Abstract
I spent two years of my childhood on a military base in the Philippines. Such communities are, by their very nature, encapsulated within the life of the indigenous population. Yet now and again some shadowy authority decided that we should have some contact with the strangers we sojourned among. I remember for instance that the boys from a nearby parochial school once came to play our school’s basketball team. We stood around the rain-glistening ball court, absorbed not in the game but in these lean, dark aliens calling to one another in unknown tongues. We understood only the laughter, and it made us shy and touchy. A boy would dash past, our eyes would inadvertently catch, and veer quickly away again. Then his brown face would jerk back with insolent defiance, he would toss the heavy black hair off his forehead and race on. I recall that as one of the most frustrating days of my life.