Culture Shocks!

Even though it feels so much longer, only six weeks have passed since I arrived in the Philippines.
Still everyday I am amazed by the beautiful surroundings of the endless rice fields , the rows of palm trees will always look ultimately tropical and I can gaze for hours to the shades of the mountains in the end of the horizon.
The planting season has begun, the farmers are in the fields, bending over to plant the seeds, or ploughing the land with their carrabows and soon the brown coloured fields will become fresh green again.
Ploughing the rice fields with a carabao, the special rice field cow
Now the elections are finally over, I'm full time working on my research again, spending more time in the communities. I've visited many farmers now, and still every time I am surprised how warmhearted they are, how despite their very very poor situation I am always welcomed with so much hospitality, interest and cheerfulness.
Its so strange that always, before I enter a new home, I feel this moment of awkwardness.. This feeling that I am so different, that my world is so different, how would it be possible for me to communicate with a farmer living in a hut in the Philippines, sometimes in circumstances I never imagined people to live in, how can I ever come across sincerely?
But with every new peasant, no matter in what circumstances, after the first words of introduction, we smile and we talk (ok.. I have a translator of course). The awkwardness glides off, and I realize we have much more in common than we are different, we are both human beings, both with minds, interests, worries, feelings....
Where does this awkward feeling, this fear come from? Is this what constitutes the layers in society? Why all my friends are from the same, highly educated background? And I know it is not the other who makes me feel awkward, it is my own mind, my own over-self awareness..
I will tell more about the results soon, which unfortunately are not very bright coloured...

There is something else very odd in this country, something that strikes me no matter how far off rural we go: the ever presence of the west in tropical temperatures...

You arrive in the Philippines, on the other side of the world, its hot, tropical hot as you can imagine. Outside you see palm trees, bananas, mango's and papayas growing. The people look Asian, with brown skin, black hair and black eyes. Finally away on vacation, far away in a tropical country! But after the 25th Catholic, Jesuit and Jehovah church you start to wonder... You look around to ask someone for directions in broken Tagalog, and they reply to you in perfect American accent. You enter a supermarket to buy the local specialties and realize that its filled with western products! Come to think of it...everything is written in English in the streets...
Its so crazy to be confronted with the ever presence of the west here, on one side the neo-colonial presence of America everywhere (in the language and in the culture), and the other the western multinationals' domination of the market.
Even 2 days walking from civil society you will find Coca Cola and Nestle in the small local shops and a tv (even in the poorest rural houses) with 5 American channels and every 5 minutes commercial breaks.

This is not the welcome sign to a special international school, this is the usual text written outside all public elementary schools throughout the Philippines

The American influence is still ever present in the street today: American pre-war trucks (Jeepneys) are the vehicle in the street, the small Filipinos all play basketball, watch American fake wrestling 24h, schools are "English speaking communities", from grade 3 theres even 5 peso fine for children who dare to speak Tagalog or Visayan (dialect of Mindanao). Hamburgers are the favorite snack, tv is dominated by American programs and films and any tiny event in America is shown here on the national news. The American dream is the final fulfillment for many and not few Filipinos leave after their university graduation to work there (so called BRAIN-DRAIN)

Bilboards along the Edsa (the main highway ring) in the center of manila I always taught multinationals would not be very interested in third world countries because the consumers there don't have the financial means to buy their products.. But truly, its flooded here with commercials and products of Nestle, Unilever, Coca Cola, Pepsi and different Vitamin pill suppliers. The market is completely dominated by these products, leaving no room for local or smaller brands.
Even in the rural areas the choice is limited, especially nestle is everywhere with coffee (even if there are coffee fields in the community) and especially breast milk(even though it is much better for the baby to get real breast milk, most women prefer powdered milk thanks to the successful nestle healthy breastmilkpowder-campaign). Real milk is non-existing here, you can have a nice cup of nestle-powder and water.
Even in the far off comunities you will find western brands, especially Nestle is everywhere

I'm seeing the outcome of the golden dream of every multinational and the biggest nightmare of many alter-globalist: schools are completely sponsored by companies; even the chairs and the blackboards have brands. The main national basketball teams literally go by the names: Red bull, Coca cola, Pepsi etc. Commercials are everywhere, in the national soap operas subtitles advertise for vitamin pills during the show and in the soap opera itself brands are shown in close up. Even the radio-soap operas have clear mentioning of brands.
Basketballmatch on tv: team Red Bull vs team Coca Cola
I really wonder what the effect of this brand-bombing is in the rural areas. Especially the introduction of television in the far off areas (even the poorest people will take a lone and a long term downpayment to get one) is really food for anthropologists.
With the many American programs and soaps, they are being confronted with something so far away from their normal simple life's. Especially the extremely escapism commercials with happy warm families of bleached-Filipinos (the beauty ideal is to be white) really make me wonder how far the spectacle society can go with creating an extremely deceiving image of the ultimate dream of somehow reachable happiness.

