Yesterday was quite an unusual day weatherwise. It started off clear and beautiful. I grabbed my camera and walked down to the waterfront and along the river and nearby neighborhoods. I got some great pictures of mothers swimming in the water with their young children, teaching them to swim in fact. This was out at the end of a very long cement pier. I wasn’t sure how useful that pier would be. The water seemed quite low around it and there was not a single boat attached to it.

I also got some pictures of a nice garden set-up. A family had built a garden around hundreds of coconut shells – one small plant in each coconut shell, which they had filled with soil. And I came across an old man sitting in the sun. He had great features and great wrinkly skin. I asked him if I could take his picture. For some reason, those pictures didn’t really turn out. They seem ordinary and don’t capture what I saw with my eyes. I also took some pictures of a mother cat with her kittens and of various people that I stumbled across and chatted with.

I ended my morning walk at the eatery, where I found a hustle and a bustle. Paz had told me the previous day that there would be street dancing in Lawaan. Now I understood what she had meant. There were elections in one of the barangays, and Paz was supporting one of the candidates. Paz told me that he was “a gay”, and apparently she had marshaled the local gay community to support him. They – all men dressed as women – were gathered at the eatery and putting on costumes and makeup in preparation for a dancing march around the town. They were delighted to see me with my camera and we had a little picture-taking session. Unfortunately, I had the 45mm lens on the camera, and that field of view was a bit tight for this kind of thing. However, I managed to take a few pictures that pleased me. I don’t think they pleased the participants, though. There was something about the camera’s settings and the lighting conditions that darkened skin and made the make-up stand out. The portraits ended up looking a bit harsh while the men – boys, really – were trying so desperately to look pretty.

I found that side of things a bit sad. These boys wanted to look pretty and they had to work so hard to achieve that. In the end, the best they could do was a kind of caricature of prettiness. There were a couple of young women among this crowd, and they achieved this feminine allure so effortlessly by comparison. There was such an easy grace, beauty, and femininity to the young girls. The boys and men could only yearn for that.

At the same time, that might not be true at all. My assumption is that these boys would have preferred to have been born as women – to have a woman’s body to go with their minds. But that might not be true. Perhaps there is something in being a boy trying to be a girl that is appealing. Certainly, these boys and men were behaving in outrageously flirtatious ways that a real girl would and could never do. There was a flamboyancy to everything they did. All their gestures were exaggerated as if they were doing a vaudeville routine about women. Putting on the clothing and accessories of a woman seemed to free them. It’s similar, I’m guessing, to the effect that wearing a mask has on people in general – it frees them from their inhibitions and allows them to express themselves. Had these boys and men been born as women, they could not behave in this way. They displayed a harsh type of femininity – a masculine and aggressive version of it.

The troupe formed up on the street outside the eatery and put on a dance performance to music that came from an amplified system loaded into two pedicabs. The pedicab in front carried the speakers, amplifier, microphone, and master of ceremonies. The pedicab in the back carried a Honda generator. The two pedicabs were connected by a short electrical cord, and the driver of the pedicab had to be careful to keep the distance just right so that they didn’t crash into each other and they didn’t unplug the cord. I was amused to see one of the guests of honor – a frail and elderly woman – sitting in the second pedicab directly in front of the generator. It seemed a dangerous place to be sitting.

Once the parade set off to march around the town, I left the eatery intending to walk around a bit more and take some pictures. However, I only got about a block away when it started to rain. I took cover underneath the awning of a garage attached to a nearby house, and I was stuck there for nearly an hour. This became the pattern of the day as the rain would stop just long enough for me to move a block or two. Then the rain would begin again and I had to find new shelter. This meant having to have a lot of conversations about not being married, about not having companions, about how it would be better to have a motorcycle, about how I should go to Boracay. The same conversation over and over again until I nearly lost my mind. It was worse than usual because the roar of the rain on the tin roofs made it difficult to hear what people were saying and I had to work very hard to keep up the conversation.

A man at the first place – the garage – opened up the garage door and got out some chairs for us to sit on. He was an older man – retired now – and had lived in a variety of places around the world. This gave him a certain perspective on aspects of life in the Philippines that displeased him. He was particularly annoyed with the way that cities and towns here are divided up into barangays. It seemed wasteful and expensive to him. He kept saying that Filipinos must be rich to be able to support such a system. He mentioned San Diego as a contrast. He pointed out and asked me to confirm that San Diego had just one city government. They didn’t divide the city into a hundred barangays and have a separate government for each one.

