A Visit to our Ancestral Home

         by Vic Odarve

 A visit to our ancestral homes allows us to trace our origins, remember our past, and revel in the excitement of knowing how our great-grandparents lived in their prime. It also allows us to reconnect with family and friends we haven't seen in years. It also enables us to see what has happened to some of the places we used to consider playgrounds when we were younger and more carefree. Furthermore, if this is our birthplace, we are stepping back in time; this is the place where your life began, and a visit gives you a sense of how things are going.

Ancestral House

A visit to our ancestral homes may be a journey of our life before we travel to another universe to see our Maker. A timely visit is usually made during fiesta celebrations and reunion activities where relatives and friends are also around. This gives us a unique opportunity to connect with our relatives and friends who, for one reason or another, could not make the visit. Our old folks at home welcomed us with big smiles, treated us like kings and queens, and extended huge open arms extending a mile out of their sleeves. Here, plenty of stories was told with a bottle of beer, singing, and dancing, and tracing the roots of the grandparents. The best part could be listening to our grandma and grandpa reminisce about the people and events from their past. Here we learned that some of our relatives and friends are already gone, while some are still living.

A tour of our hometown also allows us to see what has happened to some of the places that were filled with memories during our younger days. For most of us, we consider a visit an awesome adventure. On our last visit, for example, we came to a path that led off down a sloping mountain near the river where I had played with my kite before. The trees had grown up a lot in some areas, and the once nicely kept rice fields were overgrown and nearly filled with tall grass after a massive landslide a decade ago. It is still clear in my mind how I kept running on this mountain slope before.

Going back to the old trail, I can imagine myself walking through mists and clouds along with the mountain ranges, meeting all the fairies and magical creatures, and watching the birds perform an orchestra with the canopies. Thus, we remembered our good old childhood days, where we spent much time playing with our neighbors and assisting our parents in maintaining our rice fields. It is the sort of feeling that cannot be captured on camera and is more than the old pictures hanging on the wall. It is an exhilarating feeling to walk in the footsteps of your ancestors. Sometimes a visit gives me a feeling that if I had not studied at a university and become an engineer, I might still be working in the rice fields instead of doing lectures in the fields of engineering here and abroad.

Ricefields

Our ancestral homes also provide us a glimpse of how things are changing rapidly where today’s technology is far more advanced. The old house standing could serve as a powerful reminder for the current and future generations about how life once was, back in the days when smartphones, videokes, and other gadgets were all still unheard of.

There really is no place like home. Our ancestral home reminds me of the place and events where I come from; the land of my birth, and with all its diversity, the good and the bad, I would like to go there first over anywhere else in the world.