Magkadaupang Palad

The Benefizkonzert was definitely the highlight in their visit. It was the turnout of many a collaboration and cooperation of artists from the Philippines like Kristian Cordero, a nationally awarded poet, and from Germany, Annette Mettenleiter, music teacher and violinist and Hermann Seidel, music teacher and composer.

The well-chosen motto of that Benefizkonzert was magkadaupang palad.

Mag is the prefix used to express a continuous process. It tells of a presently on-going movement. Kadaupa means to touch and palad is the palm. So kadaupang palad literally creates a picture of two palms, oftentimes coming from two individuals, touching each other. It refers to two palms clasped together. But the connotative, cultural nuance of magkadaupang palad is not completely captured in the "handshake" or "Hand in Hand". "Palad" is meant rather as a metonymy of the entire human being; "Palad" as fate. Magkadaupang palad therefore catches a sense of having "intertwined fates."

Maybe the meaning can better be described as two people mutually giving themselves into the hand of the other.

In the Benefizkonzert, the Filipinos and the Germans celebrated this mutual giving to each other, they celebrated the differences, they lived and experienced the other view on things, the other music, the other poetry, the other approach and understanding. They created room for the other and allowed the other to enrich them. Magkadaupang palad.

In fact this is what exchange programs are about. It is about opening one's eyes, one's mind and heart to the other strange and foreign culture. This makes us grow as we gain some other understanding, we get to see other contexts, we sense other truths. What do Germans know about the Philippines? Is that not some islands in Asia? Somewhere behind India? At the other end of the world?

And what actually do Filipinos know about Germany? Hitler and Oktoberfest? Merkel and Autobahn? Culture of snobs?

True indeed, the differences are huge; Germany is an industrialised nation and a first world country while the Philippines is a developing country. Germany has spring, summer, autumn and winter. A majority of people belongs to the educated middleclass. There is a firm democracy and well ruled traffic while the Philippines does not have a common language yet. There is a wide gap between rich and poor. Corruption shakes the republic and chaos is declared the rule in traffic. Germans live structured, serious, planned and orderly lives; Filipinos live the moment, the here-and-now, facing adversities with their very Filipino ease of life. Germans eat with fork and knife, Filipinos eat with fork and spoon or with their very fingers even. Social life in the Philippines takes place outside or in open spaces while the Germans celebrate inside houses and flats, behind windows and doors. The differences are huge and much more can be enumerated.

But true also is that these differences are in fact chances to see things in new and other light, from an angle yet unknown and in a never so far experienced context. Those chances open to the ones who have the eyes to see, who have the hearts to dare, to allow the strange and different ways to enter their minds.

EPECTO, the German-Filipino exchange program is at the same time the Bikol word for to effect.

So in a way the motto Magkadaupang palad is the effect, the EPECTO, of this intercultural exchange.

In the Benefizkonzert that took place last April 23 in Neustadt Aisch, peoples' minds and hearts were opened to one another. They mutually gave themselves into the hand of the other: magkadaupang palad.

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