AN AMERI CAN IN THE PHILIPPINES

On that day she was celebrating 30 years of good and happy living in the Philippines. At about 10 am she drove into the central business district of Makati to draw some cash from the automated teller machine at Citibank. Parking was, as usual, hard to find so she put on her emergency blinkers, squeezed in ahead of a large, already parked, white van and ran into the bank’s lobby hoping to step out quickly.

A few steps into the large, classy lobby of the bank she sensed it but didn’t pay any attention to the fact that there was an eerie silence. There also seemed to be no people around. At the ATM machine she shoved in her card, punched in her numbers, and took the cash that poured out. On her mind was her illegally parked car on the street outside and the thought that it might get hauled away by the police.

As she was about to turn and make a run for the door, from the corner of her eye she saw a woman in red crouched behind the service counter, hiding. The woman with her finger on her lips was whispering something to her in Filipino. “Weird people” my friend thought and glanced to her left. This time, she saw two men spread-eagled on the floor of the bank. “It’s getting crazier!” She thought to herself and moved on.

She was unconscious of it but all this while, the loud speaker in the lobby was announcing something in Filipino. A chill ran up her spine when she heard her car plate numbers being read and by instinct, she leaped and crouched behind the counter where the lady in red was hiding. Through a choppy, whispered, difficult conversation, the lady in red was able to explain to her that there was a small car with blinking lights blocking a big white get-away van of the guys who were currently robbing the bank. When my friend, who had been living in the Philippines for over 30 years, looked up and around she did realize that there were strange looking men walking around with huge guns in their hands.

That day, the American,  non-Filipino-speaking consultant from the Asian Development Bank who up to then had lived a good and happy life in the fun-loving and warm Philippines, lay cold for a long while on the floor of Citibank in Makati.

Until news of the robbery hit the town next day, none of her family and friends believed her story of being an accidental hero during a major bank heist in her host country where she didn’t speak the language.

By: Raju Mandhyan