Outside of the Tourist View

During our weeks at the resort, hubby and I had a couple of inside views of the life of a Filipino.

I have already mentioned the fishermen on the beaches where we stayed. On one of our last days, we got the chance to view the finale of "bringing in the net", the community effort involved in the harvesting of the local fishing. There is a small boat, maybe 20' at most. It goes out in the morning, accompanied by primitive paddle boats. They drop the net in a large semi-circle within the bay, and leave the paddle boaters in strategic places - I don't know if they are watching the nets, or holding them. When the main boat gets back to shore with the other end, that's when the community gets involved. Men on the beach take the two ends of the ropes and start pulling the nets into shore. These ends start about a kilometer away, with the men pulling and walking towards each other. By the time they reach each other, the ropes are in and the colourful nets appear out of the surf, but this is far from the end of the story.  It takes several hours for the full length of the net to be drawn onto the beach.

We were surprised at the size of the net. It may be very long, but not more than 3 foot deep. These people aren't mass fishing. They aren't trying to catch everything and anything that swims within their bay, which was our first thought at seeing the length of the net. What they are after is the small fish that swim along the top of the warm ocean water.  These are little silver fish no bigger than 2 inches long, certainly not even a mouthful for the tourist types. But the locals survive on these fish, drying them and selling them in the markets.

The day we watched the ending for the first time, there were about 150 people involved in the landing of the catch. The fish are so small that their heads get caught in the netting and when the net is pulled on shore, it is littered with these fish. It would be labour intensive to remove each individual fish, so a couple of the men on shore start beating on the net with sticks, while it is still being pulled in. This creates a reverberation that separates the head, stuck in the net, from the body. So you have little fish bodies flying everywhere!  Most of these fish will stay on top of the net to get scooped up with pans and dishes and put into a communal pot. The rest, flying all over the place, are picked up by women and children, and some are even eaten by the dogs that wander along with the community. The smaller children are underneath the net, picking up anything that gets dropped through. These children are crouched down right under where the men are striking the nets with the sticks, but we never saw one hit. I'm not sure if that's because of the special care of the men, or if the children had already learned the hard way to keep their heads down. Survival seems to be an art around here.

Women come with pots and boxes of all sizes to get their share. It was not clear how it was divided, but for certain, everyone went home with something. What an amazing community effort to observe, and so different from what a tourist would usually see.

I still shake my head over the other observation of this country's lifestyle.  Mid-morning, on the busy road in front of a market, a Christmas Parade went by. Pageants are big here, and this parade was comprised of the chosen kindergarten age "Prince and Princess" on flowered vehicles followed by the runner-ups and interspersed with a couple of bands. These were young children that were on the floats and they were throwing candy to all the other children watching the parade. Normal enough, except that they don't bother to close roads for parades here. While the parade was going one way down the street, cars and trucks and motorcycles and big buses were still driving past them going the other way. Not only did it impede the view of the parade watchers, but the candy was thrown right in front of all these vehicles as they were passing. Children, and adults, would dart out into the road to grab the candy! The crowd had a big laugh when some candy fell under a bus and got run over before it could be picked up.

It blows my mind, coming from an overprotective nanny-state, to see things like this. It is probably why tourists don't usually witness them.