|
|
|
Where
Am I Archive
|
Some Characters I Have Met26th March 2006 Benshir Ben is a very quotable guy. My personal favorite is: You know man, you could haff any lay-dee you want. You could haff as many lay-dees as you want. But, whateva you do man, don't f*** my wife. (Boisterous laugh) Despite his tough bravado, Ben is a very cool guy. He used to be the personal limo driver for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Strange but true, I've seen the picture. He says that he returned to the Philippines so that his first wife could have a nice quiet place to recover from her cancer. He is always very appreciative of the volunteers and is constantly thanking me. Jerry The best way to get from Iloilo to Dumangas is in a L300 van, or Filcab as they know here. Jerry works at one of the L300 terminals in Iloilo. He is always very friendly and helpful to me. He carries my bag for me, calls me "Amigo" and tries to give me the best seat in the van. His main job though is to shout. Whenever a jeepney or taxi pulls up at the L300 terminal, he bellows "Dumangas! Dumangas! Angas! Angas!" at the top of his voice. Now the thing with Jerry's shouting is that it will never actually accomplish anything. The chances of him convincing someone to travel to Dumangas instead of the place they originally wanted to go to is practically zero. So his job is to shout. Not to shout at people to get them to do stuff. Just to shout. He reminds me of that Vogon guard from "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" who marches Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent around the Vogon Cruiser shouting "Resistance is Useless!" at them ad nauseum. I'm sure Jerry would make a great Vogon guard.
Being the popular guy that I am, I get quite a few text messages from people that I don't really know. This is how my relationship started with Psycho Girl. I assume she got my number from one of my students. Everything started out innocently enough with "Hi, how r u?" type text messages. Before long though I started getting messages like this:
I would get these text messages if I happened to have the audacity to be doing something else at the time. Things started to get really weird. She would alternate between pledging her undying love for me, condemning me to hell and hating me forever. Sample texts include:
At one stage I was getting barraged by texts at 2 o'clock in the morning. Now this all might seem a bit funny, but it got very uncomfortable for me. The girl obviously has some issues and needs some help. I tried to calm her down and talk to her sensibly about her situation but it went nowhere fast. In the end, I told her that I would never text her again and she was not to text me. She tried for a couple of weeks to get my attention with various I-hate-you/I-love-you style texts, but she eventually gave up. I hope she gets some help, but it won't be from me. Unnamed Member of the Dumangas Council The Dumangas Council consists of people like the Mayor (it's not the Mayor), the Vice Mayor, Head of the Captains, the Police Chief, Councilmen, the Head of Womens' affairs and so on. Joe is a randy old bugger. No two ways about it. The word around town is if you want to impress Joe, get him a prostitute. He just cant get enough. Viagra was made for people like Joe. I was invited around to a someones house for some quiet drinks and general chit chat. It just so happens that the only people there were men. Men being Men (or is that Boys being Boys?), the conversation quickly turned to the topic of Sex. The boys (I think I'll stick with boys) went into great detail about their sexual exploits. Good times they've has with prostitutes, the amount of rice you can hold on your penis (seriously) and just what they would and wouldn't do with a girl. Joe took the cake with his story though. Joe is a married man. He has many children to his wife. He may have other children to other ladies, but I don't know for sure. After Joe's wife gives birth to his children she begins to lactate in a perfectly normal way. It's at this point that things start to become abnormal though. One of Joe's favorite pastimes was to indulge in his wife's breast milk directly at the source. He enjoyed it so much that his child sometimes went without. Joe told this story without shame or embarrassment. He also threw in several suckling noises as her told the story in a way not dissimilar to Hanibal Lecter's famous noise. Knockout Girl I met Knockout Girl one night when I went out for a dinner and dance with a group of volunteers. After eating at the excellent Al Dente restaurant, we went to the adjoining disco club. Knockout Girl's band was playing. Before long, we all got up to dance. Knockout Girl left the main stage and proceeded to sing in the midst of the dancing. She went to the middle of our dance circle and pulled out volunteers and danced with them. She even tried to unbutton some of the male volunteers shirt. Some thought this was cool, one took offense and a bearded New Zealand was miffed that she didn't try it on him... She was obviously a very confident young lady. I only hope that a chest cold doesn't finish her off.
