an honest pirated movie saleswoman...?

the continuity of this blog is... terrible. try to keep up. sorry if it's confusing :)

not sure i should be blogging about this so publicly but Lo and I bought our first ever pirated movies today... John, our driver/body guard (seriously, we've tried to ditch him before and he won't have it, he has stern instruction to supervise us when we're away from the clinic), took us to the city center where a bunch of stands are set up with cases and cases of movies. the covers are faded with distorted images that resemble the originals, and I'm not sure yet about the quality of the movies. there is a tv on site and the woman would play the movies you showed interest in to prove they work - how thoughtful! she even advised me against getting PUSH, a newer movie she said was not yet being produced in the higher quality - can you believe that? an honest pirated movie saleswoman! i was impressed. they even have an exchange policy where you can bring back movies that don't work well and get a replacement. who knew you could get such customer service when buying illegally copied movies for P50 ($1 US). i normally wouldn't support such an industry, however, since we are usually restricted to the apt after dark we're getting a little desperate for entertainment...

the guards take such good care of us here, and Nefa, our cook, pampers us also. she made pancakes for our 3 o'clock snack today (Filipinos always have a 3pm snack... usually cheese rolls from Julie's bakeshop, though i don't really know why they're called that, you probably only have a 1 in 5 chance of picking a roll that actually has a tiny, almost invisible, sliver of cheese in it :) Nefa's pancakes are delicious! as is almost everything she cooks for us - except this one weird egg plant thing with the most bitter taste... i ate it anyway to be respectful - baaddd aftertaste! We have made great friends with the guards who are constantly teaching us new Cebuano words and making us practice. they like to know where we're going when we wander off to get ice cream down the street at Dodings or to hunt down a few mangoes at one of the nearby stands. Jojo is constantly reminding me to keep my purse in front of me rather than hanging over my shoulder behind me.

i was sitting on the street reading today (I'm done with Mountains Beyond Mountains - great book - and I've moved on to Dreams from my Father by Obama!! also a very good read so far)... and these two young girls wandered past me down the street. the smaller of the two was carrying a huge cardboard box bigger than she was. it had a picture on it of a white girl, about her age, sitting by a playhouse, and across the box it read "my happy family". It seemed ironic. i wondered what she was going to use that box for... cardboard is a precious commodity here and Lo and I save our cereal and granola bar boxes for the girls in the clinic (I think they can sell it). I always see interesting things on our street... just the other day a very old couple was walking down the street begging. they were being led by a child who couldn't have been older than 3 years... the grandpa and grandma were both blind and bent over, totally reliant on the child to lead them from door to door.

I've come to realize that there is a lot of irony in the Philippines... or at least many things that just don't make sense. Went to the post office to mail postcards today. this is the trial run, more will be mailed soon! once i know how long it takes for them to get to the states - 45 days was the last estimate, hopefully it'll take closer to two weeks. although we picked up a package from the post office today that had just arrived for the clinic, the contents were wrapped in christmas paper, not reassuring - talk about snail mail!! on our drive there I saw an old man, his skin leathery from years in the sun and sagging from his bony, hunched body... he was wearing a shirt that said "dough boy". ironic? how about this one... a man just as aged, and crippled by the look of it, wearing a shirt with bold letters that read VARSITY ATHLETE. that one got me too...

a few other things worth noting while I'm on this random tangent... men can urinate in public here (seriously, we see it allllll the time), but a woman doing the same thing would be put in jail. here's another "fun" fact: it is common practice to get your son circumsized here at age 8. have i already mentioned this? they usually have a party for the occasion. I'm sure that's just what the 8 year old boys feel like doing after being circumsized, going to hang out with a bunch of people at a party.

Lo and I battled a cockroach the other night. For the most part the bugs around here aren't that bad (knock on wood)... we've got really tiny brown ants that don't really bother me except when they destroy our food, but then there are these slightly bigger psycho black ants that move really fast and they creep me out. and the cockroaches are the worst because they're soooo big! late the night before last i was sitting at the kitchen table with my ipod in sketching, when something on the floor caught my eye - huge cockroach!! so obviously i grabbed a cup and trapped the cockroach under it (i don't think i could smush something that big)... Lauren has no qualms about killing cockroaches so after getting our cameras to take video of the slaughter, we lifted the cup and lauren swiftly smashed it with her shoe (pretty impressive considering how fast they move!)... get excited for the video to be posted later :)

We've had some odd names come through the clinic. Filipinos in general have some of the most unusual names... we had a Bitchy, a Cherry and a Friday.... Cherry came for a checkup yesterday to the clinic. she is one of the girls from Kamagayan - her last name is Love, and the reason I can tell you that is because it is not her legal name, so no violation of confidentiality. her delivery had been in the early morning that night we were up for the two simultaneous labors. She had been the difficult one not listening to instruction from the midwives. Her Bantay (an escort... the brothel "mother" in charge of all of the girls came as her Bantay), took the baby from her the moment it was born. the babies are pretty much confiscated from the girls (not that Cherry was showing any interest in the baby girl anyway, she actually asked if she could be laid on the floor because she didn't want the baby in the bed with her). Because this baby is female it will be raised by the brothel owner (not sure what they do with the baby boys, don't think i want to know)... another perfect little innocent life with a corrupt and terrible future she has no way of escaping. It is probably too early to tell if this baby has brain damage (Cherry is usually on drugs when she comes to the clinic, and her elevated blood pressure is always alarming!)... I held that little girl for almost an hour last night, she is so beautiful. she was named by the clinic staff because Cherry refused to name her... she is remarkably small compared to most of the babies we've seen in the clinic. this could be because Cherry refuses to breast feed her... or because of the drugs - though the baby doesn't seem to be going through withdrawals (then again, I'm no expert). It makes your heart break. she slept quietly in my arms, so content to walk around the clinic with me, hang out on the street talking to the guards, sleep on my lap while i played with her tiny hands. a perfect little baby with an imperfect future and no one to step in and save her.

somehow my blogs always end up heading in a depressing direction... it is hard to overlook because it is so prevalent in our experience here. bottom line is, despite all the sad things we see and experience we're having a really great time here (mostly thanks to the incredible people we spend time with), and gaining insight into a world I would have otherwise not known. It makes you appreciate what you have, feel compelled to do more, consume less, thank more, complain less, give more...I am so fortunate.