A Woman's Life Journey

Reading her blog, Julia sounded to me like the typical ‘Kano’ who is adjusting to life in the Philippines. There is an amused awareness of the extremely diverse economic difference in the lifestyle in cities and that of the provinces. There is excitement in the discovery of the Tagalog language and so you try to inject the few words that become familiar into your everyday conversation. Often times, it is the common phrases that Filipinos use that easily get remembered like – ingat ka (take care); eto, buhay pa (well, still alive); the meals – almusal, (breakfast) tanghalian (lunch) and hapunan (dinner); and the family’s nanay, tatay, ate, kuya (or mother, father, older sister and older brother).

In her blog, she shares in her stories the enormous hospitality of the Filipinos to her group. As a member of the Peace Corps, she lived with ‘foster families’, often in economically challenged situations and in homes with hardly the basic essentials that people from the First World have been so used to that they take it for granted. It is a luxury for homes in provinces to have a flush toilet, a shower and air-conditioning. In her adventures in the Philippines, she acknowledges this in almost the same breath as her appreciation for her foster family’s warmth and generosity. Her ‘foster sister’ offers to wash her clothes (by hand, for sure and not with a washing machine). Her ‘foster parents’ sleep on the living room floor so she can have their bedroom. And she tells stories of how people are always happy, always finding the sunnier side of life despite the hardships. She enjoys her new celebrity status, when people constantly adored her caucasian features and greeted her "ma'am" or 'Julia Roberts'. Kids followed her around, adoring her and probably young pre-pubescent boys developing crushes on her.

I imagine that after 2 years, she had adapted well into the country that she has become familiar with the people and the culture. Definitely much different from the world she had known when she was still based in New York City.

Today on the bus I sat next to a woman who was on the cellphone ttalking to her friend and she was crying. It isn’t so unusual when you are in Manhattan to see people cry in public. People scream on their cellphones on the street, break up with their sweethearts in bars or do just about everything out in public. Everyone is their own soap opera here. But this afternoon, despite I was reading my book, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop when the woman began to narrate how her friend Julia might have fallen victim in the mountains of Batad.

Then I realized that she was talking about Julia Campbell, the New Yorker who traded her life in the city and to join the Peace Corps. In 2005, she was assigned to the Philippines and based on her blog has traveled around the country to help in various relief missions.

On 11 April, she decided to hike the rice terraces in the mountains of Batad and was never seen again. Today in the news, Philippines authorities are claiming that the decomposing body found in a shallow muddy grave might be Julia.

It is disheartening that the good intentions of a woman like Julia were reciprocated with such violence. I hope the world will not think that Filipinos in general would be so ungrateful. Like any other country, there are a few exceptions to the general – despite the many kind hearted, loving and genuinely good natured people living in constant struggle and hope for a better life, there are also a few whose minds are just twisted. Just like in any other place – in urban or rural setting, it is a matter of misfortune that had befallen her to have found a wrong turn on the road that led her to these hooligans.

In the wake of other stories that banner today’s headlines of lives wasted in senseless deaths, I wish we can all celebrate Julia Campbell’s life and how the people she had gotten to know in the Philippines have become part of her life. And I hope people will remember most about her would be how she had found a country that had readily welcomed her as one of them and how she had grown to call it her own.

My deepest sympathies to her family and the friends who grieve for her tonight.

Julia Campbell's Blog: http://juliainthephilippines.blogspot.com/

Picture credits are from her blog also.