Commercials show how whitening soaps will literally spread the whiteness over your body

wow... its been long again... sorry.. hope it makes sense.. so much I want to write about, so little internethours.. :)
Hope everyone is doing fine, feel free to comment!!! (feel more then free: please DO :))
many hugs and kisses,
mabuhay!

Pinoy Elections..... CrAzy Times!!!

And there I am again... Looking at the screen which is my contact line with the rest of the world, a world seems further away from me every day... The screen is still white.. But my mind is flooded with words and sentences, it's boiling, so many things I would like to release, I would like to scream about...

But we take a breath... I dont want to spill out everything at once.. :)

My research has begun! The last days I have been going to communities to interview the farmers.. But still its not really a rocket-start, since everyone, even in the smallest rural communities, is completely captured by the excillerating, drama-soap-detective-horror wonder world of the Philippino ELECTIONS!

Even for the most political ignorant ostrich its impossible to let this spectacle go by unnoticed.. Campaigners go through extremes to promote themselves: every corner of the street is literally covered with posters flyers and sacks proclamating the names of the eleged politicians. It doesnt matter how far you go into the mountains, you will find promissing slogans and slick smiling faces hanging everywhere.

Beside the roosters that like to hold raging discussions around 5 am in the morning, around that time the recoridas start their tours around the towns. Recoridas are vehicles (read: anything on wheels) with a loudspeaker on top, driving aroud the whole day playing jingles of the nominated candidates. Theres even a version made on Black eyed Peas' "My humps" (Lets not forget that Karaoke is the countries favorite leasure time activity).

The 14th of may will be decisive and I am anxiously wondering how the world here will look like the day after.

But.. the Philippines would not be the Philippines if there wouldnt be a twist to the idea of ELECTIONS.. and DEMOCRACY.

Let me try to give you a small introductions on how the system goes here. The 14th of May the people are allowed to vote for the all the seats in the House of Representatives and half the seats of the Senators.

To nominate yourself to be elected as congressman or senetor you will have to pass the selection of the commitee of elections. Which basically means they will check your bankaccount to see if you have enough money. If you can not proove you have sufficient financial means, you will not get through the selection. This is a perfect tool to keep the power in the hands of the ruling elite.

About a decade ago, the government decided (after alot of pressure of the movements) to give the marginalized groups in the society a chance to represent themselves. This is implemented by the Partylist system: of the 250 seats in the parliament, 50 seats (yes.. a democratic 20 percent) are available for partylist candidates. (The other 80 percent of the seats are therefor for the ruling big families who have enough money to run for Congresman or Senator)

Of these 50 seats which are available for 'normal' parties, every party is only alowed to have a maximum of 3 seats. So if you form a party (lets say as we have in Holland the Party for the Animals ;)), you run for the Partylist, and even if you become tremendously popular and more than 50 percent (2 percent = 1 seat) of the population votes for you, you will still only get 3 seats.

Another 'funny' thing is that not only opposition parties are allowed to run for the Partylist seats (as you may think seeing that already 80 percent of the seats are ruled by the elite), there are about 90 parties (many of them government sponsored and 'empty' parties) running for the 50 partylist seats. If you calculate; with so many parties running, and every party having a minimum of 2 percent of the population for 1 seat and a maximum of 6 seats, many parties dont get enough votes to fill a seat; all the votes are spread out over the 90 parties. During the last elections in 2004, only 15 of the available 50 seats for partylist were eventually filled.

Hurray for Democracy!

I hope you are still folowing me... It took me quite a while to understand it too..

So for a great shift of power or a peoples movement overtake we shouldnt be looking in the Philippines..

Still these elections do have some importance: eventhough its not the presidential elections, GMA's (Gloria M. Arroyo, the president) position is at stake: within the dominating elite there is a 2 camp of parties who want her out and parties who want her to stay. This reached a climax in 2005 when a telephone conversation between GMA and the electoral counting officer came out, revealing GMA had frauded the elections (the HELLO-Garcie scandal- for those interested: Garcie is now also running for local senator ;)). She even confessed the fraud, but due to a majority of pro-GMA parties, she was able to remain president.

So if in the coming elections the anti-GMA parties will have a majority, there is a big chance she will have to resign. This is a reason for many critics to fear fraud... Everybody is holding his breath... what will happen this time? The last elections there was a 3 hour brown out, what trick will be pulled this time on the backs of the people?

And not only ballots and votes are expected to be missing... In the last months over 100 people have been abducted or killed, either through targeted elimination of opposition, passer-by shootings or party-conflicts... again everybody is holding his breath for in the last week, everything can happen in the Carnival of the elections...

