Setting Up House

Where thou art, that is home.

– Emily Dickinson

We move in to the Sanat's house in Margarita Village in Tagum City. About four kilometers from downtown, the village has a suburban feel with houses a little further apart and a little larger than many of those in the surrounding neighborhoods though still relatively modest by American standards. Some homes have lawns and sidewalks and brick style facades. Just down the road are some recently constructed larger, more upscale homes. The rocky road in front of the house has a new cement lane with cement forms set on the the other side.

“When will the road be completed?” I ask Mare Vising.

“The government is constructing it,” she says. “So probably in about a year.”

Once a banana plantation, there are still many banana and coconut trees clearly visible from our roof balcony with cows milling in the fields. We live near the crossroads between Capitol Road and the National Highway and about a 15 minute tricycle ride from the public market and malls. 

Elsa with daughters Hairy Lynn and Risa

Tagum is the provincial capital of Davao Del Nortre and the provincial government buildings lie just a couple of blocks away including the legislative building, a two story, 1950s modern style building with curved colonnades and an extended portico and wide recessed columns. Behind the building, rows of palm trees fill a large grounds area. Across the road from them, a new sports complex sprawls, housing a modern track, swimming pool and basketball court (no gym though). Elsa and I arise at 5 a.m. each morning to take a walk around the track before the sun rises above the mountains and waves of heat beat down on us.

The household is bare and we need to make a home. First things first. We need a bed. A wooden bed frame lies in a corner of the smaller bedroom on the second floor, but we can't get it out of the room and into our bedroom. It's too heavy and bulky and Elsa and I can't shimmy it through the doorway by ourselves. In the street outside the front gate, we see four teenagers throwing a basketball through the hoop on a makeshift, plywood backboard attached to a telephone pole. Elsa asks them for their help. They agree and follow us up to the second floor. Two take one side and two the other and they try to jam the bed through the doorway. No dice. They decide to disassemble it; it's held together with nails (like most wooden furniture here in the Philippines), instead of screws. So one of the boys grabs a hammer and bangs on the frame until the nails give and the bed falls into pieces. The boys carry the pieces into the larger bedroom and hammer it back together. We pay them 100 pesos each (about $2.25 each) and thank them. Now we need a mattress. So the next day, we go shopping. Elsa and I walk down the road in front of our house to a side street to catch a tricycle; it will be my first of many tricycle rides. We pass a small open air pool hall.

“Hey Joe,” comes the call from a couple of young men, playing pool. Elsa says ignore them and walk on. I think she is telling me that this is a sign of disrespect – many Americans take it as such and so did I at first – but later Elsa assures me that the comments weren't intended as such. Those who use the appellation simply don't know how else to call to us or attract our attention. The term isn't used because Filipinos view us negatively – in fact, most Filipinos have a favorable impression of Americans. The latest polls show 92% view Americans favorably; Filipinos hold us in higher esteem than do the citizens of any other country (even Americans view other Americans less favorably than Filipinos).

First house in Margarita Village, Tagum City.

A tricycle passes and Elsa flags it down. She and I sit in the front seat of the green monster (every municipality has it's own color of tricycle – Tagum City's are green). We occupy two narrow padded seats next to the motorcycle driver and I feel squished. Four people sit in the back on two facing benches. The tricycle pulls away from the side of the road and we head down Pioneer Highway toward NCCC and Gaisano Mall, the largest local shopping centers in Tagum. The tricycle putts along at less than 10 mile per hour and stops frequently. We arrive at the malls in about 15 minutes.

At NCCC mall, we take the escalator to the third floor and head to an appliance store. We buy a new fridge, a microwave, a coffee maker, a toaster, a television with accompanying DVD player and karaoke machine and speakers. Then we go to Gaisano Mall and buy dishes and a foam mattress for the bed. I'm a little concerned about exhausting my savings, but we are starting all over again. NCCC delivers the appliances and goods from Gaisano while we head on down to the supermarket in the basement.

On the way, I need to relieve myself and find a comfort room (toilet) on the first floor. Unfortunately, there is no toilet paper in the stalls and no soap to wash my hands. I do with what I have and then we head down to the supermarket. We fill our shopping cart and I look for some ground coffee. Most of the coffee is instant, but I do find some coffee beans next to a coffee grinder. We're not allowed to grind the coffee ourselves though. Instead, a store clerk must grind it for us. But before he can make the grind, we must stand in the grocery line and pay for the coffee. We come back and show our receipt. The clerk nods and grinds the coffee. He grinds, and he grinds and he grinds until the coffee beans become a fine dust.

Next I want to buy some razor blade cartridges. I see some Gillette cartridges behind a glass case in front of the aisles displayed like they were museum artifacts. I point to the clerk, but she tells me, once again, I must first stand in the grocery line and pay and bring back the receipt before receiving the cartridges.

