My NEO word processor ran out of memory, so I have not recorded anything on it for the last two or three days. I made notes in a notebook (my sprained finger won’t let me write even in my childish scrawl), and I’ll get to those notes in a minute. First, I’d like to talk about the experience of getting my journal downloaded from the NEO to a computer and then safely onto a flash drive or two.

A few days ago, while walking along the first part of the eastern shoreline, I was greeted by a family that was standing in the doorway of a fairly fancy-looking three story concrete house. A young man (in his mid teens?) spoke to me from a balcony and asked me if I wanted to come up there to get a better view for my camera.

I went up to the house and chatted with the group of people there. There were the usual assortment of women young and old, children, and a couple of men. They produced a chair for me and asked me the usual questions. Their English wasn’t that great, so our conversation didn’t progress beyond that point. The teenager, however, spoke very good English, and we talked at length when I went up to the third floor balcony with him. I wrote about this before. His name was Mark, and he had had a very exciting and disturbing experience of the typhoon. He had had a hand in rescuing many neighbors that were trapped in the surging water and had nowhere to go. He, along with some workers, had pulled them to safety out of the water and over the balcony into their house. Other neighbors had climbed in through their windows. All of their houses had been destroyed, and they had nowhere to go. Mark and his family gave them dry and clean clothes and shoes, and they took them with them after the typhoon had subsided. Some had returned the clothes later, but most had simply kept them. Mark noted wryly that some of these people had simply helped themselves to his shoes without asking. Mark had 12 pairs of fashionable sneakers. After the typhoon, he had none. Over the next few days, he saw people wearing them, and he saw some of his shoes just discarded and lying in the debris piles. One sad event, and something that bothers Mark very much, was the loss of the barangay captain’s wife. She was in the water below their balcony, and Mark was holding her hand through the railing. The family’s workers were also there, and they were busy rescuing people. The wind was howling and the rain pouring down and the water crashing over them. Then, for some reason, Mark had to go into the house. He said something to his workers about helping her and then left. When he returned, the woman was gone. Something had gone wrong in his communication with the workers, and the woman had not been saved. She had been swept under the balcony in the rising water and drowned. They found her body in their yard when the water went down. Mark told me this story twice, but I never did quite catch the details about how things went wrong.

I stopped in at this house a couple of times since that day and was very happy when Mark managed to produce an old laptop that I could use to download my journal. It was his brother’s old laptop, and they had kept it at their family farm – which they called the hatchery. Even better, they had purchased a small generator in Calbayog in order to power their house and to start up a small business recharging gadgets for people. Mark’s brother wired together a series of 30 outlets and nailed them to a long piece of wood. They then made up a little sign saying “Charging Station” and put it on a destroyed tricycle sitting outside their house. They are charging 30 pesos to recharge each gadget – cell phone, battery, flashlight, laptop, etc. The generator cost the premium price of 18,000 pesos, which means they will have to recharge 6,000 gadgets to make their money back. Of course, it isn’t that simple, since having the generator is also of great benefit to their family. Any money they can make on top of that is simply gravy. Since they had the generator, they could power the laptop, and I would be able to download my journal at their house.

I spent the entire day sitting on the sofa in their living room while my journal downloaded. It is, unfortunately, a slow process, as the NEO can’t download files. It has to retype the entire journal, and it does the typing at about the same speed as a very fast typist. My journal entries came to about 100,000 words and it took hours to finish.

While doing this, I had the wonderful opportunity to see a Filipino family in action. It was much like all of my similar experiences – chaotic and confusing, yet warm and generous. They gave me Pepsi to drink and crackers to eat. And when it came time for lunch, I was invited to sit with the family and eat with them at the table.

I am used to the – by comparison – almost military precision with which Canadian families prepare and eat their meals. It is always known in advance who is going to do the cooking and cleaning up, what the food will be, where it will be eaten, and who will be doing the eating. Having a dinner guest is a big deal and takes discussion and planning and advance notice. In the Philippines, having a meal is a much more organic process. Perhaps there is a system in place concerning who does the cooking, but I’m not aware of it. The cooking just seems to happen and lots of people pitch in at various times depending on what food was available that day and who was available. Who does the eating is equally random. It seems that anyone who happens to be around or just shows up is welcome to sit down and eat or just fill up a plate and disappear. In a way, this is possible because rice is the staple at every meal. It’s not like there are six pork chops, so only six people can have a complete meal. They prepare huge vats of rice, and there is always lots available no matter how many people show up. I instinctively judge how much rice is on a platter and how many people there are to see how much rice I can reasonably take. But that is not necessary. The platter will be refilled as many times as needed from big pots in the kitchen. You can eat as much as you like and not worry about someone else not having enough.

