Real life in Cebu city, Philippines

After spending seven glorious days frolicking on Bohol’s Dumaluan beach, snorkelling with turtles, enjoying Loboc river cruises with unlimited buffets and purchasing genuine pearls, I travelled to Cebu city with the intention of seeing the usual tourist sites and seeing how the locals live.

Up until this point, I had mostly used habal habal transportation in Bohol, hoping on the back of motorbikes and weaving through traffic or zooming through empty roads in Panglao with the wind in my hair. Away from the paradise of Dumaluan beach, I wanted a new experience. A “real” one. With only the equivalent of a day stay in Cebu before flying home, I began my adventure traveling on a jeepney bus.

With the help of a local Filipino woman who was going in the same direction as me, I hopped on a 03A, heading from Mabolo to Old Cebu. I gave seven pesos (15 cents) to my new friend, and she passed the coins to the driver. As more people boarded, we all squished up nice and tight. When one customer boarded and sat down, she stared at me, as though she was surprised to see a white woman sitting there. I think the Filipino woman who I boarded with found the situation entertaining.

About eight minutes later, we alerted the driver that we wanted to disembark by tapping a metal rod under the low-hanging roof. I banged my head at least twice on that rod. I’m too tall for the bus, and unaccustomed to the low-hanging ceilings.

Old Cebu contains major sites including Santo Nino church, Plaza Independencia, Magellan’s Cross, and others. I wandered around, chatting to locals and hiding in Santo Nino while the heavens down-poured for an intense forty minutes.

I really wanted to visit Carbon Market, which apparently housed fruit, restaurants, and souvenirs.
The streets were somewhat muddy from the rain and dirt. I wandered into an enclosed part of the market, and found a lady selling clumps of durian fruit. I wanted to return to her later to buy some so I wouldn’t have to carry stinky durian fruit around with me all afternoon, but I never returned.

I walked into an area near the former sea port, and there, found a shabby restaurant run by what seemed to be a husband and wife team. They displayed dishes of their food in bowls on a shelf, and kept all their prepared food in large round pots on a table. The food had presumably had been cooked early that morning or the night before. I asked for the veggie dish, some chicken, and rice. I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and the husband promptly brought me my three dishes. My meal cost 40 pesos (around 80 cents). I already had water, and placed it on my table.

I watched the locals around me. There were a bunch of fellas hanging out beside the road, smoking and chatting. A man somewhat professional looking sat at a table behind me, and another man selling bottled water approached and shared my small table for a while. He ordered chicken and rice, like me, and also a watery soup. He placed his crate containing water bottles on the table, and as he ate, asked me whether I wanted to buy water. I said no since I just bought water from another vendor and pointed at my water bottle. He pulled out a wad of small cash, flicked through it, put it back in his pocket. Before departing, he asked me at least two more times whether I needed to buy water. After recording a little video, I also wandered on.

Eating at Carbon Market

I walked by a friendly middle-aged Filipino guy in a vest, shorts and flip flops. His family were all around, and they were twisting skewered chicken around on a barbecue. He asked me if I wanted to buy chicken, and I replied that I had just eaten. Then he asked me to sit with them for a while, and I accepted his invitation.

The colours all around me seemed red and yellow. Teenagers and children bounced in and out of the shacks, laughing and enjoying themselves. My host told a woman sitting nearby, “talk to her (meaning me) in English!” She replied, “she’s your guest. You speak to her!” I laughed. He then loudly declared, to whomever was listening, “we have a guest,” (meaning me).

He then summoned some shirtless teenage boys aged around sixteen or seventeen years old, who shouted “hello” to me from a distance with beaming smiles on their faces. My host then announced within earshot of the boys, “these boys are very poor!” I think I replied, “ahhhhh.” I didn’t know what to say.

I noticed a very, very long hair or two growing on my host’s face and found it curious that he didn’t remove it. I thanked him and continued exploring.

I was the only non-Filipino person at Carbon market, and I drew quite a bit of attention. Many vendors called out, “hello ma’am.” And I’d reply “hello” back.

There were different sections to Carbon market. The main strip seemed to house the wealthier shops. The section I had just come from contained many shabby restaurant shacks. The central enclosed area had plenty of fruit vendors, and there was a large open space which had a section for fish.

Many vendors sold snacks, tiny sachets of things like shampoo or laundry soap, presumably for locals who could afford a few pesos for enough soap for that day and couldn’t afford larger batches. I stopped at a popular bakery and bought a very sugary sponge-cake and sat down.

A man selling fake gold jewellery sat next to me to sip on a Sprite he had just purchased. He then spread out several gold chains and massive thick rings, and said he’d give me a good price if I was interested. I imagined myself wandering around Carbon market with several fake gold chains around my neck looking like Mr. T, and I declined his offer. I explained that I’m too thin to wear such heavy jewellery! He understood graciously.

I resumed wandering Carbon market, recording the occasional video, and although many smiled, not everyone was smiling. I could see that some older folks looked really tired of their hard lives. I could see it in their expressions. Many workers had deeply imprinted lines on their tanned faces.

While I was filming, one Filipino guy asked another, “why don’t you smile?” To which the guy not smiling replied, “I can’t smile.” I didn’t know what to reply.

