Every day is laundry day in Mogpog.
A few do their laundry at home in washing machines.
Most do it at home in their front yards using buckets of water, one for soapy suds and the other for rinsing.
Some few still go the river to clean their clothes, using cane sticks to pummel their laundry into submission, then rinsing the laundry in the river and hanging it to dry on bushes nearby. Around town you can hear clothes pounded with boards throughout the day, slapped against rocks like a potter slaps clay at his wheel, shirts and trousers rubbed together hard to work out the dirt and grime.
When laundry is done, these kids swim in the river, in a pool scooped out by a backhoe.
On this day three girls stand on the bridge above the swimming hole and drop pebbles to startle the boys swimming below. Giggling, they run when one of the boys stands up and tosses a rock back towards them that falls harmlessly into the river
Norman Rockwell would be pleased with this moment.
Kids seem to be the same all over the world.
There are relic hunters who still roam the mountains and valleys on Marinduque searching for World War 2 memorabilia.
They sometimes find helmets, bayonets, mess kits, a lucky photograph of a wife or children in a leather pouch, pieces of uniforms and occasionally, by the side of downed aircraft, bleached bones.
This great world conflict, in the early 1940’s,finished eighty years ago and what we know of it now comes from secondary sources. The generation that fought the war has followed it into history and has left us boxes of stained photographs, old movies and books by historians who have no longer have any living soldiers or architects of the war to interview.
.At celebrations on Veteran’s Day there are a few grizzled vets left who fought in these Philippine jungles, but time has rolled over most of them.
By the side of the road, just outside Mogpog, is a tall piece of ordnance propped up outside a food mart. It is like the biggest ball of twine somewhere in the Midwest, an Indian teepee hotel along Route 66, the Brown Derby in Los Angeles.
To people in the Philippines, Japan is not liked. People remember their grandfather’s killed along with Americans, remember Japanese death marches.
World War 2 fades in significance, buried as generations pile one atop another.
Now, we are into the entertainment age and World Wars are far from people’s minds.
What is funny is that the people that were drawn into World War 11 weren’t thinking about it either.
It is easier to describe this place by telling what isn’t here.
There are no condos, resorts, blue water swimming pools, water slides, fancy cabanas with fully loaded bars. There aren’t people wearing sunglasses and expensive thongs. There isn’t a paved road to get here, or fountains, or water features.There aren’t staff moving from room to room cleaning, maintaining grounds, loading luggage into taxis.
Ulong Bay is where locals go to cool off on hot days.
It is a fifteen minute bumpy ride in a tricycle from Mogpog, and, for a moment, you wonder if the sea is really out there. You walk over a rickety bamboo bridge, down a small path, and then you see water to the horizon, as flat as a surfboard.
This evening kids ride pieces of plywood on the slippery beach, dogs swim, families play in the sea as the sun goes down. Fires have been lit and our sun begins it’s swan dive into the sea.
There are better beaches and clearer water in the Philippines, but those cost one hundred to two hundred a night and come with tourists, high prices, and New World extravagances.
Ulong Bay is attractive for what it isn’t, and what it is isn’t bad.
There are fires burning in Mogpog.
They are kept simmering all day and into the night, started with the skins of coconuts peeled and shredded to make tinder, reinforced with dead coconut tree trunks, branches too small to be used for anything else.
You see smoke as you stroll,smell it as you take a shortcut through a back yard with a pen full of chickens, stop to see what your Uncle Fernando has been drinking last night.
There is never a straight line here anywhere. Point A and B are connected by a wavy line that leads you through the brambles like a pirate’s map.
All family and friends here are tied on a charm bracelet wrapped safely around your wrist, and you visit them as often as possible.
Smoke from these fires keeps mosquitoes at bay.
Insects are at the bottom of the natural world, simple, basic, enduring, omnipresent. We take them into account wherever we travel.. Small, out of sight, insects live close to mankind, largely invisible till they bite.
Mosquito’s have much to do about giving pests a bad reputation.
Typhoid fever isn’t something anyone wants to dance with and keeping a fire going is a small price to pay.
Mosquito’s may be small, but they pack a big punch.
Pigs are popular on Marinduque.
They are particularly popular for large family get together’s and celebrations. Like Ecuadorians and Mexicans, Philipino’s like pork and many households have a pig or two staked out in back yard mud holes. On this day, the man who makes his living cooking pigs over a fire, on a spit, comes to get one for a family wedding. After looking in Alma’s pens, he chooses the right sized pig for the celebration, then lifts it out of it’s cage.
The pig squeals and hollers but is no match for this big man.
The pig man grabs one pig foot and ties it with a piece of line, then grabs the other three feet and wraps all four together. Finished, he lifts the squirming squealing pig and carries it to his tricycle. Tomorrow, this pig will be lunch. After a life of indolence, this well fed boy only has a few hours to live and he hasn’t even had a fair trial.
Pigs get slaughtered.
The most important thing to remember is not to name them, and not to get attached. It is hard to love your pork chop when it used to be your pet.
Rice is a staple.
