To Be Or Not To Be
That is, indeed, always a question.
In 2011, I went to Iligan City for college. It was an exciting time because, aside from the fact that college itself is an exciting idea, the idea of a city is even more.
You see, if you live in a province, all the media that you have consumed will always feature that wild and free city life. Cities always meant something more, something better.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not exactly how it was on TV, it’s city life. It also doesn’t matter that your province is a conservative community; people will still be saying, “Why don’t you get yourself together? Look at Pah Garwas’ daughter. She passed the entrance exam and is now studying in Iligan City!” And when you return home, an entourage of stares and gossips will greet you, but it will not be too bad. It will be coated with admiration and envy.
So there was I, geared up in my sling bag and all-new school supplies. I knew that we had to introduce ourselves on the first day of class, and this made me pumped up. It was exciting, but at the same time nerve-wracking. I mean, we all went through the toxic cycle of thoughts that started with, “What if nobody likes me?” and ended with, “I hope everything’s going to be okay.”
At this point in my life, I’ve always felt like I could give more, do more, and be more, but I didn’t have many opportunities back home. It also didn’t feel like someone would care. So, being able to introduce myself in a place where nobody knows about me felt like the first opportunity. Added to this are the possibilities that being in a city can open up for me. It expanded what this whole experience meant.
When it was finally time to introduce myself, it went smoothly. I didn’t find it daunting once I started talking, and it wasn’t difficult to find friends. In fact, before I knew it, I became a part of a click. However, there was one thing that bothered me.
In my introduction, I had to tell them that I come from the southernmost island of the country, that the border of Malaysia is closer to our island than the next city in the Philippines. I had to explain that I do not know how to speak the language used in the city, but I can speak Tagalog and English, the two official languages. So then they asked me what language I used back home. I told them it was Sinama. Nobody knew that. So I tried saying I also speak Tausug, the language of Jolo, which is the nearest city to the province. They all went, “Aah!”
My teacher then asked, “But what is Sinama?”
I scrambled to explain it. So I said it’s the main language used in my province. We are called the Sama people, and our language is called Sinama. They weren’t satisfied. In a desperate attempt to explain, I said that it’s similar to the one used by the Badjaos.
“Oh! The ones who beg for money on the streets!” Exclaimed one of my classmates.
The class laughed, and so did I. What I didn’t realize was that I was laughing at myself.
One thing that is obvious is that even though my people and the Badjaos belong to the same tribe, I don’t identify with them in culture, religion, or lifestyle. They, too, felt the same way about us. We are more different from each other than we are similar.
The Sama live mainly in the southern half of the Sulu Archipelago, in the southwestern Philippines. The Sama divide themselves into two basic categories: the land-oriented Sama (sometimes called Sama Dilaya or Sama Diliya), who are typically associated with a specific geographic location, and the nomadic or formerly nomadic sea-based Sama Dilaut, often called “sea gypsies,” who historically lack such geographic ties.
- Virginia Gorlinski (2023)
I didn’t think much about what happened, but it did bother me that I couldn’t explain my ethnicity. It was so simple that it should have been easy, but I found myself struggling to describe it. I knew my tribe and my people, but I knew too little — so much so that I can even laugh at it ignorantly.
So I was stuck in the middle. I couldn’t decide if I should fully claim that I am a Badjao, since I also heard some of my families claim that there are no barriers between the two groups of people except that some of us settled on land while others lived on the seas and the simple fact that we had different ways of life. At present, the Sama Daleya (or Sama Diliya) have become more advanced than the Sama Dilaut, the Badjaos.
At the back of my mind, it became a matter of simply identifying as a Badjao to cut the conversation short. Although I went back and forth when they asked me to elaborate.
“To be or not to be, that is indeed the question.”
When I became comfortable in college, I started blending in, but being different became my asset.
Everyone asked what it was like in my province, why they hadn’t heard about us, whether we tried crossing countries to Malaysia since it was so near, and more questions.
So, giddy by this sudden interest shown towards me, I told them that we had eleven island municipalities. There were constant blackouts, the network connection is poor, and we use wooden ships we call lansa to travel between the islands. I also told them how it has become the norm to have Malaysian relatives and that we can start traveling to Sabah, Malaysia, in the morning and arrive in the afternoon only using the same wooden ship or even smaller ferries.
I proudly shared that my province has a very diverse culture influenced by Arab, Malay, American, Chinese, and Hindi media. I told them that I grew up listening to Malaysian songs and watching Hindi movies. Some of the words we use come from the Arabic language, as influenced by our religion, and these words have no direct translation in Sinama. I also told them that most of the big businesses that we have are owned by Chinese migrants.
Having shared all of these, I became a unique character in my group. We would exchange words from our languages and laugh together because it sounded weird and funny. My classmate became proud to point out that I came from the farthest island whenever we met other people. It was not always a good thing, but I always wore this jumbled identity as an asset.
However, these did not really contribute to the definition of what my tribe is. What is Sama? It became a part of my identity, yes. In fact, my personality is heavily influenced by these foreign media, hence my romanticized version of the city. But it did not have anything to do with being a Sama.
I was merely borrowing from cultures that weren’t mine.
Slowly, I started to feel pathetic to be in the middle of all of these people who were sure of themselves, while I wasn’t sure about most things in myself.
My hometown is two flights and a thirteen-hour bus ride away. It was very far, and at the time, it felt even farther.
At one point, it felt like I didn’t have an identity, and so I asked another set of questions: So who am I then? Who should I be?
“To be or not to be, is that even the question?”
It wasn’t such a difficult question when I was younger because I just had to say what I wrote on the ethnicity section of a personal data sheet. But living my cultural identity has always been a challenge because, while I belong to one, I identify with more than one.
My grandparents always reminded us of the pangaddatan, the practice, of our people. We were people who did not abandon our families. We were people of peace. We come from Malaysia and Indonesia, and most of our relatives are in those countries.
My parents told us stories about our grandparents, distant uncles, this one foolish cousin, or that one rich aunt. And whenever they told these stories, it was always full of affection and longing. We were taught about our traditions and culture ever since we were younger.
However, we also grew up with all these other foreign cultures that we could not fit into one box. And now I realize that perhaps that was the point — that it’s not about fitting everything into a box or that it shouldn’t have to be one box only.
I grew up dancing pangalay, our traditional dance, and at the same time singing Britney Spears songs. And because this is how I grew up, this is my identity now. Still a Sama, only with a modern outlook on life and a more open mind than the community.
Slowly, I learned more and more about my culture. I engage more with my community now that I work as a teacher. I deal with students from all these eleven island municipalities and adjust to them. I proudly associate with Badjaos, and I have met amazing people from this side of the tribe. I, in fact, fell in love with my culture and am now writing literary pieces about it.
I realized that just because I didn’t know much about my people doesn’t mean that I’m not part of the tribe. Accepting this and the fact that there was no point in choosing one ethnicity or identity helped me broaden my understanding of my people and of myself.
I have many regrets about the time that I spent in Iligan City, and some of those are that; I wish I had known more about my culture, learned earlier that I didn’t need to identify with one culture, and that there is no hierarchy in culture.
I am a Sama, particularly a Sama Daleya. I grew up in diversity, and so I am multilingual. I speak four languages: I dream in Sinama, I communicate most comfortably in Tagalog, I interact with my community in Tausug, and I think and express myself best in English. So —
