Trip Report (Partial)

Well, we did indeed have a great time. I have a lot of thoughts about this but here is a preliminary report. Tena's hometown of Mangaldan (near Dagupan City, Pangasinan) isn't actually all that far from Manila; driving to Manila on our return and leaving at 6am we got to the outskirts of the city at 9:15. Naturally it took another hour and a half to get across Manila to the airport. I am not sure just why it is that the Philippines has failed to exploit its obvious tourist potential, but I think the fact that Manila is such a shithole has something to do with it. Sadly, it used to be beautiful, but all the Spanish-era buildings (and everything else) were destroyed by bombardment during WWII, whether from the Japanese or the US it's hard to say.* The rebuilt town is unusually unattractive and has traffic worse than Bangkok + LA x suburban Virginia at 6pm on a weekday.

The main reason why the Philippines fares so badly in the tourism stakes compared to Thailand is bad government, I think. There is something about its being a (stipulatively boring) Catholic country versus an (interesting, exotic) Buddhist one, perhaps, though this overlooks the extent to which Filipino Catholicism is weird and interesting in the way that only elastic, accomodating Catholicism can be. Does Jesus need to eat adobo and little plates of rice? Hell yes. Has the Virgin Mary started to take on an outsize, borderline idolatrous role? Oh, wait, that's mainstream Catholicism, sorry. Also, Thai food is one of the world's great cuisines, and Filipino food, while very tasty, can tend towards the greasy and the what-is-this-mysterious pork-knuckle-in-my-mixed-vegetables.

We stayed at Tena's mother's house, which is perfectly nice if somewhat half-constructed by western standards. You can see a lot of daylight at the meeting of the top edges of the concrete-block walls and the tin roof. They bought a fridge (well, I paid for it) and installed a sit-down toilet on our behalf, which I found touching. Though it lacked a seat or back, Zoë thought it superior in one respect: you can flush it at will by pouring water from the bucket (used both for scooping out water to clean oneself after using the toilet and for taking baths), and don't have to wait around for the toilet tank to refill. Plus it's cool.

Zoë had a truly wonderful time, and displayed an unusual amount of independence for a momma's girl. She was just off running around with other neighbor children and Tena's neices and nephews from dawn till dusk. Part of the fun was that she was such an object of unusual interest. Most of the people in Tena's barangay (the smallest political unit of the Philippines; it's a kind of cool village system which exists even in big cities, and has it's own town council) had never seen any ang mo children before. The general sentiment was that "they look like dollies"!

Violet's favorite thing was riding around in the motorcycle tri-shaw with Tena's brother-in-law. (I helped Tena purchase two of these some years back, and her brother-in-law uses them as an informal taxi service, but I must say that it seems that once he has gotten x amount of money on a given day he calls it quits to drink beer, so it is not a well-performing investment.) She said "MeiMei...a cuker [scooter]...a FAST!" When the thing was parked in the driveway she would just climb up into the seat and make motor noises and suggest we go somewhere.

Tena has two sisters, one of whom is a domestic worker here in Singapore, and the other of whom lives next door to their mom with her husband and five kids (four sons and one youngest daughter). Their place is really rudimentary, and Zoë is upset about it. She wanted to know why we are rich and live in a nice place and they just have dirt for a floor. They don't have a range (Tena's mom has a gas-fired two-burner one, and she also feeds everyone much of the time) but use a charcoal brazier outside. They don't have money to buy dog food, but feed them scraps (sensible enough, but it made a peculiar impression on Zoë.) Her little friend Rina (age 3) is so small and thin compared to Zoë...who is small and thin. Most of her milk teeth have rotted almost away already. Zoë thinks this is bad, and she's right. I've tried to tell her that we're trying to help Rina's family right now (and we have signed on to help one of her older brothers go to school. Why one? Because he's particularly smart and engaging...is this rational resource allocation or...?) Zoë wants to have a lemonade stand and send the money to Rina's family, so we're doing that next week.

Zoë believes in God about half the time, and when I said there wasn't any reason why we were so lucky and Rina's family so poor she suggested that maybe "God hadn't visited them." I told her that that would be a pretty mean thing to do, and she countered that maybe God didn't know about them? And I said that he would be a pretty pointless God if he didn't at least know all the people in the world; most people who believe in God think he knows all the birds too, and every hair on your head. So, am I crushing the tender shoots of her youthful faith? On the positive side, I have wanted to teach her about practicing charity, something I am not so great at myself unless I am personally involved somehow, and I think that really experiencing life in a truly poor family, even if only for a short time, has given her a way to think about helping other people. The relationship between the hiring family and their domestic worker is a peculiarly intimate one; I hope it can be something that is good for both our families, and something that makes Tena's terrible sacrifices more worthwhile. More later...

Zoë and Rina

Mangaldan wet market.

*Carlos, in comments, notes that it was actually the Japanese's fault. OK, then. I guess my well-founded hatred of MacArthur was causing bias.

Comments

[Matt]

Poor Pig! Just think of Babe saying, "I want my mom!"

[Carlos]

"Sadly, it used to be beautiful, but all the Spanish-era buildings (and everything else) were destroyed by bombardment during WWII, whether from the Japanese or the US it's hard to say."

