Mark, the fellow that runs the sari-sar store and who took me out to his farm on his motorcycle, wasn’t around for a couple of days. Yesterday morning, however, I spotted him at his store – which is at the front of his house – and we had a chance to chat some more. I got a lot of information from him about his life

Mark told me during our conversation that he also ran a boarding house. His own house has two rooms and then there is a larger building beside it, which he uses as a boarding house. He has 15 female boarders who pay 750 pesos each per month. I didn’t see inside the boarding house, but from the outside it looked fairly basic.

I also learned a bit more about his coconut business. He has the coconuts on the land on the farm, but he has a second parcel of land in his wife’s hometown. This land is also used for growing coconuts. He harvests the coconuts every three months in order to sell the dried inner meat, which is called copra. There are two ways to dry the coconut meat. One common way is to lay it out on the road to dry in the sun. Mark says that this takes a long time. It only dries when the sun is out and you have to take the copra in at night and put it back out in the morning. You have to do this every day until it is dried and ready to sell. Apparently, there is no market for undried coconut meat or even whole coconuts.

Mark prefers the second method – drying by fire. He builds a large bamboo rack underneath a shed. He spreads the coconut meat on this rack and then builds a fire underneath. The smoke from the fire dries the coconut meat. This is a much faster method and it also allows you to use the coconuts’ outer husk as fuel for the fire. That’s kind of handy.

I asked Mark about permits for his sari-sari store. He said that it was very simple to open. It involved only one licence, which costs 200 pesos per year. He built his entire store and outfitted it for 1,000 dollars. That includes the building itself, the window, the wire screen, the shelving, and the refrigerator. He buys all his products at a large retail store in Naval. He can’t buy wholesale because he doesn’t have enough money to buy the amount that would be required to get wholesale prices. As such, his profit margin is very thin. He might buy a packet of 3-in-1 coffee for 5 pesos and then sell it in his store for 6 pesos. He buys the “grande” bottles of beer for 65 pesos and sells them for 70 pesos. It seemed to me that with all the income streams he had plus the value of the land and house, he could easily come up with the funds to buy wholesale products, but he says that he can’t, and he would know.

I met his mother briefly while I was there. She was over having breakfast with them. She is a university professor and spoke English quite well. I asked Mark what subject she taught, but he didn’t know. I teased him about that a little. How can you be a 32-year-old man and not know what your mother is a professor OF?

I also met Mark’s younger sister. She is a nurse in a nearby town. I commented on the huge number of nurses I’ve met and heard of. There seemed to be far more nurses coming out of the colleges than the country could possibly need. This turned out to be exactly true. Mark said that his sister would work at the hospital on Biliran for only 2 years. Then she would apply to work overseas. All the overseas postings require at least 2 years of experience, so all the local nursing graduates get their first job locally and stay for about 2 years before going overseas. She makes 300 dollars a month at her job in the Philippines and could make much, much more than that with an overseas posting.

After my long chat with Mark, I tracked down some breakfast and then went for a walk – camera in hand – to the big cockfighting arena outside of town. I had seen this cockfighting arena several times on my cycling trips around the island and had noticed that it was open on Sunday afternoons.

The arena is about 3 kilometers outside of town and getting there involved walking along the main road that goes around the island. It was interesting to walk down that road instead of cycling down it, but I have to admit that it was a bit trying. There is very little shoulder and most of the time you have to walk on the pavement and compete with the traffic, which is taking your life in your hands. All the people I met were friendly, but even with the best of intentions on my part, I found myself getting a bit tired of all the “Hey, Joe!” greetings and the same questions shouted at me hundreds of times. People as far away from me as two or three rice fields away would shout out “Where are you from? What is your name? Where is your wife? Are you married?” My feelings about this little expedition soured even more when a man and a group of women shouted at me to take their picture. They were all gathered underneath a half-completed building in a rice field. It made no sense to take a picture of them from that far away, but I raised the camera to my eye and pointed it at them to please them. Unfortunately, the man then dropped his pants and waved his dick at me. I really didn’t see the need for that. It was quite rude and vulgar.

The cockfighting arena was empty and quiet when I got there. Some people were at the gate, however. They told me that it would open at 1:30. I was there at about 12:15, but they said I was welcome to come in and look around and wait.

