Farmer's Market: There are three or four supermarkets in Dumaguete that look like the ones we shop in in the United States (Albertson's, King Sooper, Safeway). They are expensive and Alana & I mostly shop there for specialty items like cheese or mustard.
The main outdoor market is in the downtown area, takes up a square downtown block, and about 3 kilometers from where we live. We can find just about anything we need there. We are sukis (regular customers) with many vendors and the fish lady and Alana are now on a first name basis. Alana wanted fish she didn't have last week and Beabing was delighted to help her find get it from someone else.
The best deal we've discovered lately has been the Wed&Sat outdoor market just down E.J. Blanco from our apartment. I was going on Wednesdays for a while and realized that Tuesday nights was the best time to get there; the air is cool, the produce is fresh, the people are calm. By Wednesday afternoon, when I could finally get there after school, most of the produce was gone and the vendors tired. The vendors set up on Tuesday afternoon and by 6pm everything is laid out and fresh and ready to be sold.
It rained softly all day today. A long rain brings a nice break from the heat and all the animals noises (roosters, dogs, goats, cows) throughout the day and night. The dogs around here seem to sleep all day then roam around all night playing dog games, ganging up and fighting with each other, and hunt for food.
It was still drizzling when I headed out to the market and that didn't deter me at all. I love walking in a slow drizzle. It feels good to have fresh water on my body as opposed to the consistent salt water (sweat) that leaves me sticky, even though I'm slowly getting used to it. Many Filipinos believe they might get sick if they walked in the rain, so I got a lot of stares :-)
Along with our nice, big, canvas, Peace Corps bag , we have also learned to start bringing our own smaller plastic bags with us to shop with. Filipino people at the markets put everything, and I mean everything, in small individual plastic bags. It isn't odd to come back from the market with 10-15 little plastic bags in all stuck in a bigger plastic bag.
The first few months we accumulated so many bags, it was getting out of hand. The vendors now chuckle at us when we pull out our own plastic bag or say, "No bag." and just drop the cucumber in our canvas bag. Ah, cultural exchanges. Apparently there has been a law passed in Dumaguete and/or Negros Oriental prohibiting further use of plastic bags. Haven't seen it put into action yet.
So I took my 600-yard walk down the street in the drizzle, across National Highway, and to the outdoor market. It was a very nice walk. When I got to the market everyone seemed just a bit more laid back than usual as the rain continued to veil the place, I guess a slow steady rain can calm the energy around us.
The vendors are starting to know me now (suki) and it gets easier and easier to shop now that I know the prices. I can often just pick up some vegetable, put it in my bag, and pay the vendor without completely breaking my stride.Supposedly, the market produce is completely local and organic. The vendors also have an agreement to sell similar produce at the same prices to prevent price wars between them. There is no haggling with customers, which is awesome for me cause I can't stand haggling, so the buy-sell agreement seems to be much more amiable than in many other places and I don't need to worry so much about being taken advantage of.
Tonight I purchased: 6 eggs for 31 pesos (62 cents), 1/8 kilo of dried, salted fish for 15 pesos (30 cents), 2 ears of sweet corn for 30 pesos (60 cents), 1 merliton for 5 pesos (10 cents), 1 kilo of mangos (4 mediums) for 65 pesos ($1.20), 1 cucumber for 10 pesos (20 cents), 1/4 kilo of small eggplants for 12 pesos (24 cents), a small freshly skinned pineapple for 35 pesos (60 cents), and a big bundle of spinach for 12 pesos (24 cents). The lady that sells me the spinach always says, "God bless you." when she finishes the transaction.
I also picked up some kind of root that looked interesting, kinda like a cross between a potato and a turnip. I like getting something new each time to see what Alana or I might do with it. Anything new can always end up in a soup.
All in all, I walked away with a bag full of food, about 10 pounds of fresh produce, for about 270 pesos ($5.40). Alana and I will be able to cook with this at least until the weekend.
I know it all balances out because I make $160 a month here, it's just fun to think about getting such good food for what I consider amazing prices. I guess supply and demand plays into the equation too because in this climate, everyone is growing small crops in their back yards or side lots for selling at the market. Heck, sometimes I see rows of vegetables planted between the street and the ditch . . . in the city!
Before enjoying my quiet walk home in the drizzle, I picked up a loaf of bread for 27 pesos (54 cents) at the corner bakery. I definitely see Fort Collins Farmer's Market visits in our future.
Beggars: Remember the Family of Women with the baby boy that suckered me into giving them money in Update #30? I have run into them a few times since then and each time they try to reel me in like they know me. I'm not sure they recognize me (they just see me as a foreigner who might give them money - a mark!) and I sure recognize them now. Each time I smile and nod and continue on my way. Fool me once . . . shame on you, fool me twice . . . shame on me.
I still struggle with what to do with people that beg for a living. Alana and I have talked about getting them some kind of food or something to eat if we have the time when we see them. It definitely tugs at the heartstrings to see people so down and out and I don't know their story.
Our resistance to giving them money was confirmed the other night by a 19 year old young woman who is a ward of LCP orphanage where Alana works. We were at the Buglasan street festival talking to BheBhe when a lady and her two children came around with their hands out asking for money. Just after Alana had handed the 8 year old girl something to eat and gotten a look from her reflecting, "Are you crazy, I wanted money not food!" Bhebhe nicely said something to them that immediately turned them away. We asked what she said and why she doesn't give to people who beg (not that she has anything to give as a ward of the orphanage).
