Balikbayan Box

Ask any Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) about Balikbayan Box, the likelihood would be 99.99% knows what a Balikbayan Box is, 90% (may) had sent at least once during his/her tenure overseas, 90% (may) had brought with him/her in his/her first return to the Philippines and 85% (may) had sent more than once.

What is a Balikbayan Box anyway?

Generally, it is a cardboard box which contains small items or just about anything and sent by OFW often through freight forwarders, or brought by Filipinos returning to the Philippines.

But to an OFW, Balikbayan Box has a deeper purpose and meaning.

Balikbayan Box has become a symbol of Filipino’s generosity. It is a cultural expectation from a returning Filipino to bring gifts to family, friends and colleagues left behind in the Philippines. To the eyes of strangers, the sight of a Filipino with a 3 to 4 boxes at an airport check-in counter is puzzling.

Balibayan Box manifests the Filipino propensity to accommodate his relatives, barkadas, neighbors and even his/her favorite teacher during school days.

Balikbayan Box may contain small items, but has brought immeasurable happiness and endless smiles to the recipient not to mention the sheer joy and unuttered delight to the sender.

Unfortunately, I am not a believer in a Balikbayan box. Throughout my 14 years abroad I had sent 2 balikbayan boxes. In both occasions, majority of its contents were my used belongings. If there were any new items in it, it is just to fill the box. However, I beg not to be judged as tight-fisted pure Ilocano something. I have my own views to justify myself.

My main reasons would be patronizing our local products and the economic impact as a result.

Whether you agree or not, balikbayan box more often than not contains items that are already available back home.

I remember when I was young, our grandmother received a balikbayan box from our uncle living in the US. She would place the box at the center of the living room upstairs and call everyone. She will open the box and ask everyone to grab one for each. As you would expect a lot of pushing and shoving only to find out most of the items were labeled with someone’s name. There were these items, pairs of pants actually, which doesn’t have a label. So everyone was grabbing for the pants, a tug ensued amongst my uncles, aunts and cousins trying to have the pants to their possession and I was just watching at the corner. When they realized that the pairs of pants were actually made in the Philippines, suddenly the pants were ignored.

A typical colonial mentality syndrome, huh… Anything imported is classy…

Back to my reasoning…

If only the money spent on these balikbayan boxes were sent back home and spent locally, multiply that by a millions of folds. It would definitely stimulate the local economy which will then translate to job creations. A job creation would mean another player in the economy and the ripple effect would be endless.

Having said that, Filipinos dwells more emotionally and culturally that outweighs the economic rationale of the benefits of sending money than in kind.

On the downside, only few amongst our love ones understands the challenges and sacrifices an OFW would go through to fill up that balikbayan box. To say that you would go through an eye of a needle would be an understatement. How many of these balikbayan box senders would spend more than half of his/her salary just to fill up and send a balikbayan box. How many would run into financial difficulties just to regularly send a balikbayan box and to realize the expectations of an unsuspecting love ones.

How many balikbayan box senders will go home at the end of the day with just a balikbayan box as possession….