Sleepless in Davao

“A nation's culture resides in the heart and the soul of its people.” – Mahatma Gandhi

When I get outside the terminal, Elsa is waiting for me with her younger brother Manny, his wife Rocel, and their son Em Em. Elsa's daughter Risa also accompanies her. Elsa looks stylish in black jeans with a red, long sleeve blouse. Risa is wearing black jeans with a white, short sleeve blouse. I give each of them a box of See's Candy – chocolates just like they requested – not the grapes they asked for though. Didn't think they would hold up on the plane and given the unexpected delays, my intuition was correct.

Elsa seems smaller than I had imagined. I knew before I we met that she was five foot tall, but standing next to her, the difference seems more noticeable. Elsa had asked me during our internet chats how tall I was. I told her, I'm 5'8.

Elsa and Manny with Rich

“Oh, you're tall,” she said. “My brothers are tall, too, almost your height.”

Another reason to move to the Philippines. I'm a shrimp in the U.S., but here I'm a giant. Later I find out that Elsa's height actually is a little above average for a Filipina and some women are much shorter. The average Filipino male is only about 5'4 – no doubt due to the malnutrition problem in the country – almost one third of the preschool population is underweight-for-age.

Risa is Elsa's middle daughter. She's a little taller than Elsa and more stout. She has a seven-year-old daughter Fem Fem and one and one half year-old son Zion. Risa had worked in a call center and speaks English well. Elsa taught English in a local college, but doesn't speak the language quite as fluently as her daughter.

With almost no sleep and no bath over the last two days, I want to go to our hotel, but Manny insists we eat at a local restaurant – probably he wants to check me out and see if I'm worthy of his sister. We climb in to his car – an older model red SUV that he bought along with his house from his winnings in the local lottery (winnings that amounted to three million pesos or about $70,000). I put on my seat belt – on one else does – and we head to Ah Fat Seafood Plaza. During the ride, Elsa and I hold hands. She is very quiet and doesn't really speak at all. Manny, in his mid-50s, a little smaller than me, but muscular, does most of the talking. He's outgoing and friendly and tells many jokes, pausing at each punchline, and then delivering with an impish grin. He is the joker in the family. His wife, a nurse about the same height as Elsa, but a little heavier, sits quietly as does their son, a student at Ateneo de Davao College. He's small and looks much younger than a college student; initially I think he attends high school. Rocel and Risa sit in the back, talking with one another in English. Risa says they rarely have the opportunity to practice with an English speaker around. “I have a nosebleed,” she says joking of her attempts to communicate in the language.

We arrive at Ah Fat's. The restaurant serves fresh seafood – steamed pigik or Imelda fish (bighead carp), noodles and rice and french beans with garlic. The food is delicious, but it is not the everyday Filipino fare to which I soon would be introduced (usually fish soup with rice). They also serve bird's nest soup.

“Smells like bird poop,” says Risa.

Rocel wants to work in Montreal and asks me if I know anyone who lives in Canada. Of course I do – my best friend Jack lives in Vancouver. She asks me to speak with him and see if he will sponsor her immigration to the Canada as a nanny. I tell her I will see what I can do. Later, when we are in our hotel room, I tell Elsa that's probably not legal and Jack likely will not agree to such a proposition, but over the next couple of weeks, Rocel keeps raising the issue with Elsa and I finally agree to speak to Jack. And, of course, he says no. This is my first exposure to the Philippines overseas worker issue.

Elsa tells me her second youngest daughter Bernadine works as a housekeeper in Dubai. And Elsa would like some of her other daughters to work overseas as well because salaries are so low in the Philippines. The per capita income in the Philippines ranks 139 out of the UN's millennium project list of 190 nations and currently stands at less than $5,000 a year. Almost one third of Filipinos can't afford to pay for their basic needs, and so many choose to work overseas. The Philippines has the fourth highest number of overseas workers in the world and the highest per capita number of overseas worker. The economy heavily depends on overseas remittances.

