On my way from San Francisco to Las Vegas for a family reunion, I had an enlightening experience at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX).

A group of about 20 or so Samoans came to greet their arriving spiritual leader. Samoans are “huge creatures,” tall and wide, the opposite of Filipinos. I interviewed a lady.

ME: Hello there, are you with this group? Samoans, I suppose?

LADY: Yes. I guessed you know we are Samoans from the way we talk and how big we are.

ME: No, not really. I saw your streamer. I’m a Filipino.

LADY: Ahh. I have many Filipina nurses as close friends. They are such nice and warm people, and talkative like me. Come, let me introduce you to our spiritual leader.

The huge spiritual leader, sporting about a dozen flower leis, hugged me so tight, I could not breathe. The leis were ruined by the tight hug.

ME: Do you know that Samoans and Filipinos are cousins?

LEADER: (Seeing how scrawny I was.) Impossible. Filipinos look so tiny. We are so big. Our height and weight are complete opposites. (We both laughed). Come. I have time for coffee with you. Tell me about it.

We sat at an outdoor table of the airport café.

ME: We have common ancestors, the Austronesians, as scientists called us. We are both from the Brown Race, which includes Malaysians, Filipinos, Polynesians, and so on. You are Polynesian, taller, bigger. Filipinos are shorter, smaller but we have a common root.

LEADER: Really?

ME: Let me explain. About 10,000 years ago, our common ancestors left the China mainland on small makeshift sailboats of 20 to 50 feet long. We are both expert boat people. Centuries before the Phoenicians sailed in the Mediterranean, you guys, the Polynesians, were roaming the vast Pacific, jumping off from Peru.

LEADER: You must be a scholar or professor to know all this.

ME: You were the most aggressive boat people of all, settling in the Pacific islands — Samoa, Fiji, Hawaii, Easter Island.

LEADER: How long did it take us to settle in the Pacific islands?

ME: About 5,000 years. That was how long the Austronesian Dispersal took.

LEADER: That long? Wow.

ME: We are both boat people. But you were the best. You roamed the vast Pacific. We were limited to having our smaller boats hug the shores of Vietnam, in fear of the vast endless ocean. Then we jumped off to the shores of Borneo until we arrived in Mindoro in the Philippines.

LEADER: Tell you what. Why don’t we meet again? I want to compare our DNAs to see how related we are.

ME: That would be fantastic.

We never met again. I had to go to Vegas right away for a family reunion of seven siblings and our marriage partners. It would have been nice to see our DNA samples, supreme evidence of our being ancient cousins of sorts, whose ancestors roamed the Pacific waters. Perhaps, this can be done in the future.

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