The Phillippines

Seven thousand islands.

Imagine trying to form a nation comprising over seven thousand islands spread over well over a hundred thousand square miles, populated by nearly a hundred million people descended from a patchwork quilt of peoples and cultures. The primary languages are Tagolog and English but the welter of tongues spoken in the various nooks and crannies of those thousands of islands provides careers for linguists and anthropologists by the boatload.

I spent a great deal of time in the Philippines during my time as a naval person. While stories of American sailors partaking of the joys of the flesh while berthed in Subic Bay are generally not overstated, it is also true that many of us were less interested in hooking up than in seeing the country. And a beautiful country it is. I loved the countryside around Mt Pinatubo and the gorgeous ocean inlets and the incredibly lush farmland. Jose Rizal Park in Manila has a garden area in which I spent hours just sitting and noticing.

It’s also generally a poor country. Yes, the industrial sector has increased remarkably in the last few decades but still, you don’t have to leave the highways of Luzon between Ologapo and Manila and Baguio and Angeles City to see abject poverty first hand. The country immediately surrounding any of the major cities is agrarian and you don’t see a lot of John Deeres or Kubotas working the fields. Most of the fields are worked by the grunt labor of humans and water buffaloes.

Most housing outside the cities is not built on steel-reinforced concrete pads and most plumbing relies solely on gravity ditches. The people live from hand to mouth and are constantly one failed crop away from disaster.

I’ve been in the Phillippines during some pretty foul weather but rode out my typhoons at sea. I’ve never seen the direct results of a typhoon hitting the area, but I can easily imagine what the people over there are going through.

 If you’ve enough to feel the need to give thanks this Thanksgiving, consider giving some of it to Phillippine relief. These are good, hard working people who’ve just had the rug pulled out from under them. (You can Google “Phillippines relief” and get a lot of information. USA Today has assembled a good list of relief againcies active in the area.)