Seeing Poverty

I guess it's not that long since I wrote a fairly lengthy post about life at traffic lights in Managua and I suppose it is one of the differences I have noticed in Manila. Metro Manila alone has a population about three times as large as that of the whole of Nicaragua. There is a lot of wealth and there is a lot of poverty in the Philippines, with a much bigger population the wealth feels more visible than in Managua, even though it definitely existed there too.

The slow traffic means Manila's street vendors don't have to limit themselves to traffic light junctions like in Managua and yet I would say I have seen far fewer vendors or beggars. About a week ago a child came up to the car windows to ask for money and our driver told him to go away. He told us you shouldn't give to children, I asked why and he said they will use money for drugs or glue, he went on to explain that he might offer them food if he has but mostly they reject it or he may give to the blind or disabled or the old.

On the way home on Friday night I watched a blind man being led from car to car by an emaciated female guide and what struck me was how absolutely no-one in any of the vehicles gave them anything, if I had seen the same scenario in Managua I know without a doubt someone would have given a coin or two. I gave nothing either although as we drove away I wished I had.

On the same day on the front page of the newspaper The Philippine Star it read:

The number of Filipino families that experienced hunger grew from about 3 million households in June to about 4.3 million in September, according to a survey released yesterday by the Social Weather Station (SWS). The SWS poll...found that one in five families or 21.5% experienced having nothing to eat in the last three months.

 Moderate and severe hunger increased by nearly 5 point to 18% and 1.5 points to 3.5%. 'Moderate hunger' refers to experiencing having nothing to eat 'only once' or 'a few times' in the last three months, while 'severe hunger' involves going hungry 'often' or 'always'.

When you see poverty daily it is too easy to become blind, cynical or feel helpless. God help me to really see.

Our Best Export?

Have you ever wondered what your home nation's best export or legacy to the world is? To be honest I never really have, perhaps having pessimistic tendencies I tend to be more acutely aware of many of the not so good things or attitudes that Britain has given to the world, however that is not entirely fair as all nations, like all people, give both good and bad.

So an advertisement that I saw on Malaysian TV last week caught my attention when it asked what Europe's best gift to the world was, I thought it was a trailer for a documentary or a travel company as it considered the options of history, architecture, culture and philosophy, but in Malaysia I really should have known better the best thing of course was our football matches! Malaysian Airlines are even the sponsor of one of the English Premier League sides.

The back page of the daily newspapers where the biggest sports events should appear has the English Premiership results and league table as well as reviews of the match. In fact if I talk to someone in Malaysia they almost without doubt know more than I do and I could watch just about every match of the season on televisions in restaurants. It is a little strange when foreigners are more interested in your national sport than you are.

How secure!

I don't think I have ever been subject to so much security, I thought one advantage of going the other direction from the UK would be that I would avoid all the security checks of the US airports, but actually it seems to combat local threats security in the Philippines is even higher. To even get into the airport terminals you must have a valid ticket for travel which you present before you are allowed into the main doors, at those same doors you also have to go through a metal detector and send all your luggage through an X-ray machine and this is all long before check-in, immigration and the pre-flight security checks. If you are not flying, you are not entering, no family farewells inside the terminal.

In addition every time I walk into my hotel I pass through a metal detector, it seems to go off every time but now they are getting used to my face they seem to check less and less. The same applies every time anyone goes into one of the many shopping malls, the entrance will have two lines separated into male and female, you are scanned with a metal detector, and the guard with a stick moves the items around in your bag to check you are not bringing in anything you shouldn't. Exiting the mall is easy and unchecked so they don't seem too worried about theft. However the most surprising of all was this morning when I went to church for the first time and there were guards at the entry to check our bags as we went in. Except at the airport it is all very efficient and the guards are pleasant but it is non-negotiable and even at the airport it's not unbearable.

When we arrive at work in the morning the security guards use a mirror on a stick to inspect the underside of the vehicles before we are allowed to enter.

Last week a colleague reminded me of the incident with the bus that was hijacked a year or two ago by rebels where many people ended up being killed in the stand-off. I knew some of the islands further to the south of the Philippines are not recommended to travel to due to kidnappings, just this week an American-Filipino woman was released but her son and nephew remained held by kidnappers. I don't feel insecure but perhaps it is as a result of ignorance or the frequent presence of police and security.