Manny is a radio commentator in Davao. His “Voice of the Military” program features guests speaking about the government's pacification program in its ongoing battle with the Muslim rebels and the Maoist New People's Army (NPA). He says that he has received many death threats for his program. The Philippines has the third highest rate of journalists murdered in the world. More than 50 journalist murders that took place from 2004 through 2013 remain unsolved

Manny says that since the Army began its community projects' program, the NPA's membership has declined from about 25,000 to 5,000. Of course, the NPA grew during the repressive era of Marcos. Could it be that the less oppressive atmosphere that followed the people power revolution had something to do with the NPA's decline? Manny sits on a different side of the political spectrum than Elsa who is more sympathetic to the NPA because she feels they serve the people. The two of them share cynicism over the US role in the Philippines.

We finish our meal and I pay the bill, which I soon find I am expected to do regularly. After dinner we drive to the hotel. Elsa told Manny that all my fresh clothes were in my luggage, which has not yet arrived. So he gives me two of his shirts – a red, long-sleeved Adidas athletic shirt, and a short sleeve shirt from the Huread Foundation given during a blood donation drive that says, “One People Mindanao: Lumad – Muslim – Christian.” Manny says he agrees with the sentiment.

Risa, Manny and his family drive away and Elsa and I retire to our room. It's a small box of a room with two single beds. I go to the bathroom to shower and shave and have my first exposure to the Philippine's CR (comfort room). The toilet and shower are in the same 4 foot by 5 five area with no separation between the two. At least there is a shower with warm water. Most Filipinos bathe by filling a bucket with cold water and dipping it over themselves.

In the morning, we eat breakfast in the lobby cafe – fried egg with sausage and three in one coffee (coffee made with a palm oil whitener, and sugar – one of the first things I need to buy is a coffee maker – that's if I can find ground coffee). I work out in the fitness room. I had spent the last two years, working out at a gym regularly and want to maintain my fitness. Little do I know that this would be the last gym with modern equipment I would find.

Manny meets us in the lobby after his radio broadcast. There's a strange, unpleasant smell in the lobby. I had worked in a oil refinery many years ago, and the smell reminds me a little of crude oil or more precisely, mercaptan, a putrid smelling chemical put in natural gas so you can detect leaks and one of the main chemicals responsible for the smell of flatus. I ask Elsa what it is and she tells me it is durian, known in the Philippines as the king of fruits.

“Smells like hell – tastes like heaven,” Manny says. I agree with the first part. I'm not so sure I want to put the second part to the test.

We head out to the airport to pick up my bag, which was no where to be found on my arrival in the Philippines. At the security area, we pass the same national policeman that had helped me the night before and he welcomes me back with a smile. We proceed to the Philippines Airline gates and an airlines representative sends us to another terminal, a cargo area where we find the bag has arrived. I breathe a sigh of relief.

Next we travel to a restaurant at Water World in Toril, the suburb of Davao where Manny lives. A waitress takes us to an outdoor table and there's an awful putrid smell like a backed up sewer wafting from the shore towards us . Manny asks the waitress about it, but she can't explain its origin. We try to ignore the smell. Manny orders San Miguel Light for the both of us. It's a light lager with a slightly tangy taste. No bitterness, which is what I prefer. San Miguel is the national beer, although San Miguel Red Horse packs a more potent punch and is most people's favorite. Manny tells me he doesn't drink much any more. He used to drink with friends regularly, but now he has to watch his diet and drinking because he has diabetes and high blood pressure. The Philippines has three times the mortality rate from heart disease and diabetes as the U.S. For appetizers, Manny orders Calamari and Kinilaw, a raw fish marinated in vinegar similar to ceviche, and for the main course, grilled bangus or milk fish (the Philippines national fish) with rice. Again delicious.

