One less Pinoy in America

Nestor is going home. You may have heard of him in these pages, but I referred to him as “N.”

He’s my co-worker, a fellow Pinoy, although he’s been with the company for much longer than I have, around 30 years. He’s one of the building maintenance specialists, and his job is to empty the wastebaskets to take the paper in for recycling. He fixes light fixtures when they’re broken, resolves plumbing issues, that sort of thing.

Well, he’s going home. He’s leaving America to go back home to his family in Iloilo after more than 30 years of the Pinoy-in-American life.

I learned of the news in the company newsletter, which I don’t always read, by the way. But a co-worker who knew I’d written about Nestor told me I better check the “Buzz.”

“Why?” I said.

“Your friend Nestor is leaving,” he said.

“Holy cow!” I said to myself. “This is big.”

Then I checked my email and looked for the PDF of the newsletter, and there it was: a photo of Nestor, with a short announcement saying he was leaving the company after 29 years to go back to the Philippines. It was interesting, too, that whoever wrote the piece also referred to Nestor as one of the most well-liked employees in the building. That I can vouch for.

Some of that, I know, comes from the simple fact that he’s been around for such a long time that he knows everyone and everyone knows him. Familiar is nice. But Nestor, too, has always been just a good-natured guy, always smiling and saying hi to everyone.

I haven’t even reached out to him all that much—and one time it was to ask him something about fixing something in the house—but he always comes by my desk when he’s working in our building just to say hi and to see if anything’s going on. If it’s NBA season, we talk Lakers. He’s the talker type, too—he’s the kind of guy that, let’s say you were both just sitting in a porch, shooting the breeze, you wouldn’t notice the time passing by. With Nestor, it would be nightfall, and you wouldn’t mind staying a little longer.

Now, I want to just explain something here. Elsewhere I’ve talked about Pinoys who’ve decided to up and leave America because of the state of the U.S. economy, which up to now hasn’t really shown clear signs of recovering from the recession. It’s caused, I’ve written, many kababayans to go home—either to wait things out or to go home permanently. But I also said that it’s not really as simple as that. It never is. The decision for Pinoys in America (for anyone for that matter) to leave the country isn’t just a matter of, OK, well, the economy’s bad, I’m going home. It always is more nuanced and complex than that. And each situation is different, unique.

Nestor’s case is a perfect example.

“It was time, man,” he told me, when I called him up last week, precisely so I could catch him before he leaves the country. And I’m glad I did because he said he’ll try to catch a flight before the end of the month.

In so many words, he told me that it was time for him to go. His children, whose education is the main reason why he came to America in the first place, were all grown up—one was now working as a nurse in the Middle East. She told him, Nestor said, that he should go home and start taking it easy, he’s doesn’t have much to worry about now. Plus, Nestor continued, he’d been talking to his older brother, who, retired from the U.S. Navy, is now running a 30-hectare tubuhan in Iloilo, and he was telling him that Nestor could just help out in the farm. A job was waiting for Nestor in the Philippines, in other words.

Nestor said that, of course, he would be earning less than what he would make here, but considering everything else, it would make sense if he went home now. He doesn’t want to go home "when he can’t walk anymore,” he told me, half-jokingly.

It does make sense, I thought, when I was hearing Nestor’s words, and I was happy for him. On many occasions he’s told me he was tired of life here. And given the state of the company we work for, just to give one example, it’s easy to understand why. Even I have found things extremely challenging at work at times, after the company cut our benefits and pay.

Nestor and I had to cut our phone conversation short, he had to go. I told him if he had time and if he was in the area, to give me a call, maybe we could hang out for a little bit. I’m going to miss him. But I’m happy for him—and for his family. I can see Nestor now, back in Iloilo, shooting the breeze with his old friends and his wife and kids (I think he also has grandkids now, I’m not sure). I can see him smiling and talking, regaling everyone with his adventures in America. He’s relaxed, happy. A contented man.

The end of the month is just a few days away. I doubt I’ll see Nestor again, I mean before he leaves. Maybe I’ll look him up in Iloilo one of these days—that would be fun.

In the meantime my own story continues. Many years from now, when I tell people of my time in these parts, I won’t forget to talk about Nestor, my friend and at one time fellow Pinoy in America.