ten ₱esos

Today I walked down to Baguio Gold borough again, to play Sepak Takraw with the youths, using the new ball and net. Well, I hardly knew the rules, and I certainly didn’t have the skills and ‘the moves,’ such as the bicycle kick. So I thought that I’d photograph the kids playing while I learned the game.

Baguio Gold Road, one lane wide,  is partly paved. And it’s not two lanes wide. When two vehicles meet, the vehicle straining uphill has the right-of-way, so the downhill-headed driver must swerve onto the verge if possible or reverse uphill to find a place to get out of the way. This road has no street lamps and is very dark at night. We can see millions of stars in an inky black sky. The locals are leery of venturing out at night and don’t want to go alone, for fear of being held-up at knife point. Many people of Baguio Gold are very poor, unemployed and desperate.

overhead black lines that are held up by bamboo and wires are 3/4″ diameter water hoses, not electric lines

chickens, ducks, geese, goats, dogs and cats wander and urinate and defecate anywhere

Some men work in the mines and refineries, and I heard that the guys who carry sacks of nava (white rock -ore) on their shoulders downhill from each mine earn 100 pesos per day. Wow – $2.43 per shift for carrying 45-pound sacks of rocks on shoulders down narrow steep footpaths. Where do I apply for that job?

Men and women who work outdoors have dark brown skin which they hide with long-sleeve shirts, jackets, sweaters, scarves, hats, hooded sweatshirts, etcetera when they venture uphill to the big city. They’re ashamed of their darkness.

Families’ living conditions vary widely in Baguio Gold. On the walk down hill from Monterrazas Village, I see one-story and two-story houses of differing levels of refinement. I see cast-concrete homes with glass windows and paved forecourts. But no garage, no front porch, no swimming pool, no manicured lawn for soccer or football. These houses would cost $20,000 to build in U.S. These are simple and crude. They’re not insulated and wired, plumbed and furnished like U.S. homes.

This is not a large house -it’s a low-ceiling house, about 16′x20′ on the first floor, with two small bedrooms above

Some homes are built with 4-inch thick concrete block, plus lumber and sheet metal for the upper story and roof. Some single-story dwellings are ramshackle assemblies of cement block, 2x4s, bamboo, corrugated steel sheets, tarpaulins and baling wire.

I see thin cement block walls around homes and hog pens, plus poured concrete patios, driveways/forecourts and footpaths. Some homeowners have 1970s Japanese economy cars or 1990s econocar taxis (below) or prehistoric, nine-times-rebuilt jeepneys.

(rear) Pedring, Nick (11) and his brother Andy (14)

(front) Charlotte (7), her sister, Rose (5) and neighbor Marshall

when I first met them, weeks ago

So I didn’t realize, until I trod the footpaths away from the cement road and the better houses, with glass windows, iron grates and television antennas, that most villagers -miners and farmers- live in abject poverty.

I met Andy and Nick’s oldest brother, Mack near the elementary school, he introduced himself, and he led me to their home, where I met his 5-year old sister, Rose, and their grandmother, whom I call ‘Nanay.’ She and six grandkids, aged 5-18, reside in a sheetmetal and cement block house that’s smaller than our den.

Without electricity, running water, telephone line, DSL , television/internet cable, Andy, Mack and others live without a refrigerator, microwave oven, freezer, blender, electric rice cooker or crock pot, coffee maker, electric kettle, FM or shortwave radio, television, cable box or dish network receiver, VCR, DVR, floor lamp, desk lamp, ceiling fan, oscillating floor fan, personal computer, printer, telephone, digital camera, cell phone, etcetera.

Walk through your house and count the things which are plugged into alternating current. You may be astounded at how much you plug in, even if your cell phone or electric razor isn’t charging now. We have alot of conveniences that we probably aren’t grateful for.

Rose on the roof of the shack that her family resides in without mother or father

Seen at top is a water hose going to a neighboring house

Dominic and I have a five gallon water jug atop a dispenser which can heat the water to 190 degrees for tea and instant coffee. And we have the wherewithal to get another jug. People in Baguio Gold carry a couple 1-gallon jugs to their local snack shacks (cookies, crackers, juice pouches, Sprite, orange soda, Coke, beer, gin, bread, etcetera) to get them refilled with water from 5-gallon jugs. When some villagers, such as Mack, return home, they have no refrigerator for their water! In the United States, we don’t think twice about hot and cold running water in our sinks in kitchens and bathrooms!

Here Dominic and I don’t have hot water on tap in kitchen or bathroom sinks. And we can’t (shouldn’t) drink that water. We don’t have filtering pitchers nor under-counter water filters nor screw-on-faucet Pur filters. But we have a five gallon jug of drinking water and we have a water heater in our shower, so I’m grateful. Well, we pay alot of money for an apartment which hasn’t hot water at the bathroom sink, nor hot water at the kitchen sink.

The poorer villagers in Baguio Gold don’t have showers, bathtubs, water heaters, Brita pitchers, et al. They have only a 3/4″ diameter water line feeding their home and a single outdoor-type faucet over a basin.

They don’t have proper bathrooms! Mack, Andy and the rest in their household bathe by pouring water over themselves in their cement-floor, tin-roof latrine, lathering, then rinsing with more lukewarm or cool water.

They have a rudimentary ‘kitchen’ to ‘store ‘ rice, vegetables and fruit, cut and prepare ingredients for dishes, and cook on two burners fed by a propane tank if they can afford to partly-refill the tank. They have a cook fire on a waist-high bamboo shelf outside their home, which is typical. I’ve seen a 10-inch pot of rice and veggies cooking on the little fires for the family’s dinner. Very humble, austere living conditions.

Mack cuts firewood (and sometimes his arm and hand), bags it, and at home he reduces it to shorter lengths for the cook fires

blackened kettle behind an iron ‘rebar’ grille over a smoldering fire on dirt on a bamboo shelf

I think that Baguio Gold is a curious name, maybe a misnomer. When you first read the name, you might have pictured something far different from this reality. “Baguio Gold” could be an upscale, gated, golf course community. You might imagine a guard post beside a gold-painted gate, gold-rimmed directional signs pointing to a country club, pool, riding stables and golf course, street lamps with a brassy finish…

But Baguio Gold is a poor borough that’s not in Baguio City but in the country, down in a valley, and it isn’t golden. The one day that I had a short lesson in refining ore, I saw a little gold dust in a pan and gold teeth caps in a woman’s mouth, but since then I haven’t seen any gold.

These brothers and sisters live “a hard knock life.” Pray for their health, welfare, security and safety. †