We drive back to Davao. Traffic creeps along. Cars, taxis, buses and jeepneys (a small bus with a low roof and narrow bench seating) stop and start, all vying for position, trying to pass one another, cut one another off, but no one is going anywhere. Manny finally manages to turn in to a shopping mall parking lot. Security guards check his pass and he pulls into a parking strip reserved for media. There's more security at the mall entrance – two guards check men and women as they enter through separate lines. The guards check handbags and backpacks, poking around in them with a small baton. They frisk the men. We finally make it inside and start down the aisles. Out of the corner of my eye, I spy the green mermaid – a Starbucks, the first sign I've seen of American culture.

“Ever had a latte?” I ask, and no one has – except, of course, Manny. We head inside the shop. I order and we make our way to a table with the drinks. Elsa takes a sip and makes a face. Not sweet enough and too bitter for her taste. I drink hers as well as my own. The lattes cost about as much as it would in the U.S. – $3 a cup. Later, I discover other local coffee shops that serve much better lattes for about half the price of Starbucks.

On our way back to hotel, a thunderstorm strikes. It's a deluge, and the streets flood very quickly as water (and raw sewage) from the concrete ditches along the side of the road spills over on to the highway. Manny says there's a typhoon up north in Manila (there are some 20 or more typhoons a year in the Philippines). We can barely see the road, but make it back to the hotel safely. Tomorrow, we travel to Tagum City and our future home. 

On the Way

“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

The plane is late taking off. Some problem with air traffic control in San Francisco. I'm beginning to think that maybe I should have spent a little more money on a direct flight to Manila. But I was pinching every penny to save toward my new life in the Philippines. So I booked a milk run from Seattle to San Francisco to Taipei to Manila to Davao. Big mistake.

The woman at the ticket counter tells me that the flight might be canceled. I'm nervous about missing my connecting flight, but two hours later, we take off. Making the connection will be tight. On the plane, I begin to read a book on rural development; Elsa had told me that she had just about completed a masters degree in the topic, so I thought I would try to sound intelligent about the topic.

Image courtesy of lkunl at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I didn't get far in the book because I notice the passenger next to me is Asian. Possibly a Filipino? I strike up a conversation. His name is Aron and he's a software engineer from Boston. He grew up in Delaware. So much for assumptions. But he was born in Madras, India. For the next hour and a half, we talk about politics, rural development, global warming and the problems caused by the rich not caring about the poor.

I mention that besides meeting Elsa one of the reasons I chose to move to the Philippines is because English is one of the national languages (little did I know how little English is spoken especially in the provinces of the Southern Philippines).

“I had been interested in Ecuador,” I tell him. “But I don't know Spanish. Hope I can learn Cebuano.”

“You'll pick it up fast.”

“I'm a writer and want to spend more time at my craft in the Philippines.”

“I'd like to learn to write, too.”

So after a rocky start, it seems like the trip will be fun. I'd already made a new friend.

We arrive in San Francisco. The plane taxis the runway for another half hour and I'm worried I will miss my connecting flight to Taipei. When passengers finally do start to deplane, there is no attempt to allow those with connecting flights to disembark early – the first time I've ever been on a delayed flight where that didn't happen. An ominous sign.

The first leg of the journey I flew on Alaska Airlines, but the next leg will be on China Airlines. I have no idea where to go. Thankfully, Aron helps me. He knows the general area and runs with me through the terminal finally getting me to the right counter. I thank him and rush up to the desk without having time to get his contact information. If you're out there somewhere Aron, please contact me, so I can properly thank you.

Aron leaves and I speak to the clerk at the desk. I've just missed my connecting flight by five minutes. There are five of us who missed the flight, four Filipino seamen and me. We're only five minutes late, but China Air failed to hold the flight for us. The next flight? Not for another 24 hours. I want to pull out my hair. Because they're not partners, neither Alaska nor China Air will take responsibility for the missed connection.

I sit down in the terminal and fume. What shall I do? Maybe I can sleep in the terminal – but 24 hours us a long time to spend in an airplane terminal and I know I won't get any sleep. So I decide to book a hotel room for the night. 

I call several hotels, but there's a major convention in town and no rooms are available. I keep dialing and finally luck out. Hampton Inn has a room that has just become available. That one night stay costs me close to $200 with a $20 taxi fee tacked on. I have already paid more than if I had booked a direct flight to Manila.

