Monday, April 11, 2011

Exploring the Filipino Psyche Day 15: Cleanliness

Okay, it has been a while since I last explored. But here I am again and now I will write about the Filipino’s obsession on cleanliness. Well, maybe I should not call it an obsession since it is nothing near the level of the aviator Mr. Howard Hughes, where he reduced everyone to a piece of filth and isolated himself from the world since he thought it was full of germs. But this is only according to the movie ‘The Aviator’, starring Leonardo di Caprio. So I do not know how much truth was put into that version, and how much of it is only cinematic liberty. Anyhow, when it comes to the version of the Filipino way, cleanliness is a habit and a value.

Let us begin with the bath. The Filipino has a bath at least once or twice a day every day. Baths that are done two times a day are one in the morning and one again in the evening. And from what I have learned, those who take their bath once a day, which is done in the morning, take their—as it is called in the Philippines—the ‘half-bath’ before they go to sleep. A ‘half-bath’ is cleaning the face, armpits, private parts and the feet. Okay, so the ‘half-bath’ removes the upper body (chest, tummy and arms) and legs, I guess.  So, because it is a habit, if there are those who find eating rice in the morning as a breakfast meal a little strange, the Filipinos are quite surprised when they see a scene in a foreign film and the actor/actress wakes up and just changes his or her clothes. “Ay, hindi naligo (Oh...he didn’t take a bath),” is the usual remark I would hear when I watch a movie in the cinema and the character needs to rush and leave for work because he or she overslept. Thus, the character will need to skip the bath. I know someone who was once a volunteer in a remote place somewhere on the globe, and after her mission for the day, no matter how tired she may be, she would walk the distance to fill up two pails with water for her bath. The other nationals thought she was kind of strange because they were indeed very tired from the tasks and duties they were called to do at a daily basis. But being Pinoy, she just had to have that bath. And I think many of us, if not all, fully understand that.

The bath is very important to the Pinoy that when Ondoy struck and devastated the Filipino people, one of the first projects of two major networks were to put up a paligo (bath) program for the evacuees. Container vans were transformed into little shower rooms for the people and they were given soap, shampoo, and towels. The evacuees were all smiles after their bath.

This reminds me of a time when I was younger. My campus was in Los Banos, Laguna. Nowadays, the students there enjoy a mall and do walk around to do a little ‘malling’, a past time that many Filipinos also enjoy. But during my time, we did not have a mall, there was no such thing, which, I do believe added flavor to my memories of those times. What we had were trees, the campus, and simple places to go to. The most memorable place for me was our movie house. There was a little store on the corner inside the movie theatre. So if you suddenly feel hungry, all you’ve got to do is walk down the stairs and go to the lady on the corner with the dim light to buy your siopao asado or bola-bola. Thus, because of not much places to go to, and the TV of a friend had only 2 channels: channels 9 and 13, what my friends and I did for enjoyment was role-playing, ‘let’s pretend’ and alaskahan. Of course we did our share of gossiping, but gossips can get boring since it is quite pointless. And it is not really fun. So there we were making up our own stories and playing ‘pretend’. One day I entered my friend’s apartment and saw him get the soap from their bathroom and placed it on the corner of their kitchen sink. He put a small towel on his shoulder and turned on the water. He did not know that I was by the door, until, “What are you doing?” I finally asked. “Carla!” my friend shouted. “Good thing you’re here! I really need someone else to do this with me,” he said. “What are you doing, anyway?” I asked again. “ Let’s pretend we’re construction workers and we’ll wash our faces.” I guess that was how bored we were that even face-washing became an activity for us. I looked at my friend, trying to decipher where the thrill was in that. “Carla,” he continued, “ didn’t you ever wonder why construction workers can soap their faces until they’re all white and still be able to keep their eyes open, walk around and talk to their fellow workers?” he asked. “Well,” I took a pause as I tried to put logic in my answer to his question, “there are soaps that are gentle to the eyes, like ‘Dove’.” My friend looked at me with brows that furrowed and said, “I don’t think they use ‘Dove’ in construction sites.”  I saw the sense in my friend’s ‘let’s pretend’ game, so there we were, soaping away. He taught me how the movements of my hands should be as I soap. The hands should not go around they eyes, they should just go up and down over them. My friend set up the ‘Safeguard’ soap and we began:

“Ah…o kumusta ka na ba, Dong? Ow!” (How are you, Dong? Ouch!)

OK naman ako…aray!” (I’m OK…ouch!)

We did our role-playing as construction workers as we tried to fight the pain the suds of the ‘Safeguard’ soap gave us. We found ourselves washing our eyes several times and repeating the practice, trying to keep our eyes open as long as we could while walking around and talking. After that exercise, my friend and I never looked at a construction site with construction workers soaping their faces until they were white  with the same eyes again. Not because our eyes became sore from all the soaping we did, but because we honored the talent and put a high regard to it. So there it is, even in construction sites we see big men soaping their faces while having a chat with each other. A big metal can with water as their timba, and a smaller one as their tabo. 

Next is brushing the teeth after lunch no matter where the Pinoy is, even in malls we see this. During lunch time, I like visiting the ladies’ room and listen to the little conversations our Filipino ladies have while they brush their teeth. I brush my hair and put on my powder and lipstick ever so slowly in the ladies’ room, pretending to mind my own business, focusing only on how I look in the mirror. Little do the salesladies know that I do this while listening to their interesting exchange. Usually they talk about end of contracts, their shifts, what time their vacants are, and where they will go after work (I wonder if I could still call that exploring or just plain ‘nosy’). Many employees bring their toothbrush and toothpaste to work. It is a common practice among Filipinos.

Then there is alcohol and  the not so old product, the alcogel. Filipinos bring one of these in case we need to wash our hands but there is no place to go to that has soap and water, especially because we like munching on a snack so we need to have clean hands for this.

Filipinos put a high value on cleanliness. If there is no water in an area, we will search and look for some. If we need to fall in line and wait even hours to fill up our pails with water, we will do just that. In an area where water is scarce, the nearest faucet or even the nearest body of water will do just to get that refreshing feeling a bath gives one. But maybe it would also be nice if we extend this cleanliness outside of ourselves and to our country. They do not have to be grand acts, but simple things like putting litter in litter baskets. No matter how small our trash is like a candy wrapper, it can wait to be thrown into a trash bin. It should not be placed on our streets and rivers, or the sand and seas.  Another thing we could do perhaps is help our community and our fellow Pinoys to be more conscious and do their part in keeping our streets, beaches, mountains, and bodies of water clean. Then maybe, step by step, little by little, as we do this together, our country shall remain truly ‘The Pearl of the Orient’.