I sat on a bench at the front gate with these people for a while to chat and be friendly. The man, unfortunately, zeroed right in on my marital status. I told him that I wasn’t married, and this led to a long and tedious process of him telling me about all the women within a 1-kilometer radius who weren’t married. Two of the single women were right there at the gate, and this man wouldn’t stop talking about how I should marry one of them. I had to sit there with a fake smile plastered on my face for a very long time. One of the women was quite young and she took a seat on the bench between me and this man. This gave the man the opportunity to keep up this conversational topic. I finally told him that I was far too old and I had no interest in getting married at all. He looked at me and said, “When you say you don’t want to get married, I think you are a fancy lady boy!”

[slickr-flickr tag=”Naval Cockfighting” type=”slideshow”]
A short time later, I popped into a little shed to have a cold beer. The people there also spent the entire time listing off all the marriageable young women they knew. After wandering around the arena and taking some pictures, I went to a different shed and had a second beer. The woman running that little operation was very excited when she learned that I was single. Her daughter was working with her that day. She was up in the arena seating area setting up a cooler with beer and cigarettes and snacks for sale. This daughter was young and beautiful with long dark hair and, apparently, she would love to marry a foreigner. The woman started shouting up at the arena building to get her daughter’s attention to ask her to come down and meet me. When she got not response, she shouted at two young boys and sent them off to get her daughter. Luckily, this daughter never appeared and I was spared that embarrassment.

I’ve made up my mind that in the future, I will simply tell people that I am married and that my wife is in Canada. I think coming to the Philippines without my wife for a holiday will be a lot easier to explain and won’t take up nearly as much time to talk about.

The cockfighting arena itself was quite a nice one – easily the newest and nicest of all the ones I’ve seen. Many I’ve seen have resembled old barns more than anything else. This one was more like a hockey arena except a lot hotter. Most of the seating consisted of simple concrete benches going around in a circle. On one side there was an area with about a hundred plastic chairs. This was the VIP area and when I bought my ticket for 30 pesos, I was told that I should sit in the VIP section. When the time came, I was glad to do that because I’m much more comfortable sitting with some kind of a backrest. My back gets quite sore otherwise.

The cocks fight in a relatively large area in the middle of the arena. It is raised up to give people a good view and is surrounded on all sides by high walls of thick plexiglass. The floor of this area is made to look like brown dirt. It has a single line running down the middle and a circle on each side of this line – one for each fighting cock. In each corner of this fighting space, there were plexiglass doors on hinges. Once the cocks were released to fight, the handlers would quickly retreat to these corners and get behind the plexiglass doors. This was not, of course, to protect them from the roosters. I’m sure this was intended simply to keep the handlers out of the way so that they don’t interfere with the fight in any way. A lot of money changes hands through bets on each fight, and it is important that the cockfights be handled fairly and impartially. There would surely be a lot of trouble if someone felt that a handler had cheated or interfered in a fight.

As I wandered around the arena, I noticed enough detail to give me the impression that the fights were relatively well controlled and regulated. There were weight restrictions for the cocks with penalties for not making the proper weight – just as there are in boxing or MMA. There were also rules about which breeds of roosters were allowed for each fight. There was a ring manager (a friendly man I met earlier), and he appeared to be in charge of the match-ups. I don’t know if these were determined beforehand or on the day of the fights. Perhaps there is a mixture. In any event, there was an area on the ground at the back of the area where all the men gathered with their fighting cocks. They sat on low wooden benches and either held their roosters in their hands (petting them like you would a dog) or kept them in small bamboo cages set around this area for that purpose. The ring manager walked through this area talking to the various men and examining roosters and making notes on a clipboard. I assume he was putting together a roster for the day’s events.

There was a long build-up to each fight. The arena had a good sound system and various men would speak at length into a microphone before each rooster was brought out and into the central fighting enclosure. I could not understand what they were saying, but it sounded like they were giving information about the roosters that were about to fight. If these were human fighters, they would be giving the fighting record of wins and losses among other things. For fighting cocks, that would make little sense since I don’t think they had win-loss records for the most part. Both winners and losers commonly were dead at the end of the fight, so their records would almost all be 1-0 or 0-1.

