Filipinos #CopingWithCovid — Ofelia Gelvezon Tequi, France

Marc and Ofe­lia Tequi

 

The fol­low­ing is part of my series, Fil­ipinos Cop­ing with Covid.
Ofe­lia Gelve­zon Tequi was born in Iloi­lo and has lived with her hus­band Marc in France for many years. Ofe­lia is a mod­ern and comptem­po­rary artist as well as a print­mak­er.
Respond­ing to my inter­view ques­tions, Ofe­lia describes life for her and her hus­band Marc in Limeuil, France, dur­ing the time of coro­n­avirus. This was writ­ten on May 28, 2020.~ Cecil­ia Brainard

Life in Limeuil, France dur­ing Covid 19
By Ofe­lia Gelve­zon Tequi

Dear Cecil­ia,

Marc and I are both in our sev­en­ties.  He start­ed his edu­ca­tion in the clas­sic path — Latin, Greek, his­to­ry but switched to bank­ing when he realised he could­n’t raise a fam­i­ly well on a teacher’s pay.  This was still the time when banks wel­comed peo­ple who had train­ing out­side of busi­ness schools.  We met in Mani­la as he was sent to UP as a “coopérant”.  The Coop­er­a­tion being the French pro­gram of send­ing young men to teach/cooperate abroad based on their edu­ca­tion­al back­ground instead of doing their oblig­a­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice.  I was also teach­ing Human­i­ties, Art His­to­ry and Print­mak­ing in the UP.  But he was my teacher at the Alliance Française where I was already in the fourth and last year.

I was born in Guim­bal, Iloi­lo where the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants’ fam­i­ly names start with the first let­ter of their town. This is true of many Iloi­lo towns.

My Papa was with the mil­i­tary so we moved a lot accord­ing to his assign­ments: Cebu, Luce­na but when he was assigned in Pam­pan­ga, my par­ents decid­ed that we stay put in Mani­la for our edu­ca­tion.  I went briefly to Mary­knoll, high school was STC Mani­la and my moth­er insist­ed we all go to UP.  Except for one sis­ter who stayed in Mary­knoll earn­ing her the loy­al­ty medal as she was there from kinder­garten to col­lege.  I stud­ied lat­er on to the Accad­e­mia di Belle Arti in Rome and got a Rock­e­feller schol­ar­ship to go to Pratt Insti­tute in New York. Went back to Mani­la and while teach­ing in UP also pur­sued a par­al­lel art career as a print­mak­er and painter.

When Marc opt­ed for an ear­ly retire­ment, he decid­ed we move to this vil­lage in the Périg­ord where we had bought a sum­mer home.  A page of new adven­tures fol­lowed.

We have been liv­ing in this small rur­al vil­lage, Limeuil, of 353 inhab­i­tants after hav­ing lived over 30 years in Paris and more than 6 years com­bined in Hong Kong and Hanoi.

We arrived from our annu­al vaca­tion in the Philip­pines last March 6, 2020, and a week lat­er France was in con­fine­ment (lock­down) due to the Covid-19 virus.

My hus­band Marc and I now have been liv­ing in Limeuil since 2005 and the con­fine­ment did­n’t real­ly weigh on us.

We have a huge gar­den, still part­ly jun­gle, which in ear­ly spring called for a lot of time and effort from us for the sow­ing, the plant­i­ng, the weed­ing, the build­ing of dry stone walls on the slopes etc.

The vil­lage is one of the 152 (more or less) that have been des­ig­nat­ed the most beau­ti­ful vil­lages in France so we are used to hav­ing a lot of tourists wan­der around the medieval streets.  Except for the few masked neigh­bours who would wave from us down in the gar­den, the streets are now emp­ty of vis­i­tors.

Marc has reg­u­lar bridge tour­na­ments in the sur­round­ing vil­lages but because the play­ers are main­ly those in the “endan­gered” brack­et, the French Bridge Fed­er­a­tion has can­celled all the tour­na­ments nation­wide. Marc has how­ev­er gone to a site for online bridge tour­na­ments where he can also earn points to main­tain his stand­ing in the Fed­er­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly he is not a gar­den­er but Marc hates over­grown and uncon­trolled weeds and brush so his atten­tion is now direct­ed to gar­den main­te­nance and con­trol.

He was also the only per­son autho­rized to go week­ly to throw the trash on his way to the super­mar­ket to get our basic neces­si­ties. Oth­er­wise shop­ping would be online even if the deliv­ery wait takes a bit more time.

My yoga class in the next vil­lage has just recent­ly resumed as well as my ceram­ics class on Mon­days.  Aside from these two class­es my day starts with the gar­den in the morn­ing.  I had been sow­ing flower seeds, main­tain­ing the Japan­ese maples, spray­ing the ros­es, mind­ing the box­wood against the pyrale cat­ter­pil­lars and weed­ing.  Some­how this last task I have always com­pared to Sisy­phus who was­n’t rolling a rock uphill but was weed­ing his gar­den. As the Span­ish say “mala hier­ba nun­ca muere”! We pause for lunch, have a deserved sies­ta and back to the gar­den in the after­noon.  Din­ner is usu­al­ly light and healthy cheeses, sal­ad.

Marc may watch a movie or a doc­u­men­tary on TV as we did­n’t think of get­ting Net­flix.  Then he set­tles down with his geneal­o­gy research­es online, or reads a book or does cross­words.  Since I have sub­scribed to Met­opera on Demand, I watch an opera after din­ner.  We both sleep nor­mal­ly after the day’s phys­i­cal efforts and are thank­ful we are not con­fined in a big city but we have all this space around us which is espe­cial­ly inspir­ing with spring’s awak­en­ing.

What we miss most are our three kids and their fam­i­lies.  Thank heav­ens for tech­nol­o­gy as there are many video calls, pho­to exchanges, text mes­sages includ­ing the ten grand­chil­dren. We also miss the love­ly din­ners with friends in their homes or in the region’s many gas­tro­nom­ic restau­rants.  I miss the vis­its of extra­or­di­nary gar­dens with my group of Gar­den Girls.  And the operas trans­mit­ted live from New York.  This last activ­i­ty applies more to me as Marc thinks opera is an acquired taste, like he’s nev­er real­ly under­stood what the fuss is all about truf­fles!

This may not be typ­i­cal of Pinoy life in France but I hope it can fill any gap.

Stay­ing safe and healthy,

Ofe­lia

Read also:
Coro­n­avirus: The Begin­ning, by Cecil­ia Brainard
How Fil­ipinos Are Cop­ing With Covid, Part One (Cecil­ia Brainard, Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino)
How Fil­ipinos Are Cop­ing With Covid, Part Two (C. Brainard, PF)

Inter­views fol­low:
Lia Fer­aren, Ger­many
Tere­sa Con­cep­cion, Cana­da
 Ofe­lia Gelve­zon Tequi, France
Reine Marie Bon­nie Melvin, France
New Zealand: Jay Mon­til­la & Moni­ka Tawngdee
Lin­da Ty-Casper, Mass­a­chu­setts, USA
Bar­bara Ann Jacala, San Diego, CA, USA
Bri­an Ascalon Roley, Ohio, USA

tags: #coro­n­avirus #covid19 #covid #Fil­ipinos #cop­ing­with­covid #Paris #France #Europe #Fil­ipinoFrench #French­Fil­ipino #Fil­ipinoAmer­i­can