This old man farms seven days a week.
He comes out early in the morning wearing flip flops, shorts, a long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap with a big brim.He has a machete in a sleeve on his belt and when he sees something that needs trimmed he pulls his machete’s long blade out and fixes his problem with decision and precision.
With a stubble of beard because shaving is a nuisance, he walks his property checking his rows of squash, cucumbers, casava, string beans – all produce that he sells in the market. Bamboo posts and fences make shade and structures for climbing plants and keeping trespassers out.. A smoldering fire of green leaves makes smoke that keeps mosquitoes down and there are always mosquitoes this time of year.
This old man’s most pressing problem is keeping kids from crossing his land to get to the closest road to town, trampling new sprouts and breaking his bamboo fences.
He looks happy when I wave at him this morning.
He waves back, squats down, and pokes his fire with his machete.
Someday he will not be able to farm, but, for now, he is a content, lean, productive senior.
He holds to his land like a man overboard clings to a life preserver.
I wouldn’t want to be one of those kids if he catches you.
His grip would squeeze the air right out of you and his machete doesn’t take prisoners.
In days when Britain ruled the seas and ruled the world, colonies were properties on a global monopoly board.
The more real estate you had, the more money flowed into royal coffers.
Real estate, however, requires expensive maintenance and security. Britain lost the U.S., lost India,lost Africa, lost all but a few Caribbean islands who are still attached to the Queens petticoats.
These days, the third world exports raw materials and people to industrialized countries that need cheap, skilled labor. Kids in Mogpog leave for jobs overseas and send money back to support their families. They go as housemaids,nannies, construction workers,nurses, hospitality workers, cooks, engineers, computer programmers, soldiers.
This flyer recruits in Mogpog. For every exploitation story, there is a success story.
Since Colonial days disappeared we have a New Colonialism.
Now, countries send raw materials and people out of their country, but don’t get security or infrastructure in return. Foreigners line up at Western Union offices around the world to pick up their wired cash from family and friends.
The price of Independence is high.
Buildings on Marinduque run the gamut from simple to complex.
They can be as small as this tiny wood frame square box with a thatched roof, unscreened windows, padlocked front door, built off the ground, no air conditioning ,no electric, no plumbing.
They can also be more modern with fancy windows, air conditioning, tiled bathrooms and kitchens with huge refrigerators, huge electrical panels and hot water when you want it.
Buildings here are nailed or screwed together, formed in concrete pours by the wheelbarrow,walls bonded by rebar to hold up to flooding and typhoons that can last for days.
Local wisdom says to start your building from scratch in Mogpog to get the best value for your money.
Local legend has it that the last family to rent this little wood house saw their kids playing with ghosts and moved out in the middle of the same night.
It hasn’t been occupied since.
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.
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