The last time I went to a cockfighting arena was on the island of Camiguin a couple of years ago. I remember it being a crazy and wild event. Most of the men appeared to be drunk and there was an atmosphere of violence and chaos. This arena in Naval was much more civilized. Everything seemed very organized and the men were quiet and focused. One rooster was brought out first and the handler put it through its paces to show off its appearance and fighting attitude. The lethal blade on the rooster’s right leg was covered with a plastic sheath at this time, and the roosters clearly found this very cumbersome. It was very difficult for them to walk and they lifted that leg high in the air and stumbled around. Then they’d reach down with their head and peck at the strings holding this sheath and blade in place. The handler would then make the rooster stand up straight again. This period was important because the audience members were all deciding on their bets and were looking at the roosters with a critical eye and judging their fighting ability.

After a few minutes, the second rooster would be brought in and the handler would bring it to the other side of the enclosure, on the far side of the central line. The roosters, when separated by enough distance, did not seem aware of each other and did not want to fight. They just walked around and pecked at the ground. The handlers were careful to head them off, though, if they got too close to the center line. They didn’t want them to start to fight early.

Once both cocks had been introduced, the handlers picked them up and brought them together in the center of the ring. The covers were still on the razor blades at this time. The roosters would be brought close together and urged into a fighting state of mind. The roosters would claw at the ground and try to break free of their handlers so that they could rush at each other and fight. What struck me was how quickly this fighting reaction would come and go. When brought within inches of each other, the roosters would go into a violent rage. When separated by even a foot or two, they would just relax and start pecking the ground looking for worms and bugs. This violent rage would switch on and off with the rapidity of a light switch controlling a light bulb. On then off like it never happened. The roosters would carry no memory of being so angry and violent just a second earlier.

Before the fight began would come the most important part of the day – the making of bets. Even when I was expecting it, this sudden burst of noise and activity would take me by surprise. I’m sure it was all highly regulated, but I have no idea how. For one thing, there appeared to be absolutely no betting before this allotted time. I saw no hidden signals, no quiet discussions, nothing. There was no betting at all. Then there was the sound of a horn and the entire audience went nuts. The place erupted with noise and hand gestures. Many of the men jumped to their feet and started shouting and waving their hands and giving complicated hand signs. They could be making bets with people as far away as the other side of the arena. Only making eye contact and understanding the hand signals was required. The idea was to offer odds on one of the fighting cocks and then see if anyone would agree to those odds and then agree on an amount for the bet. I’m sure it would all make sense in a short amount of time, but I couldn’t really understand any more than what I’ve said above. I didn’t understand the hand signals or how one rooster was distinguished from the other. Nor did I understand the roles of the various men. Some seemed to be professional bookies. Others were running around doing the bidding of these bookies and reporting their bets back to them. Others appeared to be just audience members making the bets. But these roles kept shifting and changing. For one fight, a man would appear to be just an audience member making a bet. For the next fight, he would be on his feet and shouting and yelling and making hand gestures. I couldn’t tell if people were making bets for themselves or arranging bets between other people. Even men inside the ring were making or arranging bets. The ring announcer with the microphone ran around the enclosure making bets. Then when the fight was over, money would change hands rapidly. I never saw anyone make any notes or use slips of paper of any kind. Everyone just remembered the bets that had been made and the money changed hands quickly and efficiently. Money was generally delivered by hand, but occasionally it was bundled up in a special way and then thrown across the seating area and even into the fighting enclosure to be picked up off the ground. I’m sure there were disputes, but I never saw any.

The cockfights themselves were easily the least interesting side of this activity. The build-up and the betting might take twenty or thirty minutes. But once the sheaths were taken off the blades and the cocks allowed to fight, it would be over in seconds. There would be a blur of feathered wings and then one cock wouldn’t be able to stand up, and that would that. A referee would pick up the two cocks and let them get at each other with their beaks for a second or two and then set them down on the ground again, just to see if the defeated cock could rally and fight. But every time, the cock that went down first simply couldn’t get up again. I assume the long razor blade had gone deep into its body and wounded it fatally, but it was impossible to tell. I saw no blood and no injuries. The cock simply could not stand up and was likely in the process of dying from internal injuries. The winning cock was also likely dying of internal injuries but just doing it a slower rate – slow enough to be declared the winner.

