Kablog2’s Weblog

A few months back, I wrote about knowing Cebu—its entrails, nooks, crannies and real face.  http://www.facebook.com/raymund.villanueva?ref=name#/notes.php?id=1293317554&start=50&hash=fbf48670aaf915c65e2c26f87d2e4264

Following up on said training and workshop we are back for more advanced exercises that again required some of our teams to visit Cebu’s urban poor communities.

We visited Barangay Pasil in downtown Cebu this time.  This is just about the most feared community in all of Cebu and I wonder if any Osmena, Rama, Garcia, Lhuiller or Koreans have been to its innermost alleys and shanties.  It felt like Back of Matimco, Payatas, Estero de Magdalena, Veterans, Valenzuela all over again.  If you have been to communities like these, you know what I’m talking about.  If not, I won’t bother trying to tell you.  It’s beyond words.

Three things struck me the most on this visit.

First, the alleyways have banks of computers lined against the dark walls.  You put a peso coin into the slots and you can have internet for six minutes.  For five pesos, the womenfolk can chat with dirty old foreign men looking for desperate Filipinas for thirty minutes.  This is the contemporary twist to Dingdong Avanzado’s 80s ditty “Tatlong Bentesingko”.

Second, they have drinking water stations that have coin slots as well.  Put in a peso and you can fill a glass or a soda bottle.  The water they get from their taps is just no good.

Third, they have this street food called Tuslob-buwa.  They dip nipa-wrapped rice balls (puso) in vats of boiling pig’s brain with bits of liver for taste.  They do not pay for the dip.  They only pay for the puso, which is PhP2.50 each (less than 5 US cents).  This unique street food is definitely hepatitis-bait but is a popular way of staving off hunger pangs.

It’s been three days since I took pictures of these kids eating Tuslob-buwa in Barangay Pasil and I can’t get them off my mind.  How hungrily they ate those rice balls is seared so deeply in my mind that I have had two nightmares on this already.

http://www.facebook.com/raymund.villanueva?ref=name#/photo.php?pid=30604165&id=1293317554

And then yesterday, I read this: http://www.nypost.com/seven/08072009/gossip/pagesix/eat_and_drink_183333.htm

Looking out on the beautiful hills of Talamban from my room’s balcony, I am filled with so much love for our beloved President, Her Excellency Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.  Ate glo, we love her so much.  It’s okay that many Filipinas feel that dirty old foreign men are their only hope for deliverance just as long as she has finally met her US president to legitimize her presidency.  It’s okay that many children can only eat boiled pig’s brain as long as she has caviar.  It’s okay that we have to pay a peso for a sip of water just as long as she can have bottles of Krug.

Long live our President! Mabuhay!