Filipino Taxi Drivers are no exception. One chap I met worked as a bellboy in Saudi Arabia and another had very strong views on the current administration. Taxi Drivers often try and scam me out of money. I've been here six months now, so I obviously know my way around. A common trick of the Taxi Driver here is to take you a long way and get an extra 20 pesos ($NZ 0.50) or so out of you. 20 pesos is not a lot of money to me, but it is the principal of the thing. One taxi driver took me the long way and I asked him why. He babbled something about "Driver Discretion" and "Traffic Congestion" and other such drivel. Eventually, I got to him admit that he had taken me the long because he thought I was an ignorant, rich and white (he was right on two out of the three). I gave the extra 20 pesos anyway and made him promise to give it to charity. One of the most annoying incidents was when one Taxi Driver wanted to charge me an extra 30 pesos for stopping at a hotel to drop some stuff off for a friend. I paid him an extra 10 pesos. Sometimes you just cant be bothering arguing. The worse Taxi Driver story I have is the guy who offered me a "Beautiful Lady" for 1500 pesos ($37.50). I am unsure how he would benefit from the transaction. Maybe he was a pimp on the side. Maybe he worked for a pimp. Maybe the girl was a relative of his who he knew needed the money. As we journeyed on we passed a church. The driver touch the rosary beads he had hanging from his rear view mirror and then crossed himself. Seemed just a tad hypocritical. The other end of the extreme is June. June is cool. June and his tricycle are often hired by the volunteers. He always gives us a good rate and is prepared to come out in the middle of the night. June has just recently become a father and his baby became sick. He had to pawn his cell phone so that he could buy the medicines. Pretty rough. I don't mind helping people like June and give him my business. He is a good guy. Onal Golez He hosts a variety show called Bonga! It has singing and dancing competitions, comedy skits and gay boxing tournaments. The gay boxing tournament is, well, gay. The boxers tend to look away from each other and swing wildly with both fists. I'm sure if a gay person entered with some small inkling of how to throw a punch, he would win the tournament. But then again, the gayness of the whole tournament is its biggest drawcard. Onal is also a Dumangas Councilor. He has had t-shirts and caps made with various slogans and soft focus photos. I so want a t-shirt and a hat. I've ask Onal to get me one and he has promised to look. I also want one of his musical compact discs which also sports a soft focus photo on its cover. The Mayor The Mayor, like Onal, has been very helpful to the volunteers and takes great pride that they are serving in his municipality. The Mayor is the most powerful man in Dumangas. He is a very useful person to talk to if you want to get things done. Unfortunately, he is a very busy person and quite difficult to get hold of. Eden - the volunteer coordinator - once had a meeting with him arranged for the morning. The meeting was delayed time and time again and she gave up when the municipal offices closed. That was an extreme example though. I usually assume that meetings will occur about one hour after the agreed time. He is one "western" Filipinos I've met in terms of getting things done. His "performer" nickname is well deserved. I remember being in a meeting with him one day. One volunteer was tactfully trying to say how slack a certain Barangay captain had been. In fact he was becoming downright unhelpful to the point of not lending the volunteer a spade. Git. I cut across the tact and said something like "The barangay captain is useless and unhelpful". Tactfulness be damned! The mayor immediately got on his cell phone and gave the captain a bollocking! An awkward problem solved in a flash. Good stuff! Someone commented once that Dumangas was a sleepy old municipality before the Mayor was elected. That's a scary though as I consider Dumangas to be a very sleepy place. It's hard to imagine what it must of been like before. Maybe it was used to film zombie movies. Dunno. You see the Mayor's influence all over town. Bridges, basketball courts, roading projects and even school chairs all bear his name. He has done some great work here. Questions? Comments? Try contacting
me. (c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
|
Psycho Girl
