Confessions of a Reluctant Convent School Girl

Like most Filipinas, I went to an all girls’ school run by nuns. In the Philippines, especially in the 1960s-1990s, there wasn’t much integration of sexes in schools. Girls went to school with girls and boys went with boys.

That pretty much is the tradition in my family – we only ever encountered the opposite sex at university. Usually, you go to the school attended by the elders in the family when you were growing up.

These schools are mostly run by religious orders of every sort. How progressive or regressive they were in terms of teachings and environments were and remain dictated by the order.  My brothers (and uncles and grandfathers) had the luck to be in a school run by the Jesuits – notably the most progressive order. I went to the school attended by my aunt. During her time, it was incredibly prestigious and their class rosters were dominated by important family names. When I entered it was still alright but by the time I hit high school, they forgot it was the 1980s and went back to even stricter, more ridiculous, incredibly regressive ideas of womanhood. It was only later in life that I learned the order then was actually run by German nuns.

That was the worst – a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns.

I digress. I like saying that as an excuse to explain how I turned out this way.

Anyway, pretty much from day one, religion, specifically, Roman Catholic doctrine is staple food for any child in the Philippine educational system.

From day one, I HATED it with a passion. I hated the subject and did everything I could to give the nuns and my teachers a terrible time. I was an absolute tiny terror. Making teachers cry and getting the nuns to lose their tempers was something I looked forward to on a daily basis. Sometimes, I won and sometimes I lost and got punished.

It didn’t matter – I HATED religion classes with a passion. No let me be clearer – I HATED everything they did in that school.

I absolutely detested the way they painted God as someone who was obsessed with doling out punishments. I hated the way they squashed any questions they could not answer about faith, about their conscious promotion that God wanted women to be docile, idiotic, unquestioning, unthinking, unblinking, perpetually smiling, “nice and simple” sheep following their damned idiot of a shepherd.

I may have been all of nine years old but even then I thought to myself, “If that’s the life I’m supposed to lead, I think I’ll follow the devil instead”. And follow the devil I did.

Looking back I suppose it really was in my nature any way to question everything. Everyone who knows me can attest to my personal nature as being incredibly defiant of any sort of authority and would instigate an argument quicker than you can sneeze. I cannot explain it but even now that I am an adult, I still have the incredible tendency to go left when everyone is going right and right when everyone says left.

It did not help matters at all during my schooling that my aunt told me “You don’t have to accept everything they tell you in school as the truth. You can think for yourself. If you don’t believe what they are telling you, then you should tell them. They cannot hold it against you for believing differently”.

My aunts were all American entrenched immigrants encouraging an exceptionally defiant Filipino 9 year old studying in a Roman Catholic school run by German nuns. I think that was God’s funny idea of “if you’re going to make a situation explosive, don’t hold back on the gasoline.” He certainly made sure there was lots of it and I was an incredibly enthusiastic flame-throwing participant.

Sometime before I went on to high school, my aunts were forcing me to move to 2 other schools due to the changes in the way my school was being run. Unfortunately, both of those schools had an extra year in primary school (what we used to call 7^th grade). In my school, we only had 6 years then we moved on to high school. I could not for the life of me stomach the idea of adding another year to my personal hell. Every year, they forced me to take the exams for the other 2 schools. I always passed them then I stonewalled about moving. Finally, they gave up and let me be. I sighed with relief knowing I would be gone in 4 years instead of 5.

My hatred of all things ‘nuns’ and ‘religious’ led to my considering a solitary application to a university that was public therefore non-religious. Luckily it happened to be and remains the premier university in the Philippines. God must’ve decided to give me a break because I got exactly into the course I applied for without any difficulties. Had I failed, there would have been a lot of explaining to do as I hadn’t applied to any other university.

Looking back, I don’t blame my elders for putting me in that school. Neither do I blame the nuns because they were simply doing what they believed was right. They were all simply following tradition and hey, it worked out for my brothers who are both kind, intelligent, well bred and well spoken in the tradition of men that their school like to make. I on the other hand, remain this formless mass who still likes to make lots of noise, the only difference being, I now wear make-up.

My main terror in life is giving birth to a mini-me, which is not unlikely. However, I already have a head start because there is absolutely NO way I will be putting her in a school run by nuns. On second thought, it could actually be fun….hmmmm….my second wind at torturing nuns this time with a miniature sidekick. Now THAT is a thought. 

I'm Filipino and I Cried While Reading in an English Bookshop

crying in public. that is NOT the done thing in the country where i currently live. the brits are astonishingly reserved. foreigners mistake their utter respect for personal privacy and utter shyness for coldness and aloofness. trust me - many of them are wonderful, warm, kind and sincere. you just have to understand that to be british means very careful observance of, avoiding intrusion and utter consideration of personal space. its the total opposite of us filipinos who think nothing of smiling at and chatting with completely random strangers and telling them about the inner workings of our lives at the drop of a hat.

anyways, i am in a certain life state. if you say AGAIN it means you either know me very well and you understand OR you don't know me very well but you have been reading my blog postings IN SPITE OF.

i needed to clear my head so i went out for a walk. i went into my neighborhood bookshop and as i am always wont to do, was browsing around reading random chapters of several books.

for some strange reason, i picked up the alchemist by paolo coelho. i had read that book early when it came out and i LOVED it. i loved it so much, i re-read it a dozen times in three days and i think in that space in time, i internalized it.

i sat down in a corner of the shop and started reading it. at his opening message, i started to cry and before i knew it, i was sniffing away while turning the pages.

the alchemist is an incredibly easy read. you can read it within an hour and a half. the beauty of the book though is hidden within the deceptively conversational writing are deep messages about personal destiny,    personal prophecy, love and conversing with God.

i realized while re-reading it, how much actually my life has been like that of the shepherd who, on the basis of a dream he had one night, found the courage within him to meet a king, sell his flock, lose his money to a robber,  sell crystal and tea, cross the dessert with an englishman, fall in love, meet the alchemist, predict an invasion, turn himself into the wind, have his money stolen from him and beaten to within an inch of his life, return to where he always was and find his treasure and fulfill his promise to his Fatima.

strangely, the same things i found resonant then were the same things that made me cry.

the shepherd's father, giving him money and his blessings to sell his flock in order for his son to fulfill his dream of travelling - and seeing in his father's eyes the dream that continued to burn. it was the dream of travelling which he had all those years buried because he was concerned with food, water and shelter for his family.

the crystal shop owner who told the shepherd - 'you know i will never go to mecca even if it has been my dream. some people are only meant to continue dreaming of what they want and that is enough. for me that is enough. you on the other hand are made to realize your dream and that is why i know, that you are not going back to your sheep,  you are going to the pyramids. you may go, you have my blessing'

the shepherd, when he falls in love for the first time, realizes, it is the first time he ever wanted to live in one place forever.

the alchemist telling the shepherd, when he was wavering in his decision to leave his Fatima, tells him if you have found something truly lasting, it will still be there waiting for you when you get back. if it was nothing but a spark, it will be gone when you get back therefore it would have meant nothing to go back for anyway. and love, said the alchemist, does not stand in the way of personal destiny. it is love that will bring you to it.

too many beautiful things in that book. too many that were too resonant in my life...too many parallels.
if you don't know anything about it, the alchemist is a fable about following your dream.

 i cried silently for the hour and a half that i re-read the book.

i'm filipino and i cried while reading in an english bookshop.