Finally, we complete our grocery shopping and wheel our cart over to the grocery line. An American stands in front of us. Another man with a carton of ice cream pushes ahead of him and the American complains bitterly that the man has cut in line. The man points out that's the custom in the Philippines -- those with ice cream go first so that it doesn't melt. The American refuses to accept his explanation and continues to complain. He grumbles on about the poor service in the Philippines. He's an older man who looks to be in his 70s. He tells us that he has left his 20 year-old wife at home since he can do the shopping quicker.

We finally get to the head of the line. The clerk rings us out and another clerk boxes the groceries and seals the box with plastic twine. Outside, twenty or so tricycles wait in line. Elsa haggles with the drivers and one agrees to drive us home at a premium cost for transporting our groceries – 30 pesos rather than the standard 20. The driver grabs our groceries and tosses them on the floor of his tricycle and I rest my feet on them, holding my knees to my chest.

Once we get home, I turn on the fan and plug in the refrigerator and microwave and the coffee pot. Udong helps me set up the TV and speakers. Almost immediately there is a brown out. There is a brown out every day for an hour or two, sometime longer, for the next two weeks.

After a couple of hours, the electricity comes back on. I brew my first pot of coffee. It tastes stale and flavorless. Definitely ground too fine and the coffee is old. Brewed coffee is still a luxury here. Elsa's daughter Risa visits and I offer her a cup. She declines, saying she has never tasted brewed coffee and doesn't want to start now. Most people drink five in one or seven in one – instant coffee mixed with nondairy creamer (mostly made of highly saturated palm oil) and some herbs.

I soon find out the risks of buying cheap goods in the Philippines and what it is like to live without American conveniences. The washing machine was advertised with a dryer, but it turns out the dryer is just a small spin chamber that really is not functional and there is no spin cycle on the washer, so we still have to wring out clothes by hand and hang them outside on a line to dry. Elsa's daughter Hairy Lynn does the washing, but I try wringing the clothes a couple of times and it's hard physical work. The coffee pot stops working after one week as does an electric water boiler bought at Gaisano. Other things break just as quickly. We lose the umbrella I brought with me and Elsa buys another for 50 pesos, but it breaks in a week. We go through a dozen umbrellas over the next few months. Few last more than a couple of weeks.

We set up our television, but we have no cable. In the U.S., I could just call or make an appointment on the internet, but it doesn't work like that in the Philippines. If you want to see a doctor, you visit his or her office or you visit the hospital; you don't call. And if you want cable service, you go to the cable company's office; you don't call. Same for paying your bills. It's not done online or by phone. You don't call or ask for service for anything. You must go to the office.*

So we visit a local cable company office. The woman at the front desk says that they don't have service in our area and she sends us to another company's office. We go there and again they tell us they don't have service in our area. We're too far out from city they tell us even though we're less than a 15 minute tricycle ride away. So finally, we ask our neighbor about his cable service. We talk to the company that he recommends and they promise to install the following Monday. Three weeks later, there is still no installation. Marie Vising tells us about her service, a company that installs a satellite dish. The service is more expensive, but in frustration, we go ahead and make an appointment. Finally we have service, but no HBO or major English language channels.

We sign up for internet service through Smart Communications. They make Elsa sign a a two year contract with no opt out for bad service, promising a speed “up to” 3 mbps – still slow compared to the 20 mbps speed typically available in the U.S., but adequate for our needs (if the promise were true). In reality, the speed rarely reaches one tenth of that; the internet service is extremely slow and video viewing is next to impossible. Furthermore, the contract has a “fair use” clause in which Smart ratchets the speed down even further when it deems you have used the internet too much.

We have no air conditioning; usually a fan is sufficient, but I sometimes have difficulty sleeping in the hot and stuffy upstairs bedrooms and Elsa doesn't want a fan on her. She believes they cause illness. And, of course there are the brown outs. There is a shower in the downstairs comfort room (bathroom), something few Filipino households enjoy; however, the water is unheated and ice cold. Still, there is a flush toilet, toilet paper, and soap to wash my hands – conveniences that I don't find in many public facilities in the city. And then there are the insects and rats. I'm startled one day to see lizards crawling around our walls.

“It's okay,” Elsa tells me. “They eat the mosquitoes.” They don't seem to be doing their job since I'm covered in mosquito bites. Cockroaches the size of my thumb scurry about. And there are ants all over the kitchen. We find a dead rat under our bed.

This first month in the Philippines is proving challenging for me. I am finding that I took my comfortable American lifestyle too much for granted and need to make more of an adjustment than I expected. Maybe I'm more like that 70 year-old American in the grocery store than I would care to admit.

*Actually, online payment is available, but it is still relatively new and few Filipinos use these services as yet. Only about one quarter of Filipinos have an account at a formal financial institution and only about 3% have a credit card.