Mini video recorded in Carbon Market

I stumbled into an adjacent slum near a bridge called “Sitio Bato.” I thought I was just wondering into another section of Carbon Market, but after a few steps into a narrow street, I realized that I had walked into a neighbourhood. The street was pretty narrow. There were vendors, shops and make-shift restaurants on either side, with cocks and hens making their presence known. The place was clearly a neighbourhood and not a just a place to sell stuff.

I stopped to watch children play games at a make-shift arcade. People don’t seem to have their own computers, so they go to the slum equivalent of an internet café. From what I could see, gaming and social media (Facebook) were the principle attractions for spending their hard earned cash at these places.

Some children were barefoot, with black feet from the mud as a result of the rain earlier. A woman paused to scrub her feet with a brush. I looked down at my own leather sandals, and saw that my toes were getting dirty too. I wondered how anyone spending a lot of time on these streets could retain any semblance of glamour. From the sweltering heat and muddy streets that afternoon, I thought I fit right in.

I walked past two women. One was combing nits from the hair of the other. My path suddenly ground to a halt as a man pulling a cart with produce forced his way through a narrow pass in the street. The limited space on either side was due to overspill from the local businesses which constricted traffic flow.

Despite my sweaty skin and brown toes, I felt conspicuous in my somewhat nice, clean-ish clothes and white skin. I wondered if I was safe there traveling alone, but I kept going and smiled and said “hi” to everyone that acknowledged me. On this street, I actually felt reluctant to video.

Later that evening, I would talk to a twenty-eight-year-old security guard who told me that he spends twelve hours per day, six days per week, working, and that his former girlfriend broke up with him because he had no time to spend with her. He was always so tired after working for twelve hours. He explained that he has to work these hours since he sends money back home to support his mother in Bohol.

He explained that he wants to work abroad, doing anything. When I replied that I know little about the steps for Filipinos looking to work abroad, but that I could try to find information for him and send it to his email, he replied that he has no email address. I then asked if he could type on a keyboard, and he replied, “why would I know, since I own no laptop?” I wondered what real chance this guy has to initiate getting out of his work cycle if he lacks basic skills to use a computer. I began to notice the subdivisions of education and skills, and why some Filipinos clearly have better career opportunities than others.

Before heading back to middle class Mabolo to retrieve my backpack from my hotel, I agreed to hang out with a local who would show me crazy Mango Square, the place that attracts foreigners.

While waiting at our rendezvous location, I was approached by many street children who hung around the front entrance to Santo Nino church after dark. I stayed for a while with one of the vendors who invited me to sit beside her. There, sassy children demanded that I buy them snacks from this vendor’s stock. “Buy this.” They spoke to me as if they were adults, and I was surprised at their tone. I guess street life had made them different from other children.

I noticed myself increasingly uncomfortable, experiencing the so called “white” or “privileged” guilt, and I wondered whether this was one of the reasons why I seemed to be the only foreigner in the neighbourhood after dark. The vendor sold the children cigarettes, and I watched young boys as young as eight light up in front of us, light up and walk away.

I wandered off and then hung out with mostly older women selling candles to patrons of Santo Nino on their way in. Most of them looked around sixty years old, but a scattering were in their thirties. I talked to them for a while, and they asked me many questions. They were so pleasant to hang out with, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to simply stand there for a few minutes and be part of the action within their environment.

So…

I’ve explained the “what”. Now I’ll explain the “why.”

Many tourists choose not to see these sides to a so-called paradise island. So why do I seek out the less glamourous places in the locations I visit? If I do some self-searching, I think my interest in the every day underprivileged began in childhood.

As the firstborn to a couple who were only twenty years of age, and with two subsequent siblings born within a few years of each other, my parents didn’t have much disposable income. We occasionally visited our grandparents and extended family in Spain, enjoying the occasional holiday, but these were often funded by my middle class grandparents. Travel was a huge source of joy for both myself and my siblings. But money or the lack of it had always been a source of arguments in my family. My parents bringing up three children from a very early age had little time to build marketable skills and reach an income that a family ideally should have.

My family received subsidies from the government to pay for essentials, and even our home was provided by the local council administration. My siblings and I largely wore second-hand clothing donated by friends as this was a major way that my parents managed to financially survive. My sister and I always hated our clothing, and couldn’t wait to become adults and become self sufficient.

For many years, I tried to put that part of my life as far out of my thoughts as possible, particularly when I started attending university in Victoria Canada, and pretty much all my friends had financially stable families who often even funded their tuition. I felt like I had to pretend to be the same as them. I didn’t want to accept that I grew up within a lower class family.

My perspective has changed since them. Although my experience with lack of resources occurred many years ago, these issues are still palpable for me. At a most impressionable age, experiencing lack within a developed nation was my family reality. I’ve never forgotten it, no matter how much my financial life has changed as an adult. I also appreciate that lack within my family and lack within a family living in Cebu is quite a different matter.

When I returned from Cebu and met with my forth grade students who largely come from very wealthy families, I explained how taking a holiday and enjoying a resort, the glitz and glamour of the Philippines, without taking a moment to understand how a large section of the local population live, gives us a distorted idea of the world we live it.

I’ll leave you with a few words that come to my mind which express my feelings about the people and places I visited in Cebu City:

Kind, exhausted, muddy, curious, helpful, humid, colonial history, local pride, simple dress, family, overweight, skinny, faith, too much coke, happy, and down to earth.

Keep learning!

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