Make a sand castle or fly a kite—the perfect life
The nice thing about Monette’s community, Sea Side, you step outside a rickety gate, just beyond the cock yard, and you are on the beach with miles of endless view across and up the coast. It’s a good place to cool down, maybe the perfect playground if you are four years old. Who needs parent supervision when there are ten little children, ten pairs of eyes that can spot an 18 month old who who has crawled into the water. In the U.S. we would never dare to leave anyone under 8 years old on the beach without adult supervision. The children scarcely look up as I walk by, taking pictures.
A curious looking boat
I stroll a little farther up the beach, toward a spot where every fisherman seems to dock his boat. There is one old boat that dwarfs all the others. It looks like its crew pulled up on shore in the wee hours of the morning, and the crew all but leaped off and went home, trusting the boat would be fine or trusting their belief the weather report could be relied on.
I discern a hint of glory in this old magnificent ship
I’m scarcely up to a very long walk, but the sight of the two largest vessels compell me to edging a little farther down the beach. They are a couple of profoundly sightly boats—if they were sunken, I’d call them small ships. One looks to be almost new, the other so old I have to wonder how much longer it will last. The new one is way up on shore, in the trees, like maybe it is still being worked on. The older one just hangs in the shallows. Surely someone takes it out. Looking at the lights above deck, I can’t help but think it is used for shrimping, but what do I know. In the old days, I would have hung on the beach into the night, waiting for a crew to appear, then I would have talked my way on board and joined the crew for a night out shrimping, just to satisfy my curiosity.
I run into Resha May on my way back to Sea Side. I think somebody sent her out looking for me when they got back from the “Flowing” birthday party and found me MIA, hoping I would not get lost. I wander through the gate, into the cock yard.
I’m intrigued by these guys, horribly territorial that they are
It’s a quiet evening. I pass Trisha, a superlatively gifted 8th grader, cool, collected, and bright on her way to who-knows-where. So many of these kids are SO gifted. I’m really rather awed at their talent. All they need is half an opportunity if school would stay open.
Fourteen year old, Trisha
Then I wander back into Monette’s yard, into the stifling heat of the casita. In my mind, it’s a tough place to grow up without air con, minimal electrical appliances, inconsistent school though it is good when they are actually teaching, and nominal jobs most of which don’t pay anything, but it is all they know. One thing they all seem to have is patience and an attitude, “whatever will be, will be”.
You can’t measure the heat by the sight of a photo. The heat is crippling
The only thing left for me to do is bide my time through the evening. Tomorrow, Monette and I will be on our way to Sabang. For some reason, I imagine it being less stifling, being that we will be on the water.
rubberboa 
Well yeah:
“In my mind, it’s a tough place to grow up without air con, minimal electrical appliances, inconsistent school though it is good when they are actually teaching, and nominal jobs most of which don’t pay anything, but it is all they know”
I think the crucial point is “it is all they know” – if you don’t know what you’re missing then you won’t miss it 🙂 – it’s only when people start *comparing* themselves with “others” that they start feeling discontented …
Lack of jobs (and the jobs that do exist being paid very poorly) *is* a problem though – there’s a reason why between 10 and 20 million Filipinos are working abroad …
THE most important thing any government here could do is to raise the minimum wages …
It’s a disgrace that a “middle class” (?) sales lady with a high school qualification working in a department store like Unitop or Lee’s Plaza gets paid a friggin’ THREE HUNDRED PESOS PER DAY – that’s about a third of what an employee in the Netherlands earning the minimum salary gets PER HOUR …
Economically this makes absolutely zero sense – the rich (the employers) are just stuffing their already fat bank accounts, and aren’t spending most of that money but just hoarding it – “shifting” a large part of that money away from the rich and to the middle class would be the BEST way to boost the economy of this country.
But hey what do I know 😉
P.S. you didn’t post a picture of those two ships, I would have liked seeing them!
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I went over to my friend, Wally’s place last night to visit him and his wife and their 36 year old son who has been living in Malaysia for the last 9 years. They lived in a little one and a half room shack on the hill in Puerto Galera. They had electricity that came on at 6 PM and went off at 9 PM, a flash light, no screens or windows on the two windows they had. The had a light bulb in the living room, and a little tiny plastic fan that you could stop with your hand. But it moved a little air and felt good. They had NO furniture except for two little plastic, backless chairs they pulled out of a nook for us. No beds, no mattresses. They slept on cement covered by linoleum. No bathroom except for a bucket behind a curtain they dumped somewhere intermittently. There was no stove. No sink. A spigot they could turn on. The floor had a clean sheet of linoleum on it. The walls were clean with plastic on them. They were quite happy. We enjoyed chatting with them. So, in a sense, you are right, they don’t know any difference. If my photos ever come out, I want to do a blog on their place. It is on the low end of the luxury spectrum, but a lot of people I have come to know live like this. But if you know nothing else, if it is all you have, they are quite fine.
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Well yeah THAT is a rather extreme obviously (although I guess you could always imagine even worse – you always can) – but if you’re still happy even in THOSE conditions, yeah then I’m taking a deep bow!
I’d really want to take that man to a store and at least buy him a proper mattress, if that’s all I’d ever do for him …
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I wrote a blog on their place today—my photos came out. But of course, it takes many days before I “publish” the blog
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Okay, I’ll see it when I see it 🙂
I always tend to downplay the poverty thing a bit, as in “but they’re still smiling” – but what you describe here is extreme, we’re clearly sinking below minimum thresholds of human dignity when you need to sh*t on a bucket, have no (or hardly any) running water or electricity, and not even a mattress to sleep on.
I know there exist government programs for what they call “indigent” people – you can get some cash assistance, which allows you to purchase the most basic needs – but yeah the people who need it most are the ones least likely to ask for this kind of help – education, and may not even be aware that it exists …
Someone should really help that guy, to lift him up to a minimally humane standard – I think normally that would also be a responsibility of the barangay chief or council, but yeah how competent are those, you have to be a bit lucky.
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I don’t think this is all that abnormal from what I have seen. Wally and Rose are basically happy people and don’t feel like they are rare exceptions. They live in the Philippines and this is not highly unusual. If we start treating them like they are unusually deprived, maybe they will think they should be treated like they are deprived. They are happy people and they are surrounded by people basically in the same class as themselves. They enjoy my friendship, little gifts, and life in general. Like you said, what more could you want than to be raised in a country where there is not a lot of pressure to perform at exceptional levels. You’ll have to see my blog to get a full picture of the life they lead. Really, it is not so exceptional from others around them. They don’t feel like they are exceptions.
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Well I’m sure there are many others just like him, but that doesn’t invalidate what I said … I mean, to drive the point home:
Monette also isn’t rich (I don’t want to say “poor”, but well, let’s say she’s not “middle class”), and she’s living in simple conditions, with no “luxury” – but still, it’s just a tad better compared to what you described … I mean, there’s “poor” and there’s “poor”, a couple of little things can make a big difference.
That’s just the point I’m trying to make, whether successfully or not, lol … but hey, I’m sure he’s happy as you said, so who would I be to “pass judgement” – let me just wait for your blog post for a “final verdict” 😉
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