One stroke of luck, I find out that the night clerk is from the Philippines. I strike up a conversation. She, like Elsa, has a big family – in Manila.

“I'm going to Compostela Valley near the Davao area,” I say enthusiastically, pleased that I have made a Philippines connection so soon.

“I've never been to the provinces,” she says with an air of disdain. I get the distinct impression she thinks that the people there are country bumpkins. I get a slight twinge in my stomach.

After a four hour sleep, I awake and get a brief workout at the fitness center, I set up my computer with the hotel wi fi and try to call Els via Skype. No luck. I try to call on my cell phone. No international connection. After an hour, I give up and head back to the airport.

I'm getting worried because I know Elsa is frantic. At the airport, I try skyping and emailing her again. Still no luck. Then, my phone rings. I can't call the Philippines on my phone, but Elsa has contacted a friend who lives in Pennsylvania and asked her to call me. Elsa is indeed frantic and worried that I'm not coming to the Philippines – especially since that's what all her relatives told her would happen. 

Through her friend, I set up a time to Skype Elsa and finally reach her. We both breathe a sigh of relief. I tell her that I am, indeed, on the way, but will be a day late. We agree to connect again just before my plane leaves.

I wait at the airport until midnight when the China Air flight takes off. At the gate, there are at least a dozen people from China Air helping with the boarding – far different from the one or two employees checking in passengers on American flights. A reflection of Asian collectivism values versus Western individualism?

We fly into Taipei, and after finding the waiting area, I slouch in a plastic seat exhausted and droopy-eyed and wait for my connecting flight to Manila. I finally arrive in Manila in the late morning. I make it through customs with no problems and head to baggage claim. My bag is not there. What else can go wrong? A baggage claim clerk takes my information and says they will ship the bag to Davao as soon as it arrives. I'm skeptical.

I finally make it out into the airport and look for a store selling SIM cards. I bought a new phone that takes international cards just for the trip, but I've never inserted a SIM card before and am not sure what I'm looking for. Fortunately, there are several kiosks in the airport selling them. 

The sales woman helps me insert the card, and wonder of wonders, it works! I call Elsa in Davao and tell her I will arrive in the early evening. Unfortunately, there's another glitch. I had booked my flight from Manila to Davao on another carrier, Philippine Airlines. The flight was supposed to leave the day before. Would they honor my ticket?

I head out of the international terminal and there's armed guards all around – police, army, security at every entrance and exit. There's another twinge in my stomach. I ask a middle-aged couple sitting at a palm tree planter where to find the Philippine Airlines terminal. I'm not sure if they understand me, but the woman stands and points at a terminal above us. 

I climb a couple of flights of stairs and head over to the terminal. There's a security guard standing at the entrance. I must pass through another x-ray machine. There's another security guard inside next to the boarding area. I show him my ticket and he sends me to an office building across the way. I exit the terminal and head to the other building, where another security guard checks me and sends me through another x-ray machine before I can enter and go to a ticket counter. I'm beginning to think I will succumb to radiation poisoning.

An agent looks at my ticket and tells me I have to buy a new one; the airline won't accept my one day late ticket – I have to re-book and I'll have to take a later flight. I shell out another $100 and this cheap junket has become rather expensive. The agent hands me a new ticket. I exit through security again and then back to the Philippine Airlines terminal where the security guard again checks my bag and then to the gate where I go through security again. 

I call Elsa again and tell her once again I am delayed; I will arrive that evening instead of late afternoon. I finally board the plane at 5 p.m. There are no further complications and I arrive in Davao two hours later exhausted and smelly from spending two days on planes and in airports. I have no change of clothes because my luggage was lost, but at least I will finally meet Elsa.

I'm in the terminal, but I don't know where to go. I call Elsa, but she doesn't know where I am and can't explain where I need to go. She hands her phone to Manny. He doesn't know either. I ask a couple of people for directions. They don't understand me. Finally, I turn to a National Police officer. I hand my cell phone to the officer. He talks to Manny, then nods and accompanies me to an outside area where everyone is waiting. 

