Balikbayan Boxes
by Graciela Mae (she/her)
Four months before Christmas, the sharp piercing sound of packaging tape once again takes over our entire living room. My mum still has about a third of a giant cardboard box left to cover, this current roll of tape nearing the end. Onto the next one.
This is the second pair of balikbayan boxes we sent back to the Philippines since the pandemic began—we make use of the free Bulilit (a Tagalog word for small) box promo, of course. While some overseas Filipinos send repatriate boxes regardless of whether they’ll be flying home or not, the last eighteen months has left many of us with no option but to reserve the gifts we’ve been saving for our loved ones for the balikbayan box.
These boxes have been such a part of my life that I never really realised how unique the tradition was until I wrote about it in my late teens. Having experienced being both the sender and the receiver of a balikbayan box, I remain so fascinated by how these cardboard boxes, and the carefully selected gifts within them, play such a big part in Filipino culture. The tradition highlights a culture rooted in family and community, as well as the much harsher reality of more than a million Filipinos needing to leave the country annually in the hopes of providing themselves and their families with a better future.
An extract from my article about balikbayan boxes published on The Skinny in 2018:
The boxes help aid [the] pain from both sides. The family members in the motherland receive a physical notion of their relative’s love, whereas those overseas get the reassurance that they will not be forgotten. Not because of the gifts themselves, but the happiness they bring. Seeing relatives' smiles in video calls, knowing that you’ve somehow caused this joy, however temporary, closes miles of distance despite not being able to (as the rough translation of ‘balik bayan’ reveals) “come home.
The short film below was created for my university dissertation project focusing on the effects of aspect ratios in moving pictures, presenting it through an art installation that aimed to play on the nostalgia I associate with certain aspect ratios and my personal experience of sending the boxes.
While the exhibition never took place due to the pandemic, I managed to finish the videos within the project remotely. The main film is a conversation I had with my grandmother about her recollections of the boxes, particularly its rise in the 80s due to the influx of Filipinos moving to America and other western countries.
On-screen accompanying our conversation is a POV of my mum, here in the UK, filling up a balikbayan box. I filmed this using an old school VHS camera—just like the many memories filmed by families back home for their loved ones living overseas.
During the early hours of the morning, my mum finally manages to wrap the entirety of the large box with tape, my younger sister excitedly offers to be the one to write our grandma’s address all around the box. While our safe return to the Philippines remains uncertain, I am comforted by the fact that, somehow, we can still show our love and appreciation for our family back home.