I heard a murmur of approval (relief?) go around the table when I eagerly heaped my plate full of rice and pancit and a vegetable dish. This particular vegetable dish is quite bitter and has to be tempered with some spices and sauces and sweetened a bit. I have had it dozens of times in the Philippines and dug in with pleasure. I think the family was worried that I wouldn’t like the food, and the way I heaped my plate high made them happy.

As always, I was much slower at eating than everyone else. For the most part, they attacked their food like ravenous wolves. They placed their arms around their plates with their elbows on the table and their head right over the plate. Then they shoveled the food in with a spoon and one hand. Some ate with only their hands. It was, I have to say, a messy affair, and food spilled all over the place and all over the table. I felt quite ridiculously refined as I ate with my fork and slowly chewed each mouthful and meticulously gathered up the next forkful. I hate it when food spills over the edge of my plate, and I’m quite careful to prevent that happening. I also hate sticky fingers and sticky utensils, and I eat with care so that nothing gets dirty. And before I add second helpings, I clear my plate entirely right down to the last grain of rice. I do this without thinking about it, and I wonder now what the family thought of it all. To be honest, they were so busy shoveling in the food and making jokes and laughing and teasing each other that I doubt they noticed at all. I only became conscious of any awareness when everyone had clearly stopped eating long since, and I was the only one with food still on his plate.

As to who took part in this meal, I can’t even begin to say. There was a core group of women and teenage girls in the house most of the day. They had done the cooking and had been looking after the very young children. I have no idea how they were all related or who actually “lived” in the house and who didn’t. In fact, I don’t think the concept of where you live is clearly defined in the Philippines. In Canada, you definitely live in one place. This is where you live and nowhere else. You might visit relatives and friends and on very rare occasions spend the night at their place, but you live somewhere else. And it’s extremely clear. In the Philippines, people seem to move around a lot and where they “live” isn’t that clear. It almost seems as if you can live anywhere you have relatives. You can simply show up at any house that technically belongs to one of your relatives and live there. I can’t even guess where people slept. I had been on every floor of that house, but I never saw a single room that was clearly someone’s bedroom. That, too, is a big difference. One’s room is an important concept in Canada. Your bedroom is your private castle and sanctuary. It is a special place. Here, I don’t know how it works.

So far, I’ve just been thinking about the core group that was in the house all day. Then there were lots of people that came and went all day long. I couldn’t begin to guess who they were nor what they were doing. People just came and went like I was sitting in the terminal of a busy train station. Mark had mentioned on a previous visit that lots of members of his extended family were involved in the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive”, and at lunchtime, they simply popped in to eat and then went out again. They could never know in advance how many people were going to show up and they just made lots of food. His mother was a very generous person, and she would feed anyone and everyone. Mark’s family appeared to be the wealthiest among his relatives, and so their house and food and possessions were all fair game for the visiting relatives. I’ve definitely come across a hint or two in my time in the Philippines that the demands of relatives can be a bit trying for those with a bit more money. You are expected to share and help your relatives, and it can get to be a bit overwhelming.

As the time approached 4 o’clock, there was a flurry of activity, and I guessed – correctly – that everyone was organizing themselves to go down to the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” to get their pay. They had produced the sheet of paper the program uses to monitor this, and the paper was being passed around the house as everyone signed their name. Then they all rushed out. It mattered not the slightest bit that few of these people had actually done any work. They had mostly been in the house with me all day doing the housework and caring for the children and simply hanging out. I suppose one or two might have gone out and moved a stick or two when I wasn’t looking, but it would have been purely nominal work. The family had simply listed everyone they could so they could collect as much money as they could. If there was any sense – even the tiniest bit – of ethical unease about this, I didn’t see it. I don’t think it crossed anyone’s mind that there was any connection between the money being handed out and the work that was expected. There was certainly no feeling of wrongdoing – not even the slightest. They all signed their names on the sheets in a supremely offhand manner – like someone handing around an office birthday card for everyone to sign. Then I was suddenly sitting in a completely empty house as everyone had gone down to St. Nino’s Shrine to get into their groups of ten and collect their money and applaud the speeches.

I’m not sure what the significance of this is or if there is any significance. Does this say anything about Filipino culture and society? Is it corruption? Is this part of the overall climate of corruption in the country? The strange thing is that people will get very upset at a type of behavior while being involved in that behavior themselves. I heard many people talk about how awful the looting had been and then in the same breath talk about the items they themselves had looted. One of the men that visited the house while I was there was running a small business selling looted items. He had a range of televisions and motorcycles and other big-budget items. The family’s huge Samsung flatscreen TV had been destroyed in the flood, and they spoke to this man about buying a TV from him to replace it.

