated for a specific purpose let say tuition fee for your children, sometime too generous to a fault. When we are eating, we customary invite people to share to them what we have. But other people do it in a different way.

Every morning, I am eating breakfast in the canteen provided by our company. As usual, I met few Europeans who share table with me. One guy had brought a chocolate spread. While all of them are chit-chatting, he put the chocolate spread in his bread and continued talking. He didn’t even bother to ask his kababayan if they like the special chocolate spread. If he is a Filipino, definitely he will share this to his fellow persons who are also occupying the same table with him.

I didn’t say that what the man did was wrong or try to instigate that our culture of giving more is mere right. This is only my observation. Everything depends on how you see them.

posted by Asthong Kutchong @ 3:36 AM