The rice plant grows about a foot high and then men with machetes separate the part of the plant with rice grains from the rest of it. The rice grains are shaken from the leaves, gathered, then laid out in the sun on mats to dry in the intense sun, turned with a rake to bake evenly.
When dry, the rice grains are loaded into bags and taken to a machine that separates the husk from the rice inside each grain.
Rice production is labor intensive and men standing in water bend over all day wearing broad hats and long sleeved shirts to bring it out of the fields.
Rice is served here three times a day with vegetables, chicken, fish, pork, and, occasionally- beef. What is not eaten is dished into food bowls for dogs and cats,and pigs.
Coconut trees are also a staple.
Coconut shells are burnt in little fires near houses so the smoke keeps mosquitoes under control. Coconut water is prized in European and American health food stores. Coconut is used to make culinary masterpieces and give texture and color to cosmetics. The leaves from coconut trees make roofs that keep heads dry and kids sleep in bunk beds made from the trunks of coconut trees.
Rice and coconuts leave their fingerprints on everyone here.
In the universe of coffee table books, there must be one about airports of the world.
The intrepid author would have traveled to major airports of the world, taken photographs, picked images that best describe the country visited.
The Denver airport has a blue bronco statue reared up in an open area as you drive to its terminals. The Dallas Airport has a bronze statue inside of President G.W. Bush. The Albuquerque Airport has Zuni turquoise jewelry and Indian Anasazi pottery. The Detroit Airport has photographs of Henry Ford and industrialization in the early 1900’s.
This Narita Airport in Tokyo shows me stylized Samurai warriors, gentle and inscrutable Asian women holding fans partially obscuring their emotions, upscale shops with duty free items for world travelers. There are a few English words on signs to help visitors, but the scribbles on signs remind me that I am halfway around the world and it is dark when it is usually light.
Somewhere in this airport, there must be a Memorial to those who died at Hiroshima, victims of the world’s first nuclear explosion.
Next stop is Manilla, Philippines.
The statue in the airport there should be of the Ali/Foreman prize fight, but will probably be a ten foot tall rooster with gold feathers and sharp talons.
Airports are portals to the world.
The Denver International Airport was built in cow pastures to the east of Denver, after Stapleton closed, and was turned into condos.
To fly out of Denver you follow I-70 east till you see white sails in the country, shuttle parking lots, arrival and departure ramps, east and west terminals. There are other ways to see our world but by air is the quickest and most dominant. Percentage wise, air travel is safer than walking to your local grocery.
Airports have not been designed for long term comfort though, which causes sleepless nights for those of us who travel.
This trip, the quietest place to sleep, is an interfaith chapel in the east terminal overlooking TSA processing on the commons below.. A note on the chapel doors reminds you not to put your feet on chairs, move furniture, leave trash, or interrupt prayers.
This spiritual portal should be full of travelers since we are all about to board aluminum cans and be carried thirty thousand feet up into the sky, but no one is here but me.
The screening to get on planes is daunting, but nothing compared to the screening we have to go through to get into Heaven.
I admire Mark Twain’s quip that ” I want to go to heaven for the climate, but go to Hell for the company. ”
Stuck in the airport till my flight boards for Manilla , early in the morning, I am feeling like Hell will not be a place I want to go even if Twain says the company is good.
I bet the seats down there will be several sizes too small and the sound system will be blasting rap music as loud as it will go.
Trumpets are not quiet instruments.
In the Cancun Airport, Terminal Three, a trumpet and guitars serenade travelers arriving and departing from Mexico. The terminal is full of duty free shops, and, if you didn’t pick up gifts before, this is your last tax free shopping opportunity.
Mariachi music belongs to Mexico though Mexican taxi drivers often listen to Willie Nelson and Classic Rock. This knob of Yucatan, Mexico has more in common with the Caribbean than Mexico but this fiery Mariachi group plays their Mexican style music, in tune, with great expression and distinctive costumes.
Being a neighbor to the United States is like sleeping next to an elephant. When it rolls over you become sandwich spread.
I don’t want Mexico to become the United States and I don’t want the United States to just be a continuation of Mexico.
Maintaining your national identity, in an increasingly homogenized world, is a true work of love and an expression of freedom.
This music at the airport seems to capture the extroverted flavor of our southern neighbor in a nutshell and I sing along with the musicians in English, as they croon in Spanish.
There is room on the planet for all of us, and our differences.
Yoga studios are prevalent in Tulum.
At nine sharp, practitioners dress in loose fitting clothes, clutch their orange or green mats, make their way into the yoga studio and begin exercises with a background of soothing music and the reassuring voice of a Yoga master who has learned the same way, on a bare floor in some distant part of the world.
Yoga Shala is similar to many of the hostels here, a compound of thatched roof cabanas, most with shared bathrooms, limited cooking facilities and wide open air porches for catching sea breezes and writing in notebooks in the afternoon.
On a wall at the head of outside stairs leading up to my second floor bungalow is a circle of painted Yoga positions, each position taking years of work and concentration to achieve.
Living without amenities grows on you.
Doing simple things well is hard work.
Learning how to breath was never something I used to have to think about.
At this point in our acquaintance,I’m not sure Yoga and I are meant for each other.
Recent Comments