Part One
Welcome to the Philippines.
To be fair, one can quarantine at the Hilton. And there is even a Peninsula. We just did not have the budget for that.
Baobaoan is my wife, Mira's, hometown. It is a small village (barangay) of, I'd guess, around 1,500 people, northeast of Butuan City. Surrounded by rice paddies, it is a provincial farming community, three kilometers off the main highway.
Mira's family had fixed up a small house right next door to one of her five sisters. Fresh paint, new water pump, and most importantly, a new air conditioner. It was pretty amazing: We settled in with no issues. Though with home quarantine and all, Mira's sister pretty much had to feed us for a week.
Robert & Neng
She still feeds us regularly. Her name is Maria Theresa Seno Avilla. Sobriquet: NeNeng, but most often just Neng. She and her family run the barangay's only carinderia, a small food stall. It is really the only place to get prepared food in the whole village. Needless to say, it is a busy place.
Her husband Robert does something with the farmers – He's a bit like an agricultural extension agent. He also serves on the barangay council. Given their roles in the village, Robert & Neng are pillars of the community, and as such, have really helped us settle into life here.
Junjun
Angelo Auman Seno, Jr. is one of Mira's four brothers. He and his wife, Mae, and their four children split their time between Manila where she works, and Baobaoan, and nearby Magallanes where her family is from. Junjun is really the entrepreneur of the family with a duck egg business, a coconut oil processing business, and a new recycling venture. Duck eggs, or balut, are a popular Philippine delicacy.
Junjun's day job is working as assistant to Congressman Lawrence Fortun, who represents the First District of Agusan del Norte, and is currently running for vice mayor of Butuan City.
Wendy
Mira has another sister, Wendy. She and her husband own one of the local rice farms, and she runs a small sari-sari store in front of our house. The literal translation of sari-sari is assorted, sundry, or diverse. But the best way I can describe a sari-sari store is as a Philippine convenience store. They sell snacks and soft drinks, beer, and staples like flour and sugar. Wendy is there everyday from 5:30 am till well after dark. The problem is that every third house seems to have a sari-sari store up front. I'm not sure how they all stay in business. Wendy's store benefits by being on the main street and right next to Neng's carinderia.
In a community with only a few automobiles, and the nearest market about five miles away, the sari-sari stores provide a vital service.
Andrew
Andrew is Mira's nephew, the son of her eldest sister, Angelita. He's young (21) and smart and ambitious, and always ready to take a walk with me. This gives him an opportunity to practice his English.
Now what you need to understand is that the Philippine people are among the least judgmental that I have ever met. But there is one area where Filipinos do tend to judge each other harshly: Command of the English language. So Andrew wants to practice his English, not only to help him in the job market, but also so that other Filipinos will respect his language skills. It's a real thing here.
This is such an issue in the Philippines that I have found that people with moderate to even very good fluency will not attempt to speak English for fear that others will look down on them. As an American this is very frustrating because almost everyone here can communicate in English – They are just too embarrassed to do so. They never seem to understand that their English is always better than my non-existent Bisayan, and as a typical monolingual American, I can only judge them positively.
Hanna
Hanna is Wendy's oldest daughter and has just received a degree in math education from Caraga State University. CSU is about five miles south of here and has a well-regarded College of Education. She'll probably get a position teaching high school math. The problem is she looks like a high schooler, herself. But she's smart, tech-savvy, and she and her contemporaries represent the future of the Philippines. She'll go far.
JR
JR is a family friend. He works for the local egg cooperative surveying chickens. Now, I have no idea what surveying chickens entails, but I presume that it has something to do with estimating egg supply. He is married to a quiet, reserved young woman, who also happens to be one of the most beautiful women in Baobaoan. They have a toddler named Harrison – Harrison, after Harrison Ford, JR's favorite actor. Unlike many folks, JR is always happy to talk with me in English, and here, let me thank him for it.
Odette
On Thursday, December 16th, Typhoon Odette slammed into the Philippines. JR evacuated his young family to the next barangay about three kilometers away, on the main highway. They spent the night in the barangay hall. This was extremely smart, because the rest of us endured a night of flooding not seen in this area in more than a generation. In fact, Odette hit the Philippines as a Category Five hurricane.
Now, living all my life in eastern North Carolina, I've endured my share of hurricanes. But I have never personally dealt with flooding. We were told to expect, and prepared for, six to eight inches of water. We got 18 to 24 inches. That's in our house. Some had a bit less, some had quite a bit more. We had elevated our refrigerator about eight inches when we bought it. When the water came, we realized that was not enough. So we rounded up some help and raised it to about twelve inches. A few short hours later, we rounded up yet more help and put the thing on the kitchen table, which luckily is sturdy enough to hold it.
Then we evacuated ourselves next door, to Neng and Robert's one second floor room, their oldest son, Kim's bedroom, where we spent the night.
Now about 6:30 that evening, when the water was really at its peak, Neng appears with a wash basin as an umbrella, and announces that she is going to cook dinner. With her kitchen flooded the same as ours, she went around the corner to her parents, my in-laws. You see, they had only about fifteen inches of water in their kitchen. I have no idea how she did it, but about an hour later, we were eating hot rice and fresh, crispy spring rolls (lumpia). And she fed the whole family – easily more than twenty people. It was worth traveling halfway around the world just to meet this resourceful woman of quiet competence and genuine fortitude.
And that seems like the perfect place to end this first installment. I hope to bring you more tales from Baobaoan soon.
At one time, the United States was teeming with grit. That is, people with grit. Yet, today's average college graduate looks down on people with dirty fingernails. Yeah, they don't even know what the word means. You'll not find it in Cambridge or Stanford or Chapel Hill. They don't know what the word means, and they surely do not aspire to it.
I am sure that there are any number of places in the world today where you can find true grit. But if you are looking, you could do a lot worse than the Philippines.