The Ghetto

“So... I'm wondering what the crime rate is here, because this is the ghetto.” This was spoken by a man my co-worker and I had just picked up from the airport. Being a 1^st time visitor to the Philippines, he was viewing our surroundings through fresh eyes. Needless to say, we burst into laughter. I laughed so hard I cried a little. Looking around, it is very true that this appears to be an inner city hood. I find myself still going through some stages of shock as we continue to adjust here and I think that there are things that I have a hard time 'seeing'. People ask me what it is like here and I struggle to find words to explain it. The differences are so overwhelming that it is hard to know where to start. The very undercurrent of life seems to flow differently, as if there was another type of gravity causing it to behave in ways that make no sense to a Westerner's sense of reason. How do you describe an orange to an apple who has never seen an orange before? “Well... it's.. hmm.. different.” 

People here are used to shabby. Most are lucky to live in housing that is made with permanent walls. Many of the residents of Manila have migrated here from outer Provinces that are extremely poor. Little food and no jobs has motivated them to seek their fortunes in the 'Big City'. Unfortunately, here they have found jobs are still scarce and the economic system is one that keeps them from every truly getting ahead. It is normal to see a building made of more than two types of materials. A few of the walls may be concrete, but when the money for that runs out, the rest are finished with wood or metal sheeting or sometimes old canvas banners. Most squatter homes are made of scrap wood, branches, and canvas. Bars cover everything. Windows, doors, and driveways. Tall cement walls surround almost every house and razor wire curves around properties in even the nice neighborhoods. Behind these shabby exteriors are normal homes and successful businesses. No one here seems to mind, or even to notice, that their buildings are not aesthetically pleasing. 

And this is why we were laughing. The 'ghetto' we were driving through is a pretty decent part of town. Crime is lower here than in LA and for a metro area of 26 million people, that's not too bad. The other reason for my laughter~ we were only a short distance from where this visitor was going to be staying while he was here. I wonder if he was able to see past the haphazard way this country is pieced together and discover what is hiding underneath..

Signs of Adjustment

It’s funny, the things that make you feel adjusted. When I first got here I felt that getting used to a cold shower meant I was making progress. Later I realized that it was switching back to hot ones despite the heat that really signified we were adjusting. In this environment of constantly suffering from NOT adjusting quickly enough, it is fun to see some of the ways that we have. 

One is we have stopped seeing ants as ‘bugs’. They are everywhere and in everything. We sometimes win our fight to keep them at bay and sometimes we don’t. Shortly after arriving, ants got into my favorite cereal. Our helper stuck it in the freezer to kill the ants and the next morning brought it out for me to eat. Try as I might, I couldn’t eat it. I wasn’t going to be able to get past the knowledge of all the dead ants. I waited until she was gone to throw it out because to her that was an extreme waste and I was embarrassed to do it. Today we regularly eat ‘around’ ants. They crawl onto our plate as we are dishing up and we just wipe them off and keep going. Yes, there is probably a microscopic ant smear left in their place, but like I said, they’re not ‘bugs’ anymore. I have picked them out of my coffee, milk, and juice and more often than I care to think about, NOT picked them out. The staff here joke about how ‘nutritious’ they might be so I have realized I am not alone in this adaptation to life here. 

Another sign of adjustment is our use of local terminology. Right away we started calling the living room a 'sala'. It is so easy to say and our helper was constantly referring to it as that. We also call the bathroom a 'CR' now. Short for 'comfort room', adopting this term came from necessity. If you ask a Filipino in a store where the bathroom is, they will just shake their head at you in confusion. So we learned to use the local term quickly. It is still funny, though, when the kids use it at home. “Mom, I have to go to the CR.” lol 

Another phrase we have completely adapted is AirCon.  I think it is one that will stick when we return to the states though. It's much harder to go back to the longer version of words once you have started using the shorter ones. Tyler made me laugh the other day because he was putting aircon units into his lego buildings. Now there is someone who is truly thinking 'Pinoy'. ;)

Unspoken Words

Gestures mean so much here, as they do everywhere. Some of my biggest cultural mistakes have come from misunderstanding the nonverbal communication and misinterpreting what was going on. One of the hardest things for me to adjust to were the signals used in driving. If a guard is helping you to backup he will tap on your car to say “keep going”. As in thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, BOOM. The BOOM means stop. Immediately. It is so disconcerting trying to backup when someone is pounding on the side of your car! 

Another thing they do is whistle when they want you to “go” and “go faster”. This is the worst one for me! Every time I hear that whistle my foot slams on the brake and it is only as I am slowing down that my brain catches up and says, “No, that means GO!” I have been trained my whole life to freeze at the sound of a whistle. Flashing headlights also have a somewhat opposite meaning here. Where I am from truck drivers flash their lights to say, “You’re all clear, go ahead.” Here it is the other driver saying, “I’m going first, move out of my way!” It might not seem like this would be a frequent issue but, unfortunately, our roads are often reduced to one lane at a time. What happens if you both flash your lights?? I haven't tried it yet but my guess is the bigger car wins. And that, at least, is one thing that is the same. ;)