culture | Binitay Documentary

April 11, 2016

Oral history and Lineage

As the years pass I’ve grown fascinated with this relationship and kinship of my biological family back home. After building my relationship with my biological extended relatives through the power of Skype video chats, Facebook messenger, and Viber calls, it’s my recent trip in May, 2015 where staying with my biological cousins’ place in Caduawan and Danao for five weeks found me most intrigued with this post-reunion and birth family search.

It is through the intergenerational dialogue and spending time with my biological relatives that I learned more about myself and had to unlearn in my case study papers that I was a “foundling”. When speaking with my 94 year old lola at the time, I asked her if I was given a birth name by my mother. She replied, “Isagani”.

A friend of mine who works for the InterCountry Adoption Board (ICAB) -Philippines told me the translation of my name. She said it translates from Bisaya; one of the major language groups in the Philippines, where “Isa” means one or only one and “Gani” in the Bisayan language is a term for affirmation or a yes. So the name all together loosely means “Yes you are my only one” or “Yes you are my one and only”

Each discovery while large or small helps me piece back together a part of my ethnic cultural identity which I had lost, because it is too easy to learn what people call “American” or “Western” culture when you’re surrounded by it everywhere you go and have nothing that reflects your own roots. Documenting this experience makes these experiences immortal allowing me to physically reflect upon it.

Help me continue to document these stories in my next film as I put together these collective narrative of my biological family.

I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Indiegogo campaign at https://igg.me/at/OnceUponAnOchia-/x

–> Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/binitaydoc

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

September 8, 2013September 8, 2013

My other home. The Philippine American Culture Center of Michigan (PACCM)

It’s been over a month since I’ve seen most of my fellow Filipinos or kababayan in the states who had supported me in my trip. Today begins the first day of Paaralang Pilipino or Filipino school at the Philippine American Culture Center of Michigan (PACCM).

This year also marks the 4th year that I’ve been a facilitator and mentor for the Paaralang Pilipino school classes. Those are the Beginners Tagalog and the Filipino Youth Initiative class for the thirteen and older age group. Prior to teaching I also was once a student in these classes. I look back at the struggles of identity and searching for where I belonged in the midst of reclaiming and finding home in my community. For my experience but maybe not for others, there’s an interesting sense of kinship regardless of being adopted and that I’m still seen as a Filipino. However, during the struggle there were times where involvement and trying to find home, I didn’t always feel like I belonged.

As a student I enjoyed coming here but in my heart I was an outsider. I stayed persistent but at times I wanted to drop everything, leave the community and stay who I was before. I thought to myself, if I did that, then I would be waving the white flags and surrendering. Just giving up on searching and finding out my roots and culture would be the ultimate injustice and wouldn’t have given me the opportunities to have met the most amazing people during this journey who helped keep my head up and supported me and possibly not have any of my questions answered.

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I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Kickstarter campaign at http://kck.st/filipinoadoptee

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

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August 6, 2013

Sitting in the Terminal

Filipino Heritage Camp is now over. It was a successful camp like every year meeting new smiling faces as well as seeing old ones. During the camp and even now, I’ve been hit with an array of emotions. There are no rational meanings behind them. I don’t know what they mean just yet. They are however a spectrum of both positive, negative, and neutral or empty emotions. Not empty as in depressed but they are still being unraveled I guess like a ball of yarn. Rather than layers of an onion I’ve learned that everything is more like a ball of yarn where you unravel and unwind it, and every emotion is interconnected to others somehow.

It hasn’t hit me yet that I’m going to finally search and have a reunion as well. I’m beyond fortunate again to have been given this opportunity. Although I’ve wanted to go since I was younger, and especially when I was 18 years old, I feel as if a chain of events has fallen into place and certain things have to had impacted, shaped my life, and helped me grow, mature and evolve as a person for me to take on this venture.

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013

Foiled Plans & Flight Plan

With less than a day to leave on my trip it has not sunk in…

Several times since I was 18 I always wanted to go back to the Philippines and search for both my foster family and my birth family. It would constantly fall through. I’d be invited by people to be accompanied by them when they go on vacation but I don’t blame them that they didn’t tell they were going. It’s their vacation. My trip is more personal. I’m beyond fortunate to be given this opportunity to not only reconnect with my foster family but also do this biological family search. Thankfully, I’ll be able to document this experience as well.

It is the most difficult time right now for me to fathom that I’ll be going back. It has not totally sunk and set in that I’ll be seeing my ‘birth place’. It hasn’t really hit me that I’ll be seeing these foster family relatives and experiencing the Philippines. Lastly, it has not ht me that I’ll be making this search for self real.

I feel as if that all of this has been postponed for a reason. Things had to happen within a series of events first before I could make this happen. This would not have happened without your understanding and support.

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I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Kickstarter campaign at http://kck.st/filipinoadoptee

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

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July 6, 2013July 6, 2013

Shared Self

[4 days left for my Kickstarter Campaign]

I was at work and was waiting on a customer a year ago. She comes in pretty often with her son and daughter. I found out later after politely asking her if they were adopted because both her and husband are white Caucasian while here children are Latino. I find out before she left that she adopted them from Guatemala.

When she told me that they were adopted I told her I was too. She then asked from where and how old I was when I was adopted and I told her that I was adopted from the Philippines at the age of three. She then told her son that I was adopted too and I thought it was cute because he asked if I was Guatemalan as well. She then told him “Not all adopted children are Guatemalan”, since his adopted sister is from Guatemala as well and I believe they are biological siblings.

This made me think of past times that I was working and she has come in, her adoptive son that is probably around six years old, would stare at me all the time. I told her how he would do that after today and also noted that he probably thought I was Guatemalan too. She smiled back and told me, “Yeah I think he looks for other people who look like him as well”.

Many flashbacks of when I was his age came into existence and when I would subconsciously look for other people who were like me or looked like me too.

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I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Kickstarter campaign at http://kck.st/filipinoadoptee

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

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