Category: The Philippines

25 Sentimo

Peter L. Curtis

A week after arriving in The Philippines, I came across an English language Filipino newspaper called the ‘Manilla Bulletin’.

Anya and I were staying in a typical tourist lodge on the coast of the island of Cebu and I was perusing the books left behind by other travellers crammed into several shelves of a dark, wooden book case – when I noticed a few editions of the  ‘Manilla Bulletin’ lying folded on the bottom shelf. 

I grabbed them and took them back to my room and began reading. One article in particular really drew my interest. It was from the hand of a journalist named Tonyo Cruz and it was entitled:

‘DON’T FORGET OUR SOCIO-ECONOMIC RIGHTS’

The following lines got me in:

‘Filipino Governments from the time of Fidel Ramos to Noynoy Aquino have loudly boasted about economic figures. And the boasting continues today under Rodrigo Duterte, with sycophants proclaiming the Philippines economy supposedly besting even China’s!

This is what the Duterte administration wants us to forget: recent economic growth has not resulted in the attainment of the rights to work, to just wages, to land, to an adequate standard of living, and to health, housing and education – in most instances, the situation has become worse…..’

The following statistics were quoted by Cruz:

12% of Filipinos were unemployed and 60% lived on 125 Pesos a day or less.

100 Pesos was the equivalent of $2.60 Australian or, 2 Euros.

Then I read the following: the combined wealth of the 15 wealthiest individuals in The Philippines was equivalent to the income of 77 million Filipinos.

But this was just the beginning of the story,  a story which could be told in the form of a very small coin called ’25 Centavo’… 

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Plan B

Peter L. Curtis

Early one morning, after a stay in the hills of the island of Negros in The Philippines, Anya and I took an auto rickshaw down to a city on the coast called Dumaguete.

From there we wanted to take a ferry to the small island of Siquijor.

It was two days before Christmas in 2017 and we were planning to spend the ‘festive season’ in what we thought was an out of the way place.

It was raining when we got in the rickshaw and the driver had trouble manoeuvring his vehicle over the muddy track to and from our small hotel. Once on the main road however, matters didn’t improve as the rain got heavier and we had to ford areas of the road which were flooded.

When we finally got out of the auto-rickshaw after navigating the sprawling Dumaguete and arriving near the ferry terminal, we were completely drenched.

This however proved to be the least of our problems in what was going to be a long day……….

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Yolanda

Peter L. Curtis

 

On arriving at the outskirts of the city of Cebu (the capital of the island of Cebu) after a long bus trip, we got a taxi to the airport. The airport was on the opposite side of town. We thought the taxi would be quicker than the local bus – as it turned out, a completely unwarranted assumption. Even though it was early in the afternoon and on a week day, the traffic was bumper to bumper. 

Our taxi driver seemed upbeat about the traffic. Like many Filipinos, he spoke English – and spoke it quite well.

When we asked him why the traffic was so heavy, he exclaimed incredulously:

‘You don’t know?’ 

We said we didn´t. 

Voice oozing disbelief, he proceeded to enlighten the dumb tourists. 

‘There’s a big religious festival in Cebu this weekend! People are arriving from all over the country, even overseas!’

I guessed that the taxi driver was a proud native of Cebu.

He wasn’t. 

He was a man making the best of a bad lot.  

No shortage of them in The Philippines, but this man had a cross to bear. Yolanda had ruined him, ruined his life, and yet he still managed to go on, driving his taxi into a land called Hope…..

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An Inconvenient Truth Part 1

Peter L. Curtis

The bus journey from Aleminos to Vigan took a lot longer than I anticipated: the distance was 270 kilometres and it took 11 hours.

These two cities are on the west coast of Luzon, the largest and most populated of the islands comprising The Philippines (and home to the capital city Manila). There is one main road running along this west coast because much of the interior of Luzon is mountainous. Unbeknownst to me and I should have realised this, most of the people in Luzon live along the coasts and especially, the west coast.

Some of the buses in The Philippines are ultra-modern but mine wasn´t one of them. It had bench seats and ventilation was provided by sliding windows. For much of the way, the bus crawled along a traffic choked road, a chaos of cars, small trucks, SUV’s – and hundreds of the three wheel motor bike rickshaws. There were long periods when the bus was stationary. Moving so slowly along that over congested coast road, accompanied by a constant haze of pollution, I got a sobering look at life for the Filipinos, especially those living at the lower end of the social economic ladder.  Read more →

An Inconvenient Truth Part 2

Peter L. Curtis

Early one morning, after two days in the tourist city of Vigan, I got in a small motor bike rickshaw and travelled to a small guest house on the coast.

It wasn´t far, 15 kilometres or so.

Before long, we left Vigan behind us and motored down narrow pot holed roads with open fields and small houses on either side. There were was almost no traffic. The sky was a blanket of grey. 

We came to a small town called Santa Catalina. ‘Santa Catalina’: a vestige of The Philippines origins as a Spanish colony.

There was a single main street, houses and shops either side and a large church. There were few people about.

Finally we neared the coast.

There was a strong wind blowing off the sea. It was good to breathe fresh air again. Then the sea came into view. I’d had ideas of going for a swim but I at first sight, I knew that was completely out of the question. Big ocean swells broke far out to sea, reformed and broke again and again, forming a series of wild, breaking waves which pounded the beach violently.

With the sound of the waves filling the air, the rickshaw turned left and drove down a long drive and pulled up a large open dining area with wooden tables and chairs under a large sloping thatch roof. There was a middle-aged man seated at one of the tables talking to a couple of young Filipino tourists. Besides some of the place names, another surviving remnant of the Spanish era are people’s names and as far as that went, you couldn’t get more Spanish than ‘Carlos Fernando’. 

Carlos got up and came over to the rickshaw and introduced himself.

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