My ordeal is over; my adventures in the Philippines are just beginning. 

A Daring Adventure

“Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.” - Helen Keller

“Am I being crazy,” I asked my best friend Jack.

“Probably,” he said. Jack never sugarcoats the truth. We had served in the Army Medical Corps together before he had emigrated to Vancouver, BC, Canada. He later married a

Taiwanese woman, and lived in Taiwan for a year, so he knew of which he spoke.

I was telling him about my decision to move to the Philippines and marry Elsa. I knew it was a quick decision and had concerns. I also knew it was foolish to make a decision before I had even visited the country. But I was ready for an adventure and had no family and no longer a domestic partner, nothing to tie me down. 

Elsa cuts coconut from tree on parents' Mawab farm.

“Just buy a return ticket and think of it as an adventure,” he said. “Don't think of anything as good or bad – it's all just an adventure.”

An adventure. Somehow that made me feel a little more at ease. This would be an adventure – the journey that I had always wanted to take.

I met Elsa online only ten months after my domestic partner of 27 years had left me. Initially, I signed up for the dating site because I wanted to develop some friendships and find out more about the country. But Elsa and I clicked right away. She was generous in spirit with a sweet and loving nature, thoughtful, smart, and well-spoken. I loved her smile and her laugh. Furthermore, she had taught English in University as I had; she had worked as an organizer for an NGO serving poor tenant farmers; and she had worked as a woman's organizer in the provincial government, visiting all 248 barangays (districts or wards) in the Compostela Valley, speaking to woman and gays about domestic violence, gender equality and women's and children's health issues. I was duly impressed.

“I think we have the same principles in life,” she told me. She was right. “Maybe God permit us to meet because we have the same principles like helping other people.”

I admired her bravery. “I am Ilongga,” she said (peoples from the Central Visayas, including Iloilo). “We are the most brave people. The most romantic.” I believed her. She once took on an entire assembly of landowners and banana plantation executives, speaking out against their plans to force local tenant farmers to vacate their land. She earned much enmity that day, but her farsightedness later won the admiration of the landowners when the low standard production of the banana plantation drove it into bankruptcy.

Many younger women on the dating site had expressed interest in meeting me (Elsa was much closer to my own age), but none appealed to me like Elsa. And my heart melted when she sang to me a cappella over Skype a beautiful rendition of “And I Love You So.” In her youth, she had won many singing competitions, sang on a local radio station and had been invited to audition as a singer at a radio station in Manila, but gave up a budding career to serve her family – a very large family by the way with six daughters, seven grandkids, six siblings and hundreds of cousins, nieces and nephews.

It was a bit overwhelming, and I had some concerns. Elsa lived on the island of Mindanao and the U.S. State Department had issued travel alerts about the area, identifying local rebel groups as security threats. I was worried about the kidnappings, the mosquitos, malaria, dengue, and the spitting cobras.

“I'm friends with many muslims,” she told me. “And no malaria, dengue or spitting cobras here in Montevista.” Furthermore, she said, the rebel New People's Army only posed a threat to the Philippines' Army – not to the Philippines' people or their friends.

I was also a little wary. I was told some Filipinas regularly asked for money never intending to meet the foreigner with whom they corresponded. But Elsa never asked for money or help of any kind. She asked only that I bring myself and maybe some chocolates and grapes. And so the adventure began.

The Journey Begins

“If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.” – Anonymous

For years, I yearned to travel and live abroad. The dream began when as a college sophomore, I earned a scholarship on the University of the Seven Seas. During my semester at sea, I studied on board ship as I sailed around the world, periodically landing at foreign and exotic shores. 

