ten ₱esos

I pray that John and Kim and their sons accomplish all that they desire in their visit to the U.S. that they return safely to the Philippines.

Today Mack came to the house around 3:15 to do the homework that he didn’t come here yesterday to do. Unfortunately he didn’t have poster board, so he and Dominic went to Baguio City to get groceries and cartolina (paper) while I walked to Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Turning Point.

On the way to and from church, I smiled and greeted so many adults and children who loitered along Antamok Road/Tuding Road.  Some of the kids called me by name, and the others, preteens and teens whom I’d not met, tried out their English on me as is customary: “Hello!” and “Hello. What is your name?” and “Hey, man. Wha’s up?” and “Hello, my friend.” and “Where you come from?”

Each week, kids that I encounter, wave to, or verbally greet wait until I’ve passed them to raise their voices and ask, “What’s your name?”  Obviously, “What’s your name?” is one of the stock conversational phrases taight in primary schools.  But I think it’s odd that the kids are so shy that they wait until I’m several meters past them to shout to me.

I didn’t hear “Good afternoon” as I do most every other day. I suppose that the Filipinos weren’t sure whether to use ‘Good afternoon’ or ‘Good evening.’ I didn’t hear either one. What really struck me is the number of people just hanging about, doing nothing. I understand that it’s Sunday evening. But the men – and some women – just squat or stand about looking bored and listless, rather than dining at home with their families, assisting in preparation of dinners, aiding their children with homework, reading story books to their kids, reading Sunday newspapers to their wives and children, taking down hung laundry…

At 5:40 p.m., people just languished at streetside, chatting, smoking, urinating on a sidewalk … Yes, I saw a grown man proudly urinating on the sidewalk a hundred meters from the church.  Scrawny, shabbily-dressed young men hide in the corners of the bus stop shelters.  They’re not standing at the sidewalk, waiting for a jeepney.  Maybe they’re huffing super glue fumes.  Everywhere people just stood or squatted or sat on junk, looking sullen, watching me strolling past them.  They may have wondered who I was, where I was walking, why I wasn’t driving a car or van or riding a taxi.

The ones who didn’t want to address me in English or Tagalog or Ilocano muttered to each other as they watched me pass.  Kids chased each other or squatted on rain-soaked, coarse grey sand or gravel beside cement blocks and cement bags, just scooping sand with empty tin cans and idly playing as if that’s loads of fun.  I feel sorry for them.

I ask kids, whenever I see them idly scratching in dirt or poking at chickens, if they have any toys, bicycles, skateboards, or storybooks, and they always reply, “none.”  That’s why they chase each other with sticks or draw in sand with sticks or try to make sand castles or try to hit birds with stones or flip-flops.

I wish that their older siblings and parents would nurture them, cultivate them, educate them, feed their minds and their souls.  Is it impossible to earn money to buy story books or non-fiction books such as How Things Work or newspapers or news magazines or radios or educational toys?

I didn’t realize how fortunate we were in the United States to have so many fiction books to spark our imaginations and nonfiction books to feed our curiosity.  We had games to help learn strategy and teamwork and creative thinking…

If they have anything to play with, the poor kids in Tuding have scratched, chipped marbles or ragged cartoon character trading cards, rubber bands, hand-made slingshots … One summer day, I saw kids running up the middle of the road pulling a kite made of a trash bag and sticks.  That was a Kodak moment of the Filipino sort. †