The Fruit of One is the Fruit of All

For several years, our institute has been accepting interns from universities in Japan. Last year we had one from Hiroshima University.  For the sake of anonymity, we will call him Mr. J.

MAR

Mr. J is a Malawi national and is taking up MA Mathematics Education in Hiroshima Univeristy. .  He stayed here in the Philippines for five weeks to gather data for his masters thesis.

On his second day at our institute, we told Mr. J to buy food at the canteen. We are usually having our lunch together, talking about potpourri of topics – dogs, diabetes, and most of the time, the dismal state of math education in our country.

After eating,  ate Lydia (ate is the Filipino word for older sister), one of my colleagues, picked the banana and divided into four saying “here, the fruit of one is the fruit of all.” We do this every time. Each fruit is divided into the number of people eating. Mr. J just stand there looking at us puzzled. He told one of our colleagues before he went back to Japan, that he had never seen anything like it — that in his country, “if you want fruit, you have to buy one.”

Before leaving for Japan, Mr. J told one of our colleagues about his good experiences in the Philippines and the Filipinos. He lost his wallet, but a day after, it was returned to him. He was brought to the house of one of the strangers he just met in a mall and was invited for dinner.  He told us that “the people everywhere were very warm” and that ” he was getting used to staying here.”

The most important thing that happened to Mr. J (my perspective) was knowing about Manny Pacquiao. (The guy does not know Pacman. Can you believe it?). He watched a few Pacman fights, and he instantly became an admirer. Before he left, I gave him a DVD of the Pacman’s famous fights. I told him, “In there, you will see how a short guy beat up bigger guys.”