The other night, the guys were all calling me “cowboy”. At first, I thought maybe it was because of the fact that Im an americano, or maybe it was because I lived in the Southwest US, but no. Turns out, ‘cowboy’ is a term filipinos use to describe someone who meshes well with people of different socio-economic levels. They were giving me a compliment, or at least I took it as such!
Remember, that I have not seen a non-philippine person in 4 weeks. This means I am always ‘on’ when Im in public. This is sometimes tiring, but the circumstance allows me access to many perspectives. I’ve been learning about Philippine politics lately and politics (ie. government and power) works very differently here than it does in the US. But first, a similarity: you have to be rich to get into politics at any level in the Philippines and the higher up you go, the richer you have to be. Here's the twist.
Say you want to run for mayor… well, you first have ballots printed with your name on them. Then, you staple money to the ballot and hand it out to someone and say, ‘vote for me!’ Pretty direct, eh?? The more ballots/pesos you hand out, the more votes you get. Say you are running for mayor and someone comes to you and says, “you know, my mother is sick and needs medicine”. Well, if you want to win, you buy the mother her medicine. Say, someone important needs transportation because their car suddenly broke down… well, you fix the car for the poor soul. This goodwill leads to votes, right? Of course, there are those voters who are good at milking this system, as you will very easily deduce. They might be caught talking to a competitor candidate and say something like, “you know, Mr. So-n-so just gave me a ballot with 100 pesos!” Whats the competitor to do? Dive in his wallet and provide the good good voter with 110pesos, thats what! And this spiral goes on an on...
Now you might say, “oh, that is so corrupt”, and it is, but in many ways, I think its a much more straightforward form of corruption than the mess we’ve got in the US. Think about it. Of course, it stands to reason that a rich person would would want to enter politics only when the benefits of becoming powerful exceeded the cost of doing so. I am sure Keynes would think so anyway…
In other news, the cooking contest went off without a hitch and luckily they didn't have me eat any dogs, or pig intestine (I did have to decline my first food last night when I was offered a bowl of pig blood soup, I felt bad but honestly, I do have limits!!) In fact, the food at this contest was incredible! Three cooks in the cook off, three judges. We were judging two categories: Palatability and Presentation. The first food was fried sweet potato leaves - very crunchy and very tasty. The second was this candy made of some mashed root crop, condensed milk, sugar, peanut butter and some other stuff cooked to a paste and then wrapped in a leaf and then tied. It tasted a bit like peanut butter fudge without the chocolate, although I bet they could have thrown chocolate in there if they wanted to! I was pleased that my choice for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place was exactly the same as the other judges choices! Success! Then, another beauty contest. This time, my choice for winner came up second. First place went the the local gal… silly me!
Did I mention Typhoon Luis? Yeah, Typhoon Luis was going on the whole time.. .in fact, its been torrentially raining for 48 hours… that wont stop these folks from having their fun though! No flippin way! Like I said, perspective….
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