If I take a taxi from the hotel the doormen write down my details and insist on seeing the ID of the driver. When I got a taxi outside a mall today to return to my hotel I realised the person directing me to the taxi was from the police and gave me a slip of paper, when I asked what the paper was for he informed me that it was the details of the taxi in case I had any complaints – including the taxi number, time and contacts numbers of the tourist police etc. I didn't have any problems but it felt good someone had it noted down.

Last night as I sat with a colleague getting a coffee at Starbucks hoping for the rain to ease so we could walk back to the hotel I noticed three policemen with shotguns at the corner protecting the popular dining/shopping area. We had both commented that for a city with a lot of poor we were surprised how few people hassled us in the fairly affluent area where the hotel was and we feel comfortable walking around after dark on our own in the immediate vicinities of the hotel. I was left with a nagging feeling that perhaps the security also deterred begging and street vendors.

So the fact there is more security than I personally have ever experienced, does that make me safer?

Low Cost Asian Style

Having become used to non-low cost airlines and even being able to upgrade using my airmiles from time to time I was not thrilled by the prospect of having to return to low cost, nothing included flying. I tried to remember what life on RyanAir or EasyJet had been like and stock up on drinks and snacks for the flight as well as wondering if I really might have to pay to use the toilet as one of the European low cost airlines had threatened to do. At least we had been able to pre-reserve our seats, although there was possibly a charge for that. There wasn't a hierarchy of smaller and smaller seats as per Spirit, the US low cost carrier to Nicaragua, nor a free for all as everyone pushed for seats.

True to form the flight was an hour late and we had to walk out to the plane, which did not raise my expectations. However on boarding I was pleasantly surprised the plane was new and comfortable with reasonable leg room. No entertainment and yes food an drinks were purchased but at just over £2 for a hot chocolate and a rather strange cheese roll (not bad just strange, I guess it would seem less strange if I had a Nicaraguan mindset rather than the idea of a cheese sandwich) I can't really complain. But they had a nice magazine highlighting their destinations which had the good effect of making me feel more positive about the Philippines – that there are places visiting and I'm not quite at the end of the world.

Clearly the definition of turbulence worth advising us about over the South China Sea isn't the same as my expectation it constantly feels more bumpy than I'd like but everyone else doesn't seem too perturbed.

The flight crew (not the pilots I'm pleased to report!) even played a game with the passengers giving away little pouches as prizes, so as a low cost carrier goes so far I'm reasonably impressed with Cebu Pacific.

Words

Words – those building blocks of communication, building blocks since even with the right words our personal differences can mean we interpret those building blocks differently with all those misunderstandings that can occur. Having spent five years communicating mainly in my second language Spanish I know the frustration of not being able to find the right word and even sometimes not being able to remember the proper word in my mother tongue. In Nicaragua I needed to be able to find those words now living and working between Malaysia and the Philippines I can be lazy as I can survive in English wherever I am and in work my colleagues speak at least as good English as me as I still recover from my Spanglish episodes.

Still I aspire to be able to at least to do some basic greetings etc in the local language, in Malaysia that is officially Bahasa Malaysia or Malay as it gets called in English. As will any language that uses the Roman letter system learning to read some words is easier than saying them, although I am led to believe Malay like Spanish is a phonetic language so you should be able to figure out how to  say the words when you read them, unlike in English. I thought I'd share a few of the words I've learnt to read, you'll see if you read them it should be fairly easy to work out what they mean at least if I give you the clue that they are mostly signs you see around town or places or services. I've put the answers below but I'll let you guess first, the first few should be easy

Words in Malay

1.      Teksi

2.      Bas

3.      Stesen

4.      Butik

5.      Imigresen

6.      Trafik

7.      Polis

8.      Keluar

9.      Masuk

10.  Pandu Cermat

Words in English

1.      Taxi

2.      Bus

3.      Station

4.      Boutique

5.      Immigration

6.      Traffic

7.      Police

8.      Exit

9.      Entry

10.  Drive Carefully.

Officially Filipino is the national language of the Philippines but apparently the principal base is Tagalog so it seems most of the Filipinos, at least in the Manila area, call it Tagalog. The main language of education is English which also allows me the privilege of laziness. So far I've learnt “salamat” - thankyou, “bay” for bye and “kumusta” which for anyone who knows Spanish maybe shouldn't be such a surprise that it works as “hello”. I find listening to Tagalog interesting as I haven't got a clue what is being said but every now and again I hear a word that is from English or Spanish that I understand clearly in the middle of a conversation of which I am completely clueless, like the safety briefing on the plane where they mentioned “safety card” and “salvavidas” which is lifejackets in Spanish. So in Tagalog it seems I have words but not enough to enable any communication!