With every day that passes in the streets of the Philippines, every rural community I visit, with every silent peasant I meet, every new eyebrow raising story I hear, my vision of home gets more blurred... My life in amsterdam, my friends, my daily activities... Its getting difficult to imagine my life there with the experiences I have here...

Thank you thank you thank you so much for keeping in touch, it gives me again the feeling that I come from somewhere, im not alone here, and I have something to go back to.

Nature Calling!!!!!!

How easily do we forget in the flat lowlands of Holland the incredible beauty of lush, green mountains ! Everytime I see them again, no matter in what country, I wonder how I can live without them...what miraculous wonders of nature! :)

As I was complaining about hot and sticky Manila, I write you now from the beautiful green and mountainous province of Davao del Sur in Mindanao, the most southern island of the Philippines.
The island which is mainly in the news because of the ongoing struggle for independence of the Islamic majority of the population, the Moro National Liberation Front.
But rest assured, Davao del Sur is one of the few provinces with a Catholic majority, the second largest religion is our beloved animal loving 7th day adventists church :). So no worries about Abu Sayyaf... (Im Iranian anyway! ;))

Mindanao, the 'food basket' of the Philippines, is one of the biggest food suppliers for the rest of the country. It exports coconot, banana, pineapples and oil palm not only to the other provinces but also to the rest of the world, mainly Japan, US and Malaysia.

Very ironically, 1 in every 3 households in Mindanao is suffering from extreme hunger, making it one of the poorest regions of the Philippines.
The blessing of the country is slowly becoming its curse; the focus of the agriculture is turned to export, the demands of the global food market are more important than the domestic needs. Crops which are high-value in export are taking more and more land, while essential food crops like rice and cattle-farming are decreasing. In the past, farmers were at least able to feed themselves with their own harvested products, now they must have the money first to buy food from someone else (mainly imported rice from China!).

The promiss of fortune made from the export of coconuts, pineapples (del monte) and bananas (del monte, dole, chiquita) unfortunately does not reach the normal farmers. The large plantations where these export-crops are grown are owned by big international companies or rich philippino landowner-families, who cash in the profits.
Small farmers who used to harvest on their own land, lend their land to large plantation owners who offer them short-term 'large' sums of money. For example, the farmer signes a 4 year contract with a plantation owner, he will receive the payment 1 year in advance, so he gives up his land and receives immediately 200 dollars cash, for the coming 1 year. Most of the farmers have never seen such a large sum of money in their life. Needless to say that after maximum 3 months all the money is spent, and the farmer is left without money, without land and thus no income. They are forced to find employment in the plantations, working on their own land, for the large sum of 100 pesos per day (61 peso is 1 euro). To give you an idea, the average household here consist of 6 people. 1 kilo of meat is 170 pesos.

Again I have one to add in my book of contrasts in the colourfull land of the Philippines.

And I haven't even mentioned the working conditions on the plantation! Especially the use of extremely toxic pesticides by unskilled and unprotected plantation workers will make your next banana taste bitterly different...
As I mentioned, my research will focus on the knowledge and attitudes of small-scale farmers, working on private land (not on plantations), concerning pesticides.
Before I came here my view was so different.. I had been reading other researches on the dangers of misuse and unsafe use of pesticides by farmers in third world countries. Most of the researches put the blame on the farmer for not informing himself better how to use the pesticide.
Now I know that these researchers did not keep into account that many small scale farmers have contracts with food-companies, they provide them the seeds, buy their harvest, and also determine the pesticides they must use. Small side note: many of these foodcompanies have contracts with pesticide-producing companies (eg Cargill and Monsanto)!
Many pesticides on the market in developing countries are forbidden in the west, even in the countries of the pesticide-company!
I will go more in to that after my first research results.. I will go into the communities the coming week with my questionaire... I dont want to overload you with too much negative info...

And I really must say: there is hope..!! The peoples movement is incredibly strong here! More and more peasants and workers are organizing themselves, and despite many setbacks they continue to struggle for justice.... just the right to have enough to eat in this superrich country.

sooo... how was queensday?? ;)
many greetings,
maayong adlaw
babai
Shadi

ps. I havent figured out how to underline the pictures: so first two are pictures from mount apo, the highest mountain of the Philippines (actually its a vulcano). We (dr. romy, nangin (who helped with the questionnaire) and I) hiked up the mountain where dr romy is setting up an organic farm.

The third picture are kids in an adjacent village, on our return, with their own improvised pooltable.

4th picture is another farm project of dr. romy where he is planting organic medicinal plants, the children live in the small house on the background and are the children of the caretakers of the plants, indiginous peoples. (many of them lost their land as described above). They have signed a 10 year contract with the plantation and still have to wait 9 years to get their land back.