There's a railroad track a little over a hundred linear feet from my family's home in the poor Manila suburb of Sampaloc. The miles of squatter shacks lining both sides of the railroad track are gone, bulldozed since the rail line was contracted out to a Japanese company which, rumor has it, will make the train bigger, faster, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
And here and there, squatters begin to put up shacks of vinyl tarp, scrap wood, sheet tin, and cardboard, populating the sides of the railroad track once more. But there's a difference. This time, there are dozens of gardens being grown on either side of the track. It's a hopeful sign.
....
The smartly-dressed young lady escorts us into one of the shorter skyscrapers in Makati, the rich section of Manila. The building seems to be owned by some company out of Kuwait. Her office looks as if it were slapped together haphazardly, but it's been there for some time if the pile of discarded computers in a closet are any indication. We speak to her manager about hiring nurses and we're quoted five thousand dollars per head up front, and we do all the stateside paperwork of course. Perhaps we'll do it...perhaps not.
The young lady lives with her mother and father in a destitute slum thirty minutes away (if there's no traffic). I've known them for years, my wife has known them for over a generation. The young lady's salary is 10,800 pisos per month - which equates to slightly over 200 dollars. She spends 80 pisos on her commute in each direction and gives all her remaining salary to her mother, who gives her a small allowance to use for lunch during her ten-hour days at work.
....
We take a taxi from the Renaissance Hotel - which hotel is nice, easily nice enough for three stars, perhaps even four - to a suburb of Manila about fifteen miles away as the crow flies. The trip takes close to an hour...and that hour, like combat, is filled with long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. We're riding in the back seat, and this taxi - like most - has no seat belts in the back seat. I know that odds are there won't be a collision, and odds are even greater that even if there is a collision my wife and I will have little or no injury...but such knowledge is of little comfort as our driver - let's call him Johnny Testosterone - continues to wager our collective physical well-being that the other vehicles will react precisely as he assumes. Out of all the hundreds of thousands of taxi drivers in the Metro Manila megalopolis, we get the Tom Cruise Top-Gun wannabe, out to prove to all and sundry that he is indeed bulletproof and immortal.
Article comments
1 - Clarence Yu
Great article. Though I beg to disagree on the system of collecting income and sales tax --- oh, the Bureau of Internal Revenue can be quite creative.
2 - Ruvy
Bang up article Glenn! Your writing reminds me of a less bitter version of Moshe Saperstein. An Israeli humor writer who once wrote for the Jerusalem Post, who wrote essays on life in Nevé Dekalim in Gush Qatif, where he and Rachel had retired to live - and who wrote bitterly of being expelled from his home there by a criminal Israeli regime led by Ariel Sharon.
He too, lives in a slum. Not by choice, or to be near relatives, but because his home was stolen from him.
3 - Glenn Contrarian
Thank you both for the encouragement - it really does help. Maybe this is the better way to become published, by writing about experiences and ironies most Americans don't see - instead of writing long, fictional epics on a grand scale and then watch the torrid pace of technology outdate everything one has written in a matter of months.
Again, thanks!
4 - Jordan Richardson
Nice article, Glenn. I've passed this over to my wife's family (she's Filipino). Very unique, fresh perspective with great lively tone and sharp punches of humour. Well done!
5 - Joanne Huspek
I'm going to have to bookmark this to read again, it was that enjoyable. Nicely done!