Hello, ASEAN Hive Community! It's me again, sharing my entry to the weekly challenge after a long, long time! I've had this sitting in my drafts for a few days already. Great I had a chance to check today, else it would have been too late again. 😅
So here's my entry to the 👨💻 ASEAN Hive Community Challenge #112 🏙️ Rural Life Vs. Urban Life 👩🌾 before it is too late.
Rural vs Urban Living
I want to share this in the perspective of someone who has children who have lived in the UAE all their lives, with the exception of my eldest who spent his first 4 years of life in our province in the Philippines. My eldest is 15, Little Miss is almost 10, and Little Man is 8. The most time they spent in the Philippines and experienced provincial living was last year when we went home for almost 4 months.
Urban Living
We do not live a lavish lifestyle in the UAE. We rent a space in a villa, and we try to keep a sense of simplicity and tie down to our Filipino roots. We try to grow our own mini vegetable garden despite the harsh desert weather, and even had rabbits for about two years. My kids, even though they lived in the city all their years, are better at handling animals than me, who lived in the province for the 25 years!
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That said, living in a developed (developing?) country like the UAE offers a comfortable lifestyle, to say the least, compared to the Philippines. Here are just some at the top of my head right now.
- Well, we can lavish in the comfort of an airconditioned house (not just a room, mind you!) 24/7, unlike in the Philippines where we have to be mindful of our electricity consumption all the time.
- Transportation. It is a breeze especially here in Abu Dhabi where there isn't much traffic congestion. Public transportation is also easy since bus routes have scheduled timings. One does not need to wonder when his/her bus is going to come.
- Everything is within a walking distance if you have time. Well, that is during the cooler months. But, it is quite true. The proximity of places like malls, parks, restaurants, etc. are too close that one really doesn't have to drive very far to move from one place to the next.
Rural Living
Now let's go back to our experience living in the Philippines for almost 4 months last year.
Were my children excited? Ahhm, not too much. It was not a vacation per se, but we really had to go home to extend assistance to my parents when my father had a hand operation.
And guess what, just a day after we reached, there was a water outage for almost a week. So we had to go to my late grandma's old house (where we I grew up) to take a bath and wash our clothes. Immediately, my children felt the distinct difference of having an abundant, flowing water and scarce supply. They had to scoop water from the buckets, and yes, wash clothes by hand, too.
One that they were not able to try, but I was glad to show them was how we used to cook before, i.e., cooking with firewood. Well, it was my gradma who used to always cook here, and we used a gas stove, but I distinctly remember being asked to blow air through a metal pipe to produce bigger flames.
Animals. They were able to get a close encounter with various farm animals up close, unlike here in the UAE where apart from the pet rabbits, cats, and dogs, the other animals they see are from zoos. And guess what, they also had a chance to see a phyton, monitor lizard, and skinks just around our house! It is a stark contrast from the animals that they are familiar with from books like beavers, sheep, otters, armadillo, tarantula, etc.
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Fruit Trees. Another thing we truly enjoyed in the Philippines is the abundance of fruit trees. We literally only had to reach out, and tadaaa! We had fresh fruits on our hands. There's something about the sweetness of tropical fruits that hits the taste buds differently.
Little Man was always excited to walk around the neighborhood to check out the neighbor's rambutan tree. LOL. Rambutan and custard apple (atis) quickly became his favorite. He was amused by the fact that we could just pick fruits from trees, while in the UAE, almost all (if not all) of the fruits we eat, we buy from the supermarket.
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Family
Finally, I have to reiterate this to my children time and again. The UAE, no matter how long we live here, is never going to be our permanent home. One day, we will need to go back to our roots and that is the Philippines. I pointed out how close we are to our families in the Philippines with relatives literally an arm's reach away. We never have this in the UAE. We have friends, who we may also consider as families here away from home, but true family is in the Philippines and they should never forget and take that for granted.
And I guess that's about it for now. I may be able to think of more later on, but this would have to do for now. 😅
Thanks for reading, and see you around!
All photos are owned by the author unless stated otherwise.
