Tales From Baobaoan

Part One

We arrived in Baobaoan (pronounced:  Bab-ō-wän) on Saturday, July 24, 2021.  This was after spending eleven days in quarantine in Manila.  And we were required to spend six additional days in home quarantine before our local Covid test results proved negative.  Believe me, eleven days locked in a third class hotel room is just one step above jail.

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.

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Tales From Baobaoan

Part Two

In the aftermath of Typhoon Odette, we were without power for two weeks, including Christmas.  Here in Baobaoan, that was really the worst effect of the cyclone.  Since this immediate area is fed by natural springs, lack of water was never an issue for us.  Other areas of the Philippines were not so lucky.  A category five hurricane does not hit an island nation without areas of complete devastation.

And no electricity is really a non-event for most Filipinos.  Most people do not use air conditioning.  They are also used to small refrigerators without much capacity.  But, at a mere eight degrees north of the equator, I found both of these issues rather disagreeable.

To be fair, temperature and humidity-wise, it did get somewhat comfortable between three and six am.  And we simply went to the market almost daily.  So all-in-all, it was unpleasant, but not terrible.

One mistake we made was that we failed to elevate our water pump.  Well, we did elevate it, but just not enough.  And the thing was flooded.  This is a big deal because there is no water tower here in Baobaoan.  So you need a pump to move water into and through the house.  I thought we needed to replace it, but a few days after the electric company restored the power, Mira's nephew, Kim, Neng's oldest son, got the thing working again.  But first, we made a new, higher platform for the pump.  I'm sure it will not flood that much again, but we are now prepared for the worst.

Third World Country, New World Malls

There are two open markets within five miles of here.  And in Butuan City, there are several large markets, for meat and vegetables & fruit.  We shop at all of these.

But to be honest, we buy most of our groceries at the supermarket.  Yep, just like Kroger.  Okay, they do not have a deli, but otherwise, you'd think you were in a Kroger.  Here in Butuan, we have three to choose from.

And you know where to find the supermarkets?  At the malls of course.  Three supermarkets; three malls.  Here in the Philippines, the malls are not anchored by Macy's, but rather by the supermarkets.

And when you walk inside one of these malls, you leave the third world behind.  Inside, you might well be in Pasadena.  These things are as American as you can get.  And they are packed.  There's a Levis store on the first floor and an Ace Hardware on the second.  And just like in America, Filipinos go not only to shop, but also for entertainment and restaurants.  Movies?  Theater on the third floor.  Hotel?  Attached.  McDonald's?  Right where it is in America – Out front in an outparcel.

It's fair to label the Philippines a third world country.  But it is more accurate to call it a developing nation.  A quickly developing nation.  Want evidence of the emerging Philippine middle class?  Just head to the malls.

Find Part One of Tales From Baobaoan here.

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Tales From Baobaoan

Part Three:  How to be an idiot in the Philippines

So one day last week, we are out for our morning walk.  It's the same everyday.  Three and a half miles through the rice fields.  This is what it looks like.  We walk up to the National Highway and back again.

The thing about rice farming in the Philippines is, it is farming.  When someone says I am a farmer, he means rice farmer.  Any other crop would make him less of a farmer.  Maybe even, less of a man.  The other thing to know about rice farming here is that all the farmers grow rice on these tiny plots.  Anywhere from, say, a quarter of an acre to maybe ten acres.  And ten acres would be an extremely large farm here.

Needless to say, they don't make any money.  I mean, year in and year out, they don't make money.  There's just too many farmers growing rice on too many tiny plots.  So none of them benefit from any economies of scale.  For all their efforts, the rice is expensive to produce.  And the worst part of it is that the farmers don't seem to understand this.

But rice farming is not just an occupation here, it is identity.  The farmers have a familial and intimate attachment to the land.  It is what and who they are.  Further, their cultural conviction that rice is the only crop worthy of their efforts borders on Stockholm Syndrome.  So naturally, the economics don't seem to matter.

Anyway, on this day we ran into a group of people all wearing the same logo shirts.  So I asked what kind of a group they were.  One of the leaders says:  We are an organization encouraging organic farming (sponsored by the government).

Me  You mean organic rice farming?

Leader  Well yes.

Me  Why not organic vegetable farming?  Say onions.

Onions have recently been very expensive here.  The leader mumbled something about how onions don't need a lot of organic material to grow.  And hey, what do I know?  I do know that all vegetables are generally expensive here.  It's a question of limited supply and limited demand.

Me  So where is all this organic material going to come from?  I mean, I never see any livestock here.

Leader  Yeah, we have to import it.

Me  Well wouldn't it be a good idea to encourage the raising of livestock here?  Then you could make your own organic fertilizers.

Leader  No, we don't have room for that here in the Philippines.

I scratch my head.

Me  Well, how about right there?

I point to the rice fields across the street.

Leader  No, no, it would be impossible to raise livestock there.

Me  Why is that?

She looked at me like I was an idiot.

Leader  Well obviously...because those are rice fields.

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