Matt and Kristin in the Philippines

Our journey was easy, and included the fastest baggage claim in history, I think. We have been made extremely comfortable and have had lots of time to rest and get our bearings.

We’ve had initial meetings with our Non-Goverment Organizations, InPeace and Bathaluman, but there’s a lot of orientation to our new town and placements that has yet to occur, so we really don’t know a great deal yet.

Our Tagalog, which was remedial at best, is mostly useless now, because people here mostly speak Cebuano. Fortunately, many still speak English, so we can go shopping by ourselves and manage the Internet cafe, when it’s not crowded full with kids playing online games. Happily, “thank you", “okay", and “yes” are the same in Cebuano as in Tagalog, so we can manage okay.

Tomorrow we fly to Davao, which will be our home for the rest of the year. Here’s our new address:

Thanks for all of you who have written! We will keep our promise to write you back by post.

“There is not justice in the world. Father, forgive me wherever you are, but this world has brought one vile abomination after another down on the heads of the gentle, and I’ll not live to see the meek inherit anything.”   –Leah Price in The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Our supervisor, Becca, has a modest library of very good books, so when I need to be alone or have time to relax I’m usually reading. So far I’ve read When The Elephants Dance, Life of Pi, and The Poisonwood Bible. They are all excellent.

Yesterday we had a discussion with a local theology professor to add a little God-talk into all we’ve been seeing and experiencing. He made a strong claim: that anyone who intends to understand Jesus (and/or follow Jesus) must do so from the point of view of the poor. This is not really a new idea for me. In seminary we spend most of our time worrying about what the Bible says and means, and it would take a lot of energy to ignore that the Bible is mostly about poor people and how God and Jesus care so much about them.

Awhile ago on our rural farmer immersion, I got to spend a few days living with a family who were rather obviously poor. Their house was made of bamboo and a tin roof forming about three rooms and a front “porch” on foot-packed earth. Husband and wife had six children, but also living there were an uncle and three cousins. A few houses over were many more uncles, aunts, cousins, and a grandfather who visited rather often. Some of the kids took to calling me “Kuya Mateo.” (Kuya is “older brother", and “Mateo” is more familiar to most people than “Matt” or “Matthew” and so it became much easier for me to use). These amazingly kind and gracious hosts spoke almost no English.

Question 1: You’ve just moved to a new country. It’s hot, you’re tired and trying to figure out your new surroundings when suddenly a two-inch critter creeps into view from behind the refrigerator. You’ve seen it in books and pictures, but a cockroach looks far uglier in person. How do you respond?

A. Run
B. Fetch someone else to smoosh it
C. Grab the nearest shoe

Question 2: You are preparing for bed, teeth brushed, face washed, pajama pants on. Emerging from the bookshelf is another friendly cockroach. You…

A. Smash it
B. Ignore it, there will always be another
C. Perform a dance similar to the five-year old’s “I’ve got to pee” dance and beg your partner to kill the thing who adamantly

Dedicated to my mother, who is a nurse.

“nurse” in Tagalog is “nars.”

The Philippines is one of the top nurse-exporting countries in the world. We’re told that many doctors will work as nurses in other countries, because you can earn more as a nurse in other countries than as a doctor in the Philippines.

85% of employed Filipino nurses work abroad. In the last 4 years, 50,000 nurses were exported, but only 20,000 new nurses entered the work force.

Overseas workers are the most sustainable part of the Philippines’ economy. The country doesn’t produce much of it’s own. It imports parts, assembles them, and exports products. That is an example of an unsustainable part of the economy, since it makes the country entirely dependant on the supply of the parts and the market for the finished product. A major crop is rice, but because of trade agreements, the Philippines imports rice, even though it makes plenty for itself (and sometimes it feels like we’ve eaten most of it!).

“Ka” is a title of respect or affection. It is short for “kasama” which means “companion” and is used generally for anyone older than you are, though I’ve also been told it has a progressive connotation for those struggling for social justice. It would be just as likely to hear him referred to as “Kuya” (older brother) or “Tito” (uncle). Both are not restricted by blood relations. We call many poeple “Kuya” or “Ate” (older sister) here.

“Fort” is a nickname. His real name is Diosdado Fortuna.

We met Ka Fort over two weeks ago while we were on our workers immersion. After visiting three other picket lines we met him on the Nestle workers picket line. He’s the president of the Nestle workers union at Cabuyao, Laguna.

The sun doesn’t rise until 6AM. The banana trees are still though the roosters could wake even a rock. The dogs nip at each other’s legs and children’s chattering and play began an hour ago. The smell of fish wafts in waiting for the rice already prepared. The sun still has not risen, but the sky smiles in orangeness. I have slept fitfully beneath a mosquito net and breathed fresh air, my lungs rejoice. I am fortunate to have a mattress and even a pillow! The greatest joy comes through the shower head spouting cold water. I haven’t had a shower in weeks. Living on a farm doesn’t seem too bad. It’s muddy, and animal-y, the chickens dodging between my legs later become my dinner (and breakfast and lunch), and the CR (comfort room–bathroom) is outside and I always need it in the middle of the night.

Matthew D. Black
Box EA47, Ermita Post Office,
Ermita, Malate, Manila 1004
PHILIPPINES

September 21, 2005

Mr. Ralph Lauren
Chairman and Chief Executive
Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation
650 Madison Avenue
New York, NEW YORK 10022

Dear Mr. Lauren,

I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your clothes. I have not bought many Polo products previously because I thought them a bit overpriced. However, I now own a pair of Polo by Ralph Lauren chinos, and I must say they are really excellent pants. I am a US citizen who has just moved to the Philippines, and they handle the heat well and still look good after being hand washed and hung to dry without fabric softener (most people in the Philippines are too poor to own a washing machine, much less an automatic dryer or fabric softener).

It feels like we have done so much and seen so much and learned so much, but to try to explain why anything is the way it is would be arrogant, because we really still know so little about this country. So here’s some of what I’ve noticed here in Manila in our first two weeks:

The airport looked 20 years old, and so did the equipment on the runway.
Lots of buildings in Manila look 20 years old, too, many in disrepair.
Not the enormous mall two blocks from our house. That looks new.

Lots of short brown people dressed exactly like people in the US.
Short brown people staring at the tall white people.

Greetings friends!

It’s only been a week and I’m not really sure where to begin. They say if you live in a place for a few weeks, you could write a book, a few months, a chapter, and a year, hardly anything at all. I’m in the book phase.

We live in a three room apartment with a common area for cooking and a kitchen table. Nine people live here, 8 are women. Just last night we finally disposed of the mouse occupying our space, we’d see it scurry by, but it finally fell for the blue rice poison. If only that worked for cockroaches. They’re rather large and I admit, I do the five-year-old, please don’t make me kill it dance when they apppear in our bedroom, the kitchen floor and the toilet at 3AM. Speaking of toilets, most of the time they flush and most of the time we have a trickle of water from the faucets. We’re still mastering the bucket bath skills, even though I doubt we’ll ever feel as clean as we would like. The most frutrating part for me, and the other girls here, is this sheen of gross that never, ever leaves our faces. Moving on, we sleep on mattresses on the floor and manage to find a place for our stuff (we are very proud of our packing skills especially after watching some others at orientation haul around two enormous suitcases…they weren’t going to the Philippines.) We don’t have AC, just a fan. It’s simple.