Bhebhe confidently and firmly responded, "If I give them money it only teaches them to beg for more money." I hope what she didn't further articulate was, ". . . instead of learning a skill or getting a job." What I fret about is that, for whatever reasons, these street people have gotten to the point where they may not have any skills, they may not be able to get jobs, and they are only focused on survival. As my Uncle Fred may say . . . "It's a tough row to hoe."
I remember a college friend in Lafayette telling me how he tried to buy a beggar's breakfast for him once and the guy wouldn't let him. Told my friend that he made $60,000 - $80,000 a year begging, had a route throughout the southern United States that included all the best big cities to beg in, and treated himself to a two-month trip once a year to Hawaii to "get away from it all." He was homeless though, lived out of his car.
I wonder how the Family of Women are doing in the begging market? There seem to be a lot of beggars in Dumaguete and some of them are skilled at their craft. Alana and I were on the Boulevard one Saturday eating breakfast and all of a sudden there was a beggar at our table in a heartbeat (unfortunately besides the act of begging, many are very recognizable because they are dirty and their clothes are super tattered because living on the streets doesn't give them access to water). The people at the restaurant immediately yelled at her and chased her out however not before she could get to a couple of tables with her hand out looking for a hand out.
There is another lady that hangs outside of Lee's Plaza with her three children. Sending children out to beg for money is a much used strategy. All three children are under 5 years old, excellent beggars, and cute. They run around with their hands out to people who come out of the plaza carrying bags of groceries and unnecessary plastic objects. The mother doesn't seem to do anything except 'manage' the children and collect the money from them. The youngest must be about 1.5 years old and I've never seen her with a stitch of clothes on. I try to make eye contact and reach out and touch their little hands when they beg to me in an effort to acknowledge their humanness.
Right down the sidewalk from the three kiddos is an old man who is missing his arm from the forearm. He has a tape deck, that looks like it has lived at least a couple of decades, and plays cassette tapes and sings along with them. He's got a pretty good voice and he makes decent money with a cup tied to his nub held up in the air while he belts out what sounds like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett Tagolog tunes.
Ralph told me about an infamous beggar in Dumaguete that walks around unobtrusively and every time he can get near someone about to take a bite out of a sandwich, ice cream cone, burrito type wrap, or fried banana, he runs up and swipes it from them then runs off and eats it. Supposedly it is very funny and people around who didn't get their food swiped are very entertained by the event. Ralph keeps an eye out for the food snatcher, especially when he eats out on the street.
All in all, we still feel a bit uneasy not giving to people in such need and haven't really figured out a way to handle the situation that feels good in our hearts. There are just so many of them here. Our Peace Corps friend Matthew told me he was on the Boulevard lawn one weekend and gave money to one beggar and then got raided by every beggar awake in the area. He ended up giving away everything he had on him, 300 pesos, and felt very taken advantage of.
Any stories / ideas / comments you have for us would be appreciated.
James: I guess I haven't written about meeting this young Filipino chap one day while walking named James. I thought I had so I looked at the past PCPhilippines Updates and he wasn't mentioned in any of them. I think I just wrote about him in my journal.
Every now and again I meet up with a young Filipino on my walk to or from work. We are usually walking in the same direction and walk together for 5-10 minutes. James is about to turn 21 years old, no children, no wife, has a girlfriend(I know because I asked him about his painted toenails one day and he just smiled), very nice, big smile, sparkly eyes, super friendly, about 5 foot 5 inches tall, in good shape because he walks everywhere, and doesn't seem to be very well educated.
Whenever he sees me he waves and smiles and waits up for me or crosses the street so we can share some walk time. He always greets me with a big handshake or sometimes a high five. I guess he lives near Alana and I and he works near NORSU as a sweeper in a construction site. It's crazy to see him going to work in shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops.
When we are walking he often puts his arm out to keep me from walking in the road when a vehicle is coming around the corner or down the street fast. It's a kind gesture, as his intention is to protect the doofus foreigner, yet I feel like he thinks I haven't walked a Filipino street before . . . ha!
James speaks very little English so we typically walk along having sporadic conversations, he in broken English and me in poor Cebuano. We make due. One of our first conversations was about how my name (Jacques) is the French version of the name James. That was a cool connection.
It is a pleasant change to walk along with James rather than running into Freddy the Fruitcake. What a swing in the pendulum those two are. James tells me a little about his work and asks about my wife. I ask all the introduction questions I learned so well in our language class during the first three months of our training and then work to sift through his answers for understanding. He has such a warm demeanor and is patient with me trying to understand him. Sometimes we just walk in silence together and that seems to be okay too.
Today, James had just said (in English) "There is no money" and we both looked down and there was a peso on the street. He picked it up and we laughed. I coaxed him into saying "There is no money" again so we could look on the street again for another peso as we walked.
That was fun because it is rare to find a peso on the street. I still typically pick up about 5-40 centavos on the street every day and that's not much considering 100 centavos makes a peso and a peso is worth about 2 American cents.
A few minutes later James and I parted ways and I continued on to run an errand downtown. Just when I turned a corner downtown I saw another peso on the ground and when I bent down to pick it up I saw the third peso waiting patiently for a home :-) Oh James, where are you? I disagree that "There is no money." Pesos are everywhere!!!
