in a resettlement area around two hours away from Manila. It’s not quaint or picturesque, and the houses range from shabby to not-so-shabby to livable to decent.
The neighborhood is quiet, if you don’t count the more than occasional drug- and alcohol-induced brawls and family squabbles on the street. And then there’s always a group of talking people nearby – very helpful if you don’t step out of the house too often and are not in the know about the goings-on in the neighborhood, but not so much so if you don’t really give a hoot about who slapped whom or why the police released the neighborhood drug pusher for the nth time.
From time to time, though, the neighborhood comes alive with snippets of genius to amuse and entertain, but only if you are keen and quick on the uptake.
Take, for example, this conversation between a 6 year old girl and her grandfather:
Little Girl: Lolo, ano kasi ang English sa manok natin? (Gramps, what is the English word for chicken?)
Grandfather: Roster.
LG: Ano yun? (What?)
G: Roster!
Or this mother singing her baby to sleep while she listens to the community news (i.e., gossip):
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the ocean….
Or this woman playing with and singing to her grandson:
I have two hens,
The left and the right….
Or this teenage boy upon seeing his friend helping out in the building of a new house:
Uuuuy, contraction!
And this smarter-than-thou lady talking with a neighbor after a typhoon:
Neighbor: Nakakatakot ang bumaha. Baka magkaron ako ng leptoporosis… ano nga ba yun? Yung galing sa ihi ng daga? (Floods scare me. I might get leptoporosis… you know that disease that comes from rat pee?)
Lady: Tanga, osteoporosis! (Osteoporosis, stupid!)
Filipinos can be very funny. Nothing beats Americans, though.
Image from lauraagudelo272
Contemplating the Navel 