A whole new family

(My Filipino cousins)

(Nang Tita, my Filipino grandma)

(my mom with her sisters)

While growing up, I always understood a couple things about their time in the Davao: they had their own house, but they lived in the family "compound" of a family and they had a teenage girl that lived with them as their "helper". These things became a lot more real to me when we arrived in Davao. First, the family, I will get to Patring in a later post . . .

We were picked up from the airport by Tombok, one of the little sisters of the Agton family. When my parents lived there, they were adopted by Mnang Tita and Mnoy Juanito (mnang and mnoy being honorifics for respected community members) who were a teacher and banker respectively who had 7 children between the ages of 9 and 18. Of these children, one has since passed away (along with his father) and one (the oldest daughter) lives in New Jersey. The others all live with or near their mother who recently celebrated her 80th birthday surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But I figured all this out later. Over the nextfew days I would be introduced to a dizzying array of family members (not to mention all of the families of Juanito's brothers and sisters whom we didn't really meet, but occasionally talked about).

Immediately I knew this was a special family when I met Mama Tita. She is everything I would want to be when I'm 80- strong, opinionated and sharp. She is still very much in charge of the family and she has to stay sharp to keep control over the masses.

Jojo, Bobong, Nimrod, Tombok and Nene (in case you are wondering, nicknames are very common- I'm no sure of everyone's real name, but Nene is actually Jane, for example) all welcomed my parents as if they were very a respected Aunt and Uncle. The kids, were a little slower to warm up to me, but soon I had made good friends with my new "cousins" especially KJ and Shingay (also nicknames of course). Over he next few days we were taken all around the city by various family members- up to the Eden nature park with Bok and Nene, to the Philippine Eagle sanctuary and People's Park by Nimrod and to the beach with half the family. Jojo and Bong were mostly busy with their own things- Jojo raises cocks for fighting (a long held Filipino tradition) and Bong was running in the local election (against his aunt and at least one cousin) for the neighborhood council. I get the feeling that no matter who you voted for, they might be related somehow, or at least someone's god parent or something- it's that kind of place and that kind of family.

Climbing the family tree

A few years ago, my good friend Tara moved to Norway after meeting and falling in love with a young Norwegian man (they met at an animal rescue reserve in Bolivia of all places . . . I guess thats how love is sometimes). Anyway, so Tara moved to Norway, got her Masters degree and then a job working in human rights and has been living there for about four years. When I moved to Europe, we sent plenty of messages back and forth about visiting each other or meeting somewhere, but you know how these things go. As I planned my trip though, I decided that Norway isn't really that much out of the way when you are already planning on being in northern Europe and Russia, so I decided to make a detour. In the meantime, Tara was also planning the next stage of her life- law school. As I figured out the dates I would need to travel and decided that I would go home for my friend Nichole's wedding, I let Tara know- perfect, she would be leaving Norway the next week to move home to Colorado. This would be a crazy time, but I was always welcome to a spot on her couch.

My great-grandfather on my mothers side was Norwegian, which makes me 1/8 Norwegian. I have never felt particularly Norwegian as I have more Russian (1/4), Polish (1/4), German (1/4) and because of my curly red hair and freckles people often think that I am Scottish (1/16??) or Irish (0). My mom has always identified more with the Norwegian side of her family as she grew up a "Berg", but she has never visited Norway. When I told her about Tara's invitation she decided that she would meet me there for a week. My mom looked up info that she had about her grandfather's family including a genealogy that some aunt or cousin had put together from a family bible and a letter from her aunt talking about a visit to Norway about 30 years ago. We had a destination, we had the information, Norway ho!!!

Since Tara lives in a small (but very nice) apartment and with my mom coming, the whole sleeping on the floor thing wasn't really going to work. Luckily that Norwegian guy that she was with also had a lovely Norwegian family and his sister was going to be out of town for the week, so we could use her place, perfect! It was also nice to be out of the way since as I mentioned Tara and Tor were getting ready to move back to Denver also and they were packing up their place (including selling off some furniture-there's a funny story about selling their bed, but that's for Tara to tell).

Anyway, I arrived from Kiev and my mom arrived from America (first class on the first flight she tried, flying standby which I will talk more about when I get to the part about going home). Tara made dinner and we went to crash in our gorgeous apartment. The next day, we went on our family searching expedition. Based on the letter from my great-aunt Doris, we knew that we should go to the village of Prestfloss and look for the museum there. We took two buses from Oslo and arrived at the small village museum of the Sigdal and Eggdal valleys. After a few minutes of searching around we found the caretaker of the museum, Sigrid. We told her that we had good reason to believe that our family was from this area and that one of the houses in the museum was from our families farm. I have no idea how Aunt Dorris had found this information, but it turned out to be correct. Sigrid showed us around, including in the "Bergen farm house" a typical farm house from the 1750s donated to the museum by the family, and also a nice exhibit of musical instruments. When we sat down in the museum shop for some waffles and tea, Sigrid went and got "the book," a record of the family genealogies for all of the local farms. On the Bergen farm we found my great-great-great-grandmother Kari who left in 1854 for America with two young kids including Marte my great-great-grandmother. In the book we found that her brother had stayed on the farm and in fact his decedents still owned the farm to this day- we had cousins! Sigrid knew the family (of course) and so she called them up. The farm is run by a bachelor and his sister is married and lives nearby. This brother and sister are my 6th cousins (I think???). The sister's husband (former mayor and history teacher) came to the museum to drive us over to the farm and introduce us to the family. Maybe I'm just dreaming here, but I could see some family resemblance- the farmer looks uncannily like my grandfather- the same thin frame, the same features; they could be cousins. . .

One interesting thing for Americans traveling abroad is explaining to people the "Heinz 57" mix that many Americans are, especially after a few generations. In Albania, I got the question all the time "what is your origin- Albanian?" since one way that they could explain my presence in their country was that I was Albanian originally. When I would answer with my litany of origins they would be amazed. I don't think about my different backgrounds so much and I don't think that most Americans do anymore. This was the first time that I had gone searching for my roots; it was interesting, but I don't know if it made me feel more Norwegian. It was nice to be there with my mom, because she was excited about it and it was fun to see her so happy. And it is kind of cool to know I have family- somewhere out there.