I stayed around for three, maybe four fights and then I’d had enough. I felt very out of place just sitting there in my chair doing nothing but watching while all this activity went on around me. I clearly didn’t belong and I felt slightly embarrassed when everyone around me leaped to their feet and started the frenetic betting activity. It’s like being the one member of a group of people not out on the dance floor. You just feel silly sitting there.

I was very tired by that point, and the walk back into town was difficult and hot. I could have taken a pedicab or motorcycle taxi, but I was still taking pictures and I preferred to walk to take in all of my surroundings. I also had a bit of a mission. Like the total buffoon I am, I had neglected days ago to care for my bicycle after I had taken it for a long ride in the rain. I had simply carried my bike up to my room and left it there soaking wet. I never gave it a second thought, but that morning I had noticed something odd about the bicycle chain. I bent down to examine it and to my horror discovered that the entire thing had seized up with rust. I couldn’t believe that it had happened so fast. I shook my head in numb horror at the sight and at my own stupidity. I should have dried the bike and cleaned it and relubricated the chain. But I was lazy and didn’t do that and now it looked like I was stuck. I had no idea how I was going to clean the chain or even if it could be cleaned. In my experience, once a chain has seized up like that, you might as well just get a new chain. I had no possibility of doing that, so I had no choice but to try to clean it. I spent the whole day imagining all the ways that this would go wrong. I figured I’d end up with a drive train all screwed up, and all out of carelessness.

I stopped off at a hardware store and the best they could offer me was WD-40. My understanding is that WD-40 is one of the worst things you can put on a bike chain. It might effectively cut through some rust, but it can get inside hubs and dissolve all the grease. I stopped off at a motorcycle mechanics shop and the mechanic told me that they would just use kerosene to clean a chain. I had no idea if kerosene was a good idea or a bad idea. In any event, I’ve long since learned that you leave your high-tech gear in the hands of a local mechanic at your peril. Things can easily get broken that way.

I’ll skip to the end and say that there might be a happy ending to this story. When I got back to my room, I decided to just apply liberal amounts of my regular lubricant to the chain, allow it to soak in, and then manually manipulate the chain to break the seized-up links and loosen it up. Then I would wipe away the lubricant and gunk and then go through the whole process again. I was pleased to have some success with this method, but there were still about eight links that simply would not budge. I used all the strength in my hands I could muster, but even after three hours of work, those links were seized up solid. I hadn’t wanted to use much force, but it looked like I had no choice and I got out a pair of pliers and an allen wrench. I held onto one link with the pliers and then carefully pried the other link with the allen wrench by inserting it into the hole. This was dangerous because applying too much force might twist the chain or break something and then I’d be finished. Luckily, this technique worked and I broke all the frozen links free. Then I carefully worked them back and forth and back and forth to loosen them up, all the while applying more lubricant and wiping away all the gunk that emerged. By the end, I was exhausted. My back was so sore from bending over the chain, I could barely stand up. I had to lie down on the bed for quite a while just to get my back comfortable enough for me to stand and walk again. And the tips of my fingers were badly swollen and very painful to the touch. All this hard work and pain because I didn’t take two minutes to wipe down the chain and apply a bit of lubricant. It’s something of a metaphor for life. It’s astonishing the price one ends up paying when you ignore little things for too long. The lament of the procrastinator. Perhaps I should start up a self-help group for procrastinators. We could have meetings and sponsors just like they do in AA. Whenever I feel the urge to procrastinate, I can call my sponsor and be set on track again. Certainly, procrastinating has done more damage and caused more problems in my life than anything else. I wonder if there is a cure for procrastination? There might be. I’ll go online and do some research…. Tomorrow.

I checked the chain this morning, and it appearsto be functional. It isn’t as smooth and natural as it was before this disaster. And it remains to be seen how well I can change gears while riding, but I have hope that given time and a few more cleanings, it will be back almost to normal. Hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson about caring for the bike chain.

 

 

Tags: bike, Biliran Trip, Cockfighting Arena, fire, job, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, VIP, WD