Manila was declared a open city at the beginning of WWII by the Philippine government; the Japanese bombed it anyway. Then in 1945, the Japanese Navy overruled the Japanese Army, which considered Manila indefensible. The old city, Intramuros, was where they made their last stand, blowing up all their old positions as they slowly got bottled up inside the walls. MacArthur -- to his regret, because for all his faults (and there were many), he did love Manila -- knocked it down with artillery.

And Imelda as governor of Metro Manila didn't help either. Anyway.

[woof]

Belle, I’d been waiting to read about your trip, because what you call “a peculiarly intimate” relationship between employer and employee not only intrigues me at a human level but is part of a current research project I’m involved in, with my new research centre (http://www.cespi.it/SCMeng.htm). We’re looking at transnational welfare and care drain. Specifically, I’m interviewing Ukrainian women in Italy and their family members at home, as well as local social services and stakeholders in both receiving and sending towns. As part of this research, I was in Milan last week for the presentation of a research project focusing on the Philippines. There is a lot of work done on these families, both by post-feminist writers like Rachel Salazar Parrenas and by Catholic researchers. In fact, the Milan research was heavily influenced by Catholic ideas (see a relevant report at www.smc.org.ph/heartsapart/pdfs/Hearts%20Apart.pdf). A lot of the issues you raise are well documented in literature (remittance waste, etc.). There also seems to be an ethical issue in so much investment in education: all these jobs are for the foreign job market, and prepare for emigration. The bloated education system is driven by remittances and does not educate for the internal market. At the same time, agencies – even nurse-recruitment for Western countries – systematically place Filipino nurses in jobs which are below their educational level, after promising nursing or other such jobs.
The literature on Filipino workers concurs that while most overseas jobs have their dignity, domestic work is a humiliating job and workers – especially men - often hide the true nature of their work from their families. When you wrote that you were going, I wondered what it meant for Tena to present herself so explicitly as a “domestic worker” – with you in tow – rather than as a breadwinner. Filipinos are so consensual and avoid open conflict like the plague… How did you address this issue?

[Carlos]

Damn. Woof, have you changed your address to your new org? 'Cause me and my co-author are approaching the same issues from a different viewpoint, and I'd love to pick your brain... gently, of course, using only tools made of soft plastic.

[woof]

I never post my real e-mail. Write to me at j(dot)chaloff(at)gmail(dot)com

[Saheli]

hough it lacked a seat or back, Zoë thought it superior in one respect: you can flush it at will by pouring water from the bucket (used both for scooping out water to clean oneself after using the toilet and for taking baths), and don't have to wait around for the toilet tank to refill.

Actually, I think you should be able to flush almsot any flushing toilet that way. It's the geometry of the bowl that creates the suction-flush once doused with water---the tank simply makes it simple to dump that much water in the bowl all at once.

[Noel Maurer]

This is fascinating. Carlos and I are hammering away at an HBS case on the Philippines, focussing, of course, on the OFW phenomenon.

I can see class now. "So, isn't the Philippines just like McKinsey?"

Anyway, it's a deeply interesting country. And a deeply depressing one, since you just can't walk away from the place without thinking that after fifty years there we just should have done ... better.

So, please, Belle and Woof, I'd like to hear more.

[Anthony]

"Part of the fun was that she was such an object of unusual interest."

Actually that's what is making life in Sulawesi pretty much hell for our kids. Much staring and pinching, even after 5 months here. They hate it.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Wow, that photo's enough to return this former vegetarian to his ethical-veganism roots. I mean, he's winking at us.

[Phred]

Not at us , at you, Squat. He recognizes his cuz'.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Wow, you're trolling at midnight on Sunday. I truly and sincerely thank you for taking a break from all your Quine-loving lady friends to grace us with your presence. 'Cause you know how much we love you...and we feel your love us.

By the way, how's Right Said doing these day?

[almostinfamous]

my car gets 40 rods to the hog's head and that's the way i likes it!

[SamChevre]

What I want to know is--what do they do with the pigs' heads? Do they make souse, or scrapple, or something like either of those?

[Gary Farber]

"The main reason why the Philippines fares so badly in the tourism stakes compared to Thailand is bad government, I think."

I'm no expert on Thailand, and the only Thai guy I've ever known is a certain Somtow, but I don't exactly read a lot in the news in recent years about fine, upstanding, good government in Thailand. Just sayin'.

"I guess my well-founded hatred of MacArthur was causing bias."

The Japanese bombing wouldn't have gone so well, at the start -- for a little while, if MacArthur hadn't conveniently left all his planes out to be bombed, even after having warning of Japanese attack. So blame him for that.

Also for saying the Chinese would never attack in Korea.

And throw in the Bonus March, too. Just because.

[JRoth]

Actually, the brother-in-law's method is pretty typical for cabbies. Surowiecki had a piece in the New Yorker about 3 years ago describing NYC cabbies' irrational economic behavior: On good nights, they knock off early, and on bad nights they keep trolling for fares, hoping to reach some magical plateau. Just more evidence that simplistic economic models don't describe human behavior very well.

[happy person]

Hi Mrs Holbo,
just wanted to say thank you for showing me that there are and can be, intimate relationships between a domestic helper and her "mam".. some people burn, starve and abuse their helpers, some people treat them worse than slaves, some people even rape their helpers.. your relationship with your helper is really heartwarming.. the extent you go to love and care for her is something that every singaporean "mam" should model. :) cheers!!

[belle waring]

thanks a lot, happy person!