“Are you back in the Philippines? Why did you come back?” a source asked me one day, when I was asking for information for a report.

Not this question again, I thought. I’ve run out of ways to answer that question, and frankly, my family is also running out of ways to understand why I keep coming back.

I’ve just come from an extended 3-month stay in the United Kingdom, where my family lives. It was only supposed to be for one month, but the new UK COVID-19 variant closed the border and forced me to extend for another month.

The second extension was, well, out of coercion, premised on the need to help my sister settle into a new home, but with an undercurrent of staying longer.

“I see that the kidnap Lian operation has succeeded?” our friend said when she found out I had said yes to staying in the UK until March. My friends in the Philippines told me to tell my family I would lose my job if they didn’t let me go.

Well, wouldn’t my family like that? I can’t, and don’t, blame them. The government is trying to shut Rappler down, my boss keeps getting arrested, one of our younger reporters has just been charged, and there’s generally no scarcity of threats to Filipino journalists.

Plus – and this was the only appeal to me – the UK had started vaccinating, and had a clear timeline to vaccinate all adults by mid-2021.

The Philippines, meanwhile, only got its first emergency doses on March 1.

I really could have stayed.

Except that I couldn’t.

I was not working from home

During most of my stay, I was “working from home,” but not really from home. I was not in the Philippines.

In December, an armed off-duty cop had brazenly shot dead a mother and her son in broad daylight, in front of many people – including his young daughter.

There is a different kind of pain waking up on UK time to find your country shell-shocked and traumatized. You were not traumatized the same time as they were. Their morning was your night, and every day was a game of catchup.

All waking mornings began with the thought: please, I hope no one died today. It’s infuriating how that seems a little too much to ask for nowadays. (When I landed in Abu Dhabi for my connecting flight home, the first notification I received was that a lawyer in Iloilo had been stabbed in the head. Not another lawyer. Not another attack.)

That exercise of opening your messages abroad and spotting bad news is jarring. The only comfort would have been to go through the shock with fellow Filipinos, except I was always hours behind.

Around Christmas, when I was still in the UK, I and my teammates in Rappler’s crime and justice cluster were on the last stretch of data tabulation for our investigation into the drug war killings.

For days, as the Philippines slept, I encoded names of the dead on a spreadsheet, taking note of the brutal manner in which they were killed, and if their families had been willing to pursue prosecution. Many of them had not.

So I had to look for the ones who were willing. And there is also a different kind of shame in telling victims of extrajudicial killings: sorry, I can’t come to talk in person; I can only call, as I am not there.

The many times I had to type “I am not there” is traumatizing on its own.

Sorry I cannot attend your court hearing; I am not there. Sorry I cannot cover your rally; I am not there. 

But I am painfully aware that all of this comes from a point of privilege. Yes, I know that many people would kill to have my visa. Many people would kill to be where I was.

Yes, I know. I also know that every time I come back, I hurt my family in a way different from the last. 

I am also painfully aware that the choice I am making does not make me a hero. What do I do, really? I leave my family, and for what? What concrete help have I really provided?

Being here is always better

I have battled with this throughout my career. But when I can’t find the answers, I settle for the next best thing – that being here is always better than not being here, despite not being able to do much else.

I remember all too well the feeling of watching the country take to the streets, with even fence sitters roused from their comfort zones, when the Supreme Court granted a hero’s burial to a dictator – while I was a thousand miles away in a different time zone.

I remember watching the kill count rise speedily day by day in the second half of 2016, and thinking, why on earth was I not there.

“Why was I not there,” was a question that kept me awake many nights.

On my way to London Heathrow, coming home at last for what seemed like a year, Rappler had a virtual meeting where our boss, Maria Ressa, said that this year may well define the next 10 years for Filipinos.

I agreed. 

I couldn’t not be there.

London will always be home

One day, on one of the better days in London, when the sun was out and only one layer was required to keep warm, I told my friend: these past 3 months on lockdown, I had forgotten that London is truly a great city.

I mean, look at that.

I told her that London and I feel like a perpetually unfinished story. That sometimes I would just have to do it and give this city the chance it deserves. Or give my family the chance to be together – it’s what my mother worked hard for.

“Do you think you’ll ever live here someday?”

That was a little hard to answer. Maybe. Probably. I think I am morally obliged to? Fumbling for answers, I settled with: I think it’s just a matter of when, and how long.

“When do you think it will be?”

That was easy.

Without thinking, I said, definitely not until after June 2022. – Rappler.com