Still on the island of Biliran. Still raining. There were downpours last night that I thought would sweep away the building. The rain hits the roof with a deafening sound that builds and builds and builds. This hotel sits on the edge of town and I get beautiful views across green fields into trees and villages and then on to the mountains. The fields are all flooded right now. I remember reading that Biliran is noted for the amount of rain it gets. This allows them to have three harvests of rice per year.

Not much is going to happen today with all the rain coming down. It’s also a Sunday, which is a very quiet day in the Philippines. They take their Sunday holidays very seriously, as they do their religion. I haven’t actually seen any churches in Naval, but I’m sure they’re around and I’m sure they will be full this morning. The churches in Tacloban were quite a sight on Sundays. The crowds filled the church seats and then people packed in and, standing, filled all the empty spaces both inside and outside the church. The crowds were so big that they extended out over the entire church grounds and reached the fences and even spilled over them into the street. The sermons were delivered in English most of the time and since they were amplified, I could hear them quite clearly.

The other places that will be busy today will be the cockfighting rings. That, perhaps, says something about the Philippines and the temperament of the people here. The two most popular things on their holidays are religion and animal fights (with gambling and drinking). I haven’t gone to see any cockfighting on this trip. I’ve seen enough of it to last me a lifetime. I could say that it is horrible and violent and nasty and all of that, but my main objection is that it is boring. Cockfighting is sometimes playing on TV here, too, so I can get my fill of it that way and it reminds me of what it was like to see it live. There is a long build-up to the fight as they get the cocks mad at each other and ready to fight. They hold them in their hands and bring them close together and then pull them apart. They do that with substitute cocks and finally with the cock that they are going to fight. The cocks get really worked up and when they are ready to fight, they let them go. The fights themselves are so fast that you can’t see anything. All you see is a big ball of feathers and wings. Then in one or two seconds, it is over. One rooster will be unable to stand up. The handler will pick up both roosters and let them get mad at each other again and then he will put them both on their feet to see if the fight can go on. It usually can’t. One of the roosters won’t be able to support its weight on its legs and will just flop down. It’s dying or dead already, but there is no way to see the injury that killed it. The roosters wear long, extremely sharp blades on their feet and this blade likely punctured its body and cut through arteries and vital organs. But it happens so fast that you don’t see any of that. Much of the time, both roosters are fatally wounded and even though a winner is declared, both of them die. The worst part for me is the time when they try to see if the fight can continue. If one of the roosters is still capable of fighting, it lashes out with its beak and catches the other rooster on the head and neck, usually going for the eyes. It holds on, and when they pull them apart, you can see the other rooster’s flesh being pulled out. They do this several times, but it generally has no effect. The dying rooster continues to die and the fight is over. I’ve spoken to a number of men about their fighting cocks, and they say that even when their cocks win, they usually die from their injuries. So it’s really just a contest to see which rooster dies first. I don’t understand the enjoyment of it at all. It’s surprising, really, to learn how popular it is here. I wonder how many people realize that it is illegal in the United States and Canada. Perhaps on its own, it wouldn’t be that popular, but it is combined with gambling and drinking – two other very popular pastimes here. The extent of it is truly surprising. It’s not like an underground sport that only a few know about. It is huge, by far the biggest pastime in the country. The cockfighting rings are like stadiums and are packed to bursting during the fights. And you see fighting cocks everywhere. This hotel in Naval has about thirty of its own. I don’t know for sure who owns them. Perhaps all the employees and the owner and some of the tenants. They are staked all over the lawn and around the building. They can’t let them run free because they might fight and kill each other if they did. They are all tied to a pole shaped like a T. The roosters either peck around at the dirt under the pole or they fly up to the top part of the T and perch there. They are well fed and well treated. Making shelters for them is a popular business here. People make unique shelters out of old car and truck tires. These are split open and shaped in a way as to make something that looks like a Darth Vader helmet. This makes a little house for the rooster to shelter it from the sun and rain. Of course, there is a side-effect to all this – no matter where the poor foreigner goes, he is surrounded by crowing roosters. I’m actually kind of used to them. I guess I’ve been around crowing roosters enough in my life that they don’t keep me awake as much as they used to. Still, they wake me up every morning before dawn. Occasionally, they tether one or two of them right below my window and the sound is deafening.

Speaking of animals, I think there is one species that I haven’t mentioned yet. I’ve talked about dogs and cats before. They are actually treated fairly well here compared to most countries I’ve visited. They seem relatively well fed if starved for affection. Luckily, there are so many street dogs around that they don’t lack for company and the street dogs can romp around together in order to have fun. Household pets tend to be kept for protection but not for companionship. Cats are also kept as household pets, and they have just as important a job as the dogs, which I will get to in a minute.

