Day 4

10 December 2008

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and we decided to be good Catholics and went to morning mass with my aunt and uncle at the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Baclaran. I can’t say that we’ll do that again, considering we left the house at 5:00am – yes, A. M. - and stood for nearly an hour because there was standing room only at the church at 5:30. The church at Baclaran is one of the biggest in the area and is known for being the birthplace of the People Power movement that deposed the Marcos regime. The attendance at that mass was staggering… there’s nothing like it in Seattle, not even at the midnight mass at St. James Cathedral. There were easily well over a thousand people at Baclaran.

The one thing that surprised me was the amount of foot traffic present there from all the vendors and shoppers who began their business a few hours before the mass began. My uncle says that the majority of the street vendors are displaced Muslims from Mindanao and that they live on the streets. It’s been difficult for me to see the level of abject poverty here and how widespread it is, especially when we’re staying in a gated community and there are four vehicles in the driveway. I’m not saying that I hold any of that against my family. They are hard working people who don’t show off their wealth, and indeed, who also contribute to a lot of welfare programs. But it is quite hard to reconcile their lifestyle with the immense poverty that surrounds them. We tried solving the country’s unemployment problem while we were driving to breakfast and, needless to say, I’m glad that other, much smarter people are working on it than I.

We drove to Bulacan later today and toured my aunt and uncle’s property where they have a dairy farm training center, mango and mahogany groves, papaya plantation, rice paddies, and a small resort. My mother, the queen of misinformation as we lovingly call her, informed us that there would be internet access and a swimming pool there, and that we could go home that evening with our cousin, Marilou. Well, we discovered that the internet access was only available at my aunt’s computer – which was being used by her, the swimming pool hadn’t covered nor in use for the past month and had algae growing on top of it, and Marilou wouldn’t be at the property that day. Even though neither of us was prepared to spend the night, we took it in stride and enjoyed the rest of the day there by taking a walking tour with our uncle around the property. The day ended with a delicious sample of the yogurt that was made at the farm. Yum!! All's well that ends well.