It’s all rather a mystery to me. It’s certainly not fair. The other day, I walked all the way to the Astrodome, and on the way, I passed the little shack over the water where Edwin and his brother and mother lived. Nearby, I just happened to see Edwin’s mother working hard clearing garbage and debris with dozens of others. She, as I mentioned before, is a lovely and friendly and kind-looking little woman with brown wrinkly skin and a great smile. I asked her about Edwin and she said that Edwin was also working there with the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive.” Everyone there knew Edwin, and a great call went up for him. Everyone was shouting his name over and over until he was finally produced and came up to talk to me. We talked about the program, and he said it was a wonderful thing, and he was so grateful to the foundation for setting it up. The money he and his mother were getting was making all the difference in the world to their lives. And that’s easy to see. Edwin and his mother have next to nothing and with the city still recovering, they have little chance to earn anything. The 1,000 pesos a day they were earning through the program was not far off saving their lives. Then on the other hand, we have this wealthy family with a big house, a farm, a giant flat-screen TV, many vehicles, computers, workers, and enough money to buy a generator for 18,000 pesos (not to mention 12 pairs of sneakers for one person) and go on holidays to Korea and Brunei. And they were defrauding the program of at least 5,000 pesos a day, probably 10,000. (I wasn’t sure if they had just one group of 10 or two groups.) I don’t think the program organizers care, actually. They want to distribute the cash and this was a good way to do it. The work itself is simply an add-on.

I wonder, actually, about the legality of the whole program. Here in the Philippines, I simply accept it without thinking about it too much. But when I imagine the same thing happening in Canada, I quickly see it in a new light. It would be impossible in Canada for the simple reason that the work is far too dangerous. Simply walking over the debris piles is incredibly dangerous. When I do it, I go slower than a turtle, taking every single step with extreme caution and never allowing myself to be off balance. There are exposed nails, broken glass, twisted metal edges, and a thousand other things that can tear up your flesh in a second. And there are large empty areas underneath the debris pile. One false step, and you could plunge through into the foundations of a building. And mixed in with the debris is no end of toxic and dangerous substances ranging from decomposing bodies to household chemicals and industrial products. We’re talking about the remains of an entire city. Anything and everything is in there leaking and rotting and waiting to do damage to your body. And into this environment, the program has sent ten to fifteen thousand average people ranging from minors to the elderly with zero protective gear and no supervision or training of any kind. They are out there in flip flops and T-shirts removing debris with their bare hands. Not only that, they are doing the usual Filipino thing and setting fire to the garbage they collect, so they are working in clouds of toxic smoke. So it’s kind of a miracle that a program like this would be allowed in the first place. What happens when people fall and suffer bad cuts or broken limbs? What happens when they expose themselves to toxic chemicals? The BFP team goes into this same area and they suit up with at least heavy boots, surgical gloves, and face masks and sometimes even full gas masks. And they have a full medical team at their base prepared to deal with any injuries. And I’m sure there is some kind of insurance or disability pension for them in case of severe injuries. How, then, can a random NGO just set up shop and send out thousands of ordinary people into that same dangerous environment with nothing?

Personally, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I believe the “safety, safety, safety” culture of North America has gone way too far. It’s like common sense doesn’t exist in Canada anymore, and people are not allowed to do anything, as regulations pile on top of regulations. People in the Philippines at least have the right to exercise their own judgement and take responsibility for their own actions. They know that life is not a guaranteed risk-free thing. In fact, if the “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” didn’t exist, the Filipinos would be out there in their thousands searching through the rubble anyway looking for things of value that they can use or sell. I’m sure that many of the people in the program are thinking in those terms. They are being paid to clear away the rubble and garbage, but in their minds they are being paid to search through a very valuable garbage pile. On my walks around the city, I’ve been present for lots of cries of triumph as people find wallets containing money, entire cases of Coca Cola, jugs of tuba, designer clothes, pots and pans, cups, cutlery, and everything else you can imagine. Crews are at work all over the city scavenging whatever they can find. Computers are completely destroyed, of course, but the computer cases and other components can be cleaned up and resold. Bicycle taxis might be bent and twisted, but the wheels can be straightened and reused or sold. These people don’t own these bicycle taxis, but they are fair game and people are everywhere removing the wheels and carting them off. The “Cash-for-Work Cleanup Drive” simply pays them to do the work they would have been doing anyway.

This is an extremely North American point, but I also wonder if such a program couldn’t work in Canada for simple tax reasons. The NGO is paying out millions and millions of pesos, and there is no system in place to tax this income. And it is income. I suppose the Tzu Chi Foundation is a registered charity, but they are paying thousands upon thousands of employees at the moment. In Canada, the government would certainly want their portion of this in the form of income tax.

 

Tags: barangay captain, Canada, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Super Typhoon Yolanda, TV, typhoon