The other animals I’ve mentioned are the geckos and ants and cockroaches and mosquitos. I love geckos, as most people do. They are beautiful animals and great fun to watch as they hunt. I have a small one in my room that has taken up residence right beside a bottle that I’ve put on the floor next to the wall. For some reason, a type of fluffy, small fly likes to land right on the wall above this bottle. The little gecko comes out from hiding when this happens and slowly stalks the fly. Once he is in striking distance, it is over in the blink of an eye. He never misses. There are hundreds of them living in this hotel, and at night they line the walls of the hallways. The hallways are open at both ends of the building and all manner of insects come in to fly around the lights. The geckos feast all night long. All the restaurants I go to are also full of geckos. They are everywhere on the walls and ceiling and provide lots of entertainment as I eat.

The ants, as I’ve said before, are the biggest problem for me. They’re not a huge problem in that they don’t bite, but they are very annoying and there are so many of them. I can’t leave anything even vaguely tasty out unless I want it to be covered in a thick coating of ants when I return. The surprising thing for me has been the variety of ants. There must be ten different species in my one room – all different sizes and shapes and with different behaviors. Other than their ablity to get into everything, they also find me fairly tasty and I pass most nights with them sharing my bed and crawling over my body. They may not bite, but they do tickle and it gets a bit annoying to have to wipe away ants all the time. I have my mosquito net over my bed here, but it doesn’t keep out the ants.

The net has been effective against another of the creatures I’ve mentioned – mosquitoes. The mosquitoes here haven’t been as big a problem as in some other places I’ve been. However, they are still a constant presence and I’m always getting bitten or having to do battle and kill them. I have to leave the windows open or the room will be an oven, but even with the windows closed, they would still find their way into the room. Without the mosquito net, I’d be eaten alive. I haven’t seen a mosquito net in any of the many rooms here at the hotel. It makes me wonder what that means for the local people. They must get bit constantly. Actually, I have some proof of that. This morning, I found my bathroom filled with mosquitoes and I spent a few minutes killing them all. They were very easy to kill because they were all filled with blood. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t my blood because I keep the door to the bathroom closed at all times (for many, many reasons) and I have had no recent mosquito bites, certainly not seven or eight of them. The only explanation is that these mosquitoes bit the people in the rooms below me and then drifted out of the rooms and up the wall and into the window into my bathroom. Therefore, they were all carrying the blood of other people in this hotel – the long term residents. They were still trying to bite me, and had they succeeded, they might have injected me with some of the blood they were carrying. That, of course, is how many diseases are spread. There is a very good chance that some of the people in this hotel have malaria or dengue fever. They’re very common here. And without my mosquito net, it would likely be easy to contract one of them.

Luckily, cockroaches haven’t been a big issue for me in the Philippines. They are around, of course. Occasionally, I’ve seen them in huge numbers, but these are the really big cockroaches. Somehow, they don’t bother me as much as small household cockroaches would. These giant cockroaches seem like creatures of the wild. They seem less dirty. In one hotel, they swarmed all over everything, but generally I’ve only encountered them outside.

The one creature I haven’t mentioned yet is related to the role of the household cat. That creature is the rat. Rats are masters at staying hidden. They only come out at night, but I’ve seen enough of them and enough evidence of them to know that they are around in huge numbers.

My hotel room here in Naval, for example, is rather covered in rat droppings. There is a ledge outside my window and this ledge is clearly a highway for the rats as they make their way around the building going from window to window. There are rat droppings all over this ledge and I see new droppings in my room and in the bathroom just about every day. I’ve never seen or heard a rat here, but it’s clear they make nocturnal visits.

Actually, rats (and this little essay on animals) is on my mind because last night I watched a cat stalk a rat in the restaurant where I was eating. This is a very common experience for me, and it shows just how important the household cats are. In Tacloban, there was a real rat hunter in one of my regular restaurants. I saw this cat hunt and kill rats many times while I was eating. This cat loved to play with its prey, and one memorable night, it kept flinging a rat from the back through a doorway into the restaurant near where I was eating. Then it would pounce and pick up the rat and fling it back through the doorway. No one else in the restaurant seemed to notice this was going on.

Last night, I noticed the cat in the restaurant suddenly come to a hunting posture while staring at a sofa at the back of the room. It then slowly moved forward and worked its way under the sofa. A minute or two later, a huge rat came running out from under the sofa and disappeared through a doorway into the back. The mother and daughter that run the restaurant were sitting on the sofa at the time, but they didn’t notice anything. I imagine this happens all the time and they’ve just learned to live with the rats. They have two or three dogs as well, and I’m pretty sure that the dogs keep the rat population down as well.

That’s it for the creatures.

 

 

Tags: Biliran Trip, Darth Vader, fly, job, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Tacloban