Balikbayan: Chesca vs. Rambutan, 2012 vs. 2026
Balikbayan: Chesca vs. Rambutan, 2012 vs. 2026
Fourteen years apart, same rambutan, same house in Valencia, Bukidnon — and a text thread, half English, half hard-won Tagalog, that made a father's whole week.
I woke up before the sun rose per usual, and got her text around 6 a.m. in the 707 from my bunso. It was 9 p.m. in the Philippines, and Chesca had just gone back to Valencia, Bukidnon — back to Mama Helen's house from the farm, the house where her mommy grew up — and done something nobody asked her to do. She'd found the same spot, picked up a rambutan, and recreated a photo of herself from fourteen years earlier.
She didn't caption it with an explanation. She just sent it and let the math speak: 14 years ago. I recreated the picture.
The Same House, Fourteen Years Apart
In July 2012, Chesca celebrated her 8th birthday at Mama Helen's house, surrounded by her mommy's family. She was a kid on a balikbayan trip, biting into a rambutan the way every province-visiting Fil-Am kid eventually does — a little unsure of the shell, delighted by what's underneath. Somebody caught it on camera. It became one of those photos that just sits in a folder for a decade and a half, not famous, not posed, just true.
Tess is gone now, five years and change. Mama Helen is still there in Valencia, Bukidnon, still keeping the house that raised her daughter. And in August 2026, Chesca — grown, on her own balikbayan trip — walked back into that same yard, got some rambutan she probably requested since this has been her favorite since her July 2012 Balikbayan trip, and did it again. Not for me. Not for the archive. She just wanted to.
Rambutan doesn't travel well and rarely shows up fresh in U.S. grocery stores, which means for a lot of Fil-Am kids the fruit itself becomes a marker of the trip — you eat it in the province, on your lola's or lelong's plate, and then you don't taste it again until the next balikbayan visit years later.
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Hati — hah-TEE
To split or share evenly. Chesca used it to describe dividing the rambutan with her Kuya, JianCarlo — hinati namin, "we split it between us." One small word, one very Filipino instinct: nothing good gets eaten alone.
The Text Thread
What made the morning, though, wasn't the photo. It was what came after it — a short thread where my daughter, unprompted, tried out her Tagalog on me and let me watch her work for it.
"Nag nonosebleed ako sa Tagalog" is its own small monument — the self-aware joke a 1.5-gen or 2nd-gen Fil-Am kid makes when they're reaching past their comfort zone in the language and know it. Chesca knows she's not fluent. She tried anyway, in a text to her dad, for no audience but me. That's the whole ballgame.
Why This Is the Point
I didn't ask her to speak Tagalog. I didn't ask her to go back to that yard and eat a rambutan for the camera. She did both on her own, on a trip I wasn't even on, half a world and a fifteen-hour time difference away. That's what a balikbayan trip is supposed to do to a kid who grew up in the States — not just visit the province, but come back changed enough to reach for the language without being told to.
Whatever Tagalog she keeps, retains, and one day passes down — that's the whole point of everything PinoyBuilt is trying to build. Not fluency by force. Just enough love for the language that it survives the ocean, and the generation, and comes back out in a text at 9 p.m. in Valencia, Bukidnon, unprompted, because a daughter wanted her tatay to see it.
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
Salamat sa mga litrato, bunso.
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