Recent news from Botolan

A few disorganized notes from what Paz told me yesterday morning of her talk with Marites. Their need is still great and if you can use the ChipIn widget to send a few dollars their way it would be a help to them. Clicking on any of these small pictures will open a larger, clearer image of it.

Life continues to be a struggle. Getting back to the flooded houses to try to salvage more belongings is time consuming and exhausting. In normal times the two would be walking distance apart, or maybe a short hop on a tricycle, a sort of mini-taxi built around a motorcycle, most with dirty, noisy two-stroke engines. Now, though, the bridge they used is gone and getting to their devastated homes takes eight hours round trip. Going to Botolan town for shopping takes that long, too. This is Paz and Marites shopping in Botolan.

Nanay ("Mommy") is beginning to formulate a plan for her life going forward. Her old house was maybe 1700 square feet in two stories, with stuccoed cinder block walls that were unpainted outside but painted inside, and with a corrugated galvanized iron roof. It had electricity whenever the general area wasn't suffering a brownout, and in preparation for my visit in 2005 they installed an indoor bathroom for the first time, with a flush toilet and even a shower. That made it one of the more substantial homes around. It was the center of life for the extended family, and with a television and usually a little food in the frig it was a magnet for her many grandchildren. (She had 12 children, all of whom survived to adulthood, and in a country with no contraception except abstinence and few jobs to leave people exhausted at night...you get the picture.) That was a burden, sometimes. Besides the noise and occasional squabbles it was hard to feed that many. She lives on the widow's pension she gets because Tatay ("Daddy") was a career officer, a second lieutenant, in the army. It's 5000 pesos, about about $104.00, a month. She's thinking about building a smaller house in one of her fields on higher ground. It could be built largely of material salvaged from other buildings. She could more conveniently work in her garden growing vegetables and fruit. She wouldn't have electricity or indoor facilities, so her life would be quieter, too. For now she would just have an outhouse with a pit toilet, and maybe someday they could put in a septic system. It sounds rough, but she grew up that way and she'll manage.

Here is a picture of me, Paz, Nanay, Tatay, and a sulky Anna with a little friend in calmer times.

Paz's brother Jesse and his wife had, like Marites, begun a small store selling sundries like candy, soda pop, cigarettes and a few groceries. Everything was washed away.

Here are a few more pictures from our 2005 trip:

There are innumerable cousins, aunts, and uncles always around. These are some of them.

Here is another shot of the front of Nanay's house. The smaller one in front is where Paz's brother Merwin and his family lived. The flood water was halfway up to the ceiling there. Nanay is in the street in the foreground laying out a tarp on which she'll dry freshly harvested rice. On the right is the view from the back of Nanay's house in 2005 with rice growing. That field is flooded now and the rice that was growing this year is gone.

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Here is another shot of the front of Nanay's house. The smaller one in front is where Paz's brother Merwin and his family lived. The flood water was halfway up to the ceiling there. Nanay is in the street in the foreground laying out a tarp on which she'll dry freshly harvested rice. On the right is the view from the back of Nanay's house in 2005 with rice growing. That field is flooded now and the rice that was growing this year is gone.