I agreed with him up to a point, though I don’t know enough about the situation to have an opinion on it. Certainly, San Diego would have one overall city government, but I’m sure the city is divided into many administrative units. These divisions wouldn’t have their own governments, but they would have their own bureaucracies. I’m not sure how barangays differ in this regard. This town of Lawaan, for example, is quite small. Yet, it has at least 10 barangays. And from what I can tell, each barangay has its own government – a barangay captain and councilors. And there are separate elections in each one. That certainly seems excessive.

Dodging from shelter to shelter between rain storms, I made my way to the far end of town. Then it cleared a little bit, and I risked leaving the shelters of town and heading across a bridge to the outskirts. I had the vague idea of going to the Baybay Beach Resort. Everyone had been telling me that this place was run by an Australian and that I had to go there. Paz said that it was only one kilometer outside of town. I quickly got sidetracked when I spotted a cement path that went down to a little village right on the ocean. I walked there and wandered around taking pictures and chatting with people. When I’m taking pictures, I don’t mind the conversations as much. I think of answering those same questions over and over again as the fee I’m required to pay in exchange for taking a picture. People gather around as I am talking to someone, and I’ll occasionally tap the screen of my Olympus to take a picture of an interesting face. At this village, I was told that the Baybay resort was more than three kilometers away. I wasn’t in the mood for a six-kilometer round trip to see another bit of beach with some thatch-roofed shelters. The local villages are much more interesting for me.

On my way back to town, I noticed a tiny kitten mewing at a little house right beside the bridge. It attracted my attention, and then the woman who lived in the house saw me and called out to me. I crossed the road to pet the kitten and chat with the woman. She said that she was a single mother and she had seven children. Her house was quite a simple one – a small shack perched precariously on a crude set of very tall stilts. I would be very nervous inside that house. It seemed like it would take very little for the structure to collapse.

I made the usual fool out of my myself by bending down and making a big fuss over the kitten. It was very cute and friendly and I was worried that it would run out into the road and get killed. There was barely a foot or two between the edge of the road and this house. I had assumed that this kitten was just another product of the endless litters that occur uncontrollably. However, that wasn’t really the case. This woman had specifically asked for this kitten from a neighbor. She said that she didn’t have any pets of her own. And there were a number of rats in and around her house and she needed a cat to deal with them. This kitten would provide companionship and the much-needed service of rat control when it grew up. The kitten seemed so frail and weak that I had my doubts it would survive long enough to become a rat catcher. Its ribs stood out from its tiny body. It hardly seemed old enough to be away from its mother. And as the woman told me, it seemed drawn to the side of the road and ran the very real risk of being killed by a passing vehicle. I told this woman that I was leaving Lawaan this morning and that I would stop by her house on my way out of town to say goodbye.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. I returned to my room and reviewed my pictures from the day. I went back to the eatery for an early dinner. While I was eating, Paz returned from a successful outing to drum up business for her basket-making. She got an order from a local church for a set of collection plates and other things. After my meal, I returned to my room and hung out until an early bed time. I really seem to be running a sleep deficit. I’ve slept extremely well and long here, so well and long that I appear to be making up for not sleeping elsewhere. I must have been in bed for 12 hours last night. Yet, every time I woke up during the night, I’d find my eyes jammed with sleep. It was like my body had huge amounts of housekeeping to take care of and needed this time to do it. I can only hope that equally efficient repair teams were sent down to my knees and shin bones and other places. If nothing else, this little sojourn in the Philippines has taught me the realities of aging. I always assumed that my body would just stay as capable as it has ever been. I’ve never been any sort of a physical specimen. I’ve never been particularly strong or fast. Nor have I had a great deal of endurance. Yet, my body has always done whatever I asked of it without complaint. It never occurred to me on previous bike trips to wonder if my body could do it. I just assumed that it would step up and do it. I never worried about conditioning or training. Now, things appear to have changed. Riding this bike is really tough and it is taking it out of me. There are signs that I might not be able to do it the way I used to. I’m still astonished at how tired I am in the mornings. I wake up with limbs that feel like lead. I have to fight my way out of sleep in a way that I never had to before. I don’t know what’s going on.

Well, the hope is that the weather will be somewhat clear today. In any event, I should get on the road as early as possible to take advantage of the clear skies. They might not last for long.

 

 

Tags: barangay, barangay captain, eatery, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, San Diego, South Coast of Samar