My journey took me to Lisbon where I visited a Fado nightclub, Barcelona where I marveled at Goudy's Sagrada Familia, Marseilles where I peered out over the Notre-Dame de la Garde at the Chateau D'lf, Rome where I stood in awe before Michelangelo's statues of Moses and La Pieta, Athens where I strolled around the Parthenon and looked down on the Theatre of Dionysos, Istanbul where I stared in astonishment at the bejeweled forearm and skull of St. John the Baptist, Cairo where

I traversed the sands of Giza riding up to the Sphinx and Great Pyramids on a camel, Mumbai where I scanned trees for funeral biers as vultures picked at their bones, Sri Lanka where I delighted in shadow puppet theater, Bangkok where I sailed on a royal barge to the Temple of Dawn, Hong Kong where I stared up at skyscraper jungles, Tokyo where I watched with rapt attention as whiteface actors performed Kabuki theater, and finally Honolulu where laborers loading bananas on a truck gave me a bunch before we left and sailed back home to Los Angeles.

These four months traveling around the world gave me brief exposures to new cultures and distant lands sandwiched in between days at sea and I promised myself I would one day return and drink more deeply from these and other cultures. Alas, it was not to be. Life intruded and apart from a three week trip to England ten years later, I never made it back overseas for any substantial length of time. 

Over the years, I had done some foreign travel, Paris, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Puerto Valarta. But these were brief trips never more than a week or two and I yearned to actually live overseas and experience other cultures at a greater depth. I did live in Canada for eight years, but apart from Quebec (where I managed several short stays) the culture was not that much different than the U.S. (some of my Canadian friends would beg to differ). 

The Canadian experience did allow me to realize another dream – a writing career. During my last two years there, I wrote for an Ontario city magazine, Hamilton, and the national magazine supplement Today as well as worked as a stringer for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star newspapers. 

Over the next few years, I completed a writing degree, taught English composition and continued to freelance while working as an editor, writer and communications director for several national associations. During this time, I also wrote a novel, The Para Ward, which won first prize in the Pacific Northwest Writers Novel Competition. But I became a victim of my own success.

A major PR success I engineered for one of my client organizations led its Board of Directors to ask me to serve as their executive director – not as an employee, but through a separate management company that I would form – I would become a business owner and no longer an independent consultant. 

I succumbed to the temptation and my writing receded into the background. The business was a success for a while. I ended up hiring a dozen employees. But I was miserable. There was some travel involved in the business, but it was not the journey I had planned to take. Some fifteen years later and after much soul searching, I finally sold the business, making little money on the deal.

For a short while, I tried my hand at business consulting, but then the recession hit and my new business failed. Now, some forty years after my original voyage, I once again returned to my dreams. In truth, I was never really a businessman and this financial reversal gave me the opportunity to return to the fields I loved – teaching and writing. 

For the next four years, I taught English at a local university. It was a part-time gig and I never made much money at it, but it allowed me to do some writing. I also taught English as a second language with Berlitz and later with Rosetta Stone in the hopes that this would prepare me for an overseas ESL assignment. South America and Asia especially appealed to me, but I also explored the possibility of teaching in Europe.

Unfortunately, while my domestic partner of the last 27 years supported me in most of my endeavors, she wasn't prepared to move overseas. And, after my reduced income and the declining value of our home led to further financial difficulties, the support ended; my partner announced she was leaving me. I remained in the house with my life on hold for the next several months while I waited for the bank to approve an underwater sale. 

For the past few years, I had regularly checked out websites offering advice on retiring abroad. Only a pipe dream at the time. But now, with the home sale imminent, my formerly sterling credit rating down the tubes, and worrying whether I would even find a suitable place to live in Seattle, I started thinking more seriously about living abroad. 

I considered in turn, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Thailand. Italy seemed out of the question now. Then I read an article touting Cebu in the Philippines as a beautiful city with white sand beaches, and a low cost of living where most people speak English as a second language and retirees are treated like kings. Sounded like heaven (a sugar-coated heaven I was to find out later). But I hadn't been to the Philippines and didn't know any one there. 

Over the last several months, I had done some online dating and decided to try a Philippines dating site with no expectations other than developing some friendships and finding out more about the Philippines. That's when I met Elsa.