After The Visa Part Two – Culture Shock – Filipinas in Australia

Culture shock something that will always come up for Australian Filipina couples, sometimes mildly and in other cases dramatically. It comes down to your Filipina lady adjusting to how different life in Australia is to the Philippines, and a lot of that has to do with people. When she gets her partner visa and moves to Australia, rest assured it will happen to her to some extent, and you need to be patient and understanding.

In the Philippines, there are people everywhere. I used to joke that there is no word in Tagalog for “privacy”, and that there’s no word for “loneliness” either. How can anyone be lonely when there are so many people everywhere? In the provinces, they get up in the morning early and they open the door. The door stays open until night time. The neighbours, who are usually family, turn up at each others houses more often than they do in an episode of Neighbours on TV! And even without visitors, there are always lots of people in the house. Old people, middle-aged people, younger people, kids and babies. And outside the house, everyone generally walks everywhere. And in the evening they socialise out in the street!

In Australia? In many of the suburbs you could let off a gun and you wouldn’t hit anybody! No one is around, and the neighbours generally don’t know each other and don’t want to know each other. Relatives could be miles away or days away, and no one has 47 cousins all living in a 1km radius! Families consist of mum, dad and kids (2 – 3 only), with no grandparents and no older kids and their families who never left home.

So you can expect she will miss her parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties and uncles very much. She will miss her also all the familiarity of the home where she grew up, and you need to be aware of this. During the day, if she’s left at home while you go to work, your new bride is going to feel lonely for the first time in her life most likely!

What to do to ease the Aussie loneliness? Support network!

Get to know other Filipinas

You can do this yourself even before she arrives. See if you can find some other Aussie Filipina couples in your community, and get to know them beforehand if you can. See if there’s a local Filipino Association. Most areas have them. Or the local Catholic Church is another good place. Or just ask around. Try to look for couples like yourselves rather than Filipino/Filipina couples, as they will be able to relate to you and her better. The idea is that ideally she should have a couple of ladies whom she can talk to on the phone and where they can meet up with to share some smelly fish etc.

And later once she arrives? She will meet other Filipinas when you're out and about. Look for the smile and the upward-eyebrows movement in the supermarket or in other public places. That's their secret code! Next thing you know you'll have some new friends.

Your family

If you are close to your family, then try to get them involved more in your lives than they probably were before. In most cases she will latch onto your mum, and the two will probably get on very well. She will tend to treat older relatives with respect and kindness as like how she would have grown up. Having no family around will seem odd to her, so again try to understand this and try to make it easier for her.

Your friends (?)

Your friends can also be a good support network, but sometimes they are not. I'll explain why:

Some people are closet-racists, and you may not have even realised it because it never came up and because it's no longer normal in Aussie society to go around making "Go back home" comments, but mark my words racism and concepts of white superiority is still alive and well. You need to be very aware of this. It can show up particularly amongst women, some of whom have issues with Aussie men marrying “one of them”, and can see your decision as a rejection of Aussie womanhood on the whole. We lost a few friends after Mila arrived, sorry to say. So please be selective of your friends, as your wife doesn't need people patronising her and your relationship.

And the above can also be mixed up with feminism. Feminism, like any other xenophobic philosophy, mixes very well with racism to the point that the perpetrator doesn't necessarily even see it. There is feminist-racist thinking that says that all Asian women are weak-minded and trained from childhood to be subservient to men, which can bring on patronising attempts to emancipate and free her from her "shackles of slavery" to you. Yes, you will find those who will assume that your wife is your slave and that you are a dominating chauvinist pig who controls her and that she needs rescuing! If your friends show any signs of this, like former friends of mine did, then be prepared to move on.

But if they're OK and you all get on well, and they are supportive? Yes, try to see them as much as possible. But don't be too surprised if your circle of friends changes somewhat.

Yourself!

What she will need most of all is you! This is not the time to take on extra overtime or to go on lots of business trips. I heard a tale of a chap who plonked his wife in a farmhouse in rural South Australia in the middle of winter, then went off shearing! And he was surprised when he returned after a few months that she wasn't there! You need to be very aware of the way things are, and you need to be around and be as patient and as attentive as you possibly can be.

So try to come home early. And try to bring her with you as much as you can. If you're going on an errand somewhere, even if it’s something otherwise boring, bring her with you. Introduce her to nice people. Show her the local sites. Let her see how everything works. Let her see and understand this new country and new society all around her, and she will soon settle in.