After seeing Intramuros, Malacaņang Palace, Recto, Edsa, Ermita, Pasay City, Las Piņas, and Mutinlupa I was left with these few, direct comments: dirty, overcrowded, smelly, smoggy, and showing a general lack of concern for tourism as well as an apparent lack of cultural pride.
Buses are the typical form of transportation from the provinces of Luzon to Manila. The comfort of these busses varies widely and some come equipped with a television for the showing of a current video movie. The cost of one company's air-conditioned bus for a 63 kilometer ride from the province to Manila is P35 (Peso25-30 for no "air-con"). Busses have both a driver and a conductor, who collects money and hands out tickets. The conductor is also responsible for packing the bus with as many people as is humanly possible. The seats are often designed for an average Filipino (to sit but not necessarily comfortably) so where there are three seats across, three Filipinos are expected to sit whether or not they are average size. In addition to the filling of these seats the aisles are to be filled to capacity with standing riders who pay full fare.
At a pier where a boat was preparing to launch there were about a dozen young children swimming in the water waiting for the non-Filipino tourists to throw small change and small bags of junk food to them.
Entering Manila by car or bus, one of the first things you may notice is the squatter housing. The houses are made of wood that that seems, in some cases, to be put together haphazardly because the wood is not uniform. Many of them have the look of buildings that were made with whatever wood materials could be found over a length of time. Unlike poor homes in the provinces, squatter homes in Manila are crammed together in abandoned land, overhanging Pasig River, or encroaching dangerously close to the railroad tracks. Coming from the United States, I was surprised even after being forewarned, that the beggars in the Philippines are not your average bum seen in urban America. It is a rarity to see amongst the beggars an abled body man or woman. Instead you see old people begging for anything, a peso or even less will do (a P25=$1.00). Dirty, barefoot boys and girls walk up to cars at traffic stops and place their face and open hand against the car windows. They don't ask for money and then move on if rejected, instead they wait until empathy for their plight sinks in, the window is rolled down, and some change is placed in the boy or girl's hand. You walk past a site where a building was demolished and playing in the rubble is a group of young children. This is their playground. One day in Manila, I saw two young boys. The younger one was maybe five-years old and completely naked. They were walking around on the center divider which separated traffic going in opposite directions, and was planted with grass, bushes and trees. I watched them long enough to see the older one seemed to be trying to get a piece of fruit from a tree with a stick but it was out of reach.
(Children of Bay, Laguna)
Tita Ofe adopted a young girl, informally. The girl was getting old enough that it would have been difficult for her to be adopted, but informal adoptions are not unusual in the Philippines where unwanted pregnancies are high and the financial burden is often severe. This girl began stealing money from a "change" jar that Ofe's daughter had and was given a warning not to do it. Despite subsequent warnings she continued to steal the money to buy things for her friends. Tita Ofe also owned a tricycle that she rented out for income. She kept the money in a box and soon that money was disappearing too so the little young girl was asked to return to her family.
Rosemarie is eleven-years old. She is the sixth of Nejellia and Canuto's ten children. Canuto had eight additional children with his previous wife. Rosemarie's father lost part of one of his legs apparently from some medical condition. Her mother does what she can, but it isn't enough. Rosemarie was informally adopted by a couple who own a karinderia (eatery) in the same barangay, and have four children of their own. Rosemarie is not treated exactly as a member of the family, and it would be difficult for her to accept her adopted family as family because her natural family is nearby. She visites the, and sometimes two of her sisters even visit her at her adopted family's home above the karinderia. The important thing is that Rosemarie is one less person that needs to be housed, fed, clothed and provided for in other such ways. Rosemarie is pretty fortunate because she doesn't even have to do chores though her adoptive mother could probably use her help at the karinderia.
In a country as poor as the Philippines, these sort of adoptions seem to be fairly common. They are a necessity. Rosemarie is clearly better off than her two sisters that I saw her with. They were hungrier, their general hypiene appeared poorer, and their clothing was clearly inferior. What was difficult to understand was why she wanted to be adopted by another family. She mentioned that a white couple had once met her and considered adopting her, but that she couldn't speak English well enough to articulate her desire to be adopted so nothing happened. When she met me, it was clear that she thought I might be able to take her to America. Is it her desire to have a more secure life that makes her yearn for an adoption by a foreign family or is it just a desire for more "material comforts" that many Filipinos are in search of in what is labeled a "developing society?"
PRINTER-FRIENDLY FORMAT
