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

When back in France, I had then little time to organize my marriage and to inform my family and my friends there. For my family and especially for my mother, the news was well received. For my friends it was more mitigated, they wondered what had been able to push me with such a fast decision in such a distant place.

Already at the end of October after having taken our decision, Dhana and I had started the processing of our legal papers through the consulate of France of Manila to get married in conformity with the French law. We had passed the premarital medical consultation and the file was to be sent to the city hall of 20th district in Paris for publication of the banns. I was relieved only when I saw them posted around the end December.

Another step was much more amusing. It consisted of going to see my parish priest and to ask him to write me a certificate of good morality required by the Filipino priest to marry us. My poor old priest was dumbfounded because he had never seen me before. He told me that he should refer about it to his hierarchy. His bishop assures him that this practice existed in certain countries and they gave me satisfaction. In any event with Dhana they were going to gain a regular churchgoer.

In fact the most difficult was to find a summer suit in December in Paris. Luckily my good friend Valerie helped me to choose it. I wanted to get married dressed according to the French tradition.

All the rest I conceded it to my in laws. It was especially Leth the accountant who took care as well as possible of my finances. Rare enough to mention even today in the Philippines where the foreigners too often thought to be an ATM.

January 9 was finally the day of my departure and the following day I was again in Manila where I booked again in Las Palmas hotel, which had become my local HQ.

I was immediately taken in the swirl of the preparations including the religious ones for me who had never been confessed before; I had to do it in English.

On January 17, the marriage was scheduled at 8 am in the Santo Niño church of Pandacan and would be followed of a breakfast in a restaurant. The number of guests of my future in laws reached the hundred and on my side I had sent only ten invitations to friends and French residents. No member of my family or Jacques had been able to come. However Dhana and me had already envisaged organizing in February a party in France for my family, my friends and my colleagues.

The day of the marriage, it was a cousin of Dhana, Eddy who visited me and to help me in preparing myself. He was so short that he had to climb on a chair to fix my bow tie.

The ceremony passed like a dream. The breakfast followed in a restaurant where my magnums of Bordeaux wine were drank before I had a chance to drink one glass.

I have to say that at the time I was so mad some with the French residents I had invited and who did not come and did not even take the trouble to excuse themselves. They were Jean-Pierre G, André S and Pierre V. At least two of them are still in Manila.

On the other hand Jeff, the British-Australian, and his wife Leova attended the marriage as Jean-Jacques who had delayed a voyage to Hong Kong for us.

I have to say about Jean-Jacques that he was the cousin of a colleague that was how I had met him. It had important businesses in Gabon in Africa but shared his life between Thailand and the Philippines. I knew he had certain tendencies but I was flabbergasted a few months to see him interviewed in the infamous TV broadcast which did so much wrong to the image of the Philippines, "the pavements of Manila." It took part in it as a notorious pedophile. I agree that the subject was serious and authentic but why choosing to show the French public the sewers rather than the good side of a country so little known as the Philippines. Later still I saw Jean-Jacques picture in a large magazine and this time it was in Thailand. Not only did he like teenager boys and girls but he also enjoyed notoriety. I never met or heard of him again.

As for Jeff, his projects were to have a resort built in Puerto Galera but I will go back to that later.

Dhana worked then for a well-known man, Attorney Oledan, who had a whole building in Makati and was also a friend of the Marcos dictator. As I had been engaged to one of his two secretaries, he had wanted to meet me. Consequently he invited us for our honeymoon to be his guests in the Baguio country club of which it was member, as long as we would like to stay there.

Thus the following day of our wedding Dhana and I took the bus for Baguio where I had already been with Françoise in May 80. Unfortunately because of the annoyances and slowness of the Philippines administration we were able to stay there only three days.

With great relief our family record book, essential for my wife's visa, was issued one or two days before our departure date.

We were at the beginning of February and it was time for me to begin a new life but what to say of Dhana who was leaving her family, her friends and the Philippines for a country that she didn't know, covered with snow when we arrived and where she did not speak the language.