Photos et lettres des Philippines, de France et d'ailleurs

When back in Manila, Jacques renewed contact with his girlfriend Perlita and me with my pen pal Dhana. In fact the true first name of Dhana was Josefina but like so many Filipinas, she had a nickname. At 25 years old, Dhana, worked as legal secretary in Makati, the business district of Metro Manila. Everyday I waited for her after the offices hours and we spent all the evenings and weekends together.

After two weeks Dhana thought that it was time to introduce me to her mother and her youngest sister. The second, Leth, whose true name was Lolita, knew me since the beginning, as she was our chaperon as it was at the time the custom in decent families.

The mother had raised herself her three daughters and provided for the needs of the family by selling fishes at the market. Abandoned by her husband, a good for nothing, drinker and gambler, she had succeeded in giving a College education to her 3 daughters. Dhana thus was a secretary, Leth the second and the most active, was already chief accountant and the youngest Lheng whose true name was Calipay (Joy in the Visayas dialect) was still a student in Education. The family lived in the district of Pandacan which standing was hardly higher than a slums area. No wonder Dhana had hesitated to take me along with Jacques, as she was ashamed of the place where they lived and where the railway was within a few centimeters of the wall, thus giving us the feeling that the trains were passing in the room. However the interior was clean and tidy. Nevertheless Leth never took along any of her friends in this house.

As I grew up in a working class family, I was more interested in the quality of the people than the living conditions and. I was not shocked. Furthermore Leth was already planning the buying of a new house in lot in Bacoor, 25 km from there.

The departure approached and one Sunday we went to see the ballet " The Sleeping Beauty" in the new Cultural Center built on Imelda Marcos initiative. In the evening our chaperon left us for a while and my thoughts were all puzzled in my head. What was I going to do? Going back to France and live alone again? I had let pass my chances on several occasions and the only girls in their 30s whom I now met in France were passably complicated even bloody nuisances. So far I did not know yet that Filipinas could be also nuisances but it is an other story and of course Dhana is not concerned. I did not believe either in a long correspondence or in endless engagement and then I was running to 36 years. In 1980 it was almost unthinkable in the Philippines to ask her to live in with me without being married. And then how about the legal papers, visa etc. and most important my job was in France.

So on the spur of the moment I proposed her to marry me trusting my instinct and my feelings. She answered in the affirmative. Later we acknowledged while joking than we had both regretted at the moment the words pronounced with haste. Here I was, the dice were thrown and the marriage scheduled in Manila for January 17, 1981.

Jacques who knew Dhana well congratulated us for our decision. Another French Jean-Jacques called me an idiot after I broke the news but then after meeting Dhana said that I was not such an idiot after all.