Not Your Typical Chinese Laundry

I am grateful for the Dry Season here, which lasts all of 2 months, but still….my laundry dries.

Tonight is the second night of moderate rain and the beginning of the Rainy Season, wherein my laundry takes 2-4 days to dry a damp-dry, hung inside on the rafters in the kitchen….when the kitchen is dry.

When I lived with my host family, the Ustares family in Tiniguiban, I usually did my laundry on Sundays when they were at church.  I finally gave up on trying to photograph myself doing my laundry, and just before I moved, snapped some shots of Brenda doing the family laundry, which she did usually two days a week.   On a heavy laundry day, during the dry season, Mario would move the multicab from the driveway and set up a pipe assembly – the clothesline – which held seemingly hundreds of articles of damit – clothing.   That was the extent of Mario’s involvement with the laundry.

Typically Brenda washed on Thursday and Friday, starting as early as 6am in order to finish everything by 4pm.   She wore shorts and a tank top, and was lucky that she is under 5 feet tall, so she could squat on the stool easily to scrub the clothes.  She usually soaked the clothes the night before in tubs of soapy water – the whites with bleach as well, so that they were ready to be scrubbed.  This shot is looking from the kitchen to the outdoor area – Brenda is standing where the water pipes are and is filling the rinse tubs.  

The blue tub in front is the washing tub and that is just a piece of wood for her scrubbing board, and the stool to the right is where she sits.  The brown tub in the back holds the rinsed and wrung clothes.  The laundry basket holds to be washed items.  The other two tubs are usually the rinse tubs; often Brenda double-rinses;  however, two rinses here is not like at home – most of the time things are still soapy, but that’s not too big a deal…I make sure that my undies are rinsed well and then theorize that leaving some soap in helps me in some way – I’m making up my own superstitions here.

Brenda is lucky in that she has both a washing machine and a spinner (no dryers here).

The bar on the board is a whitening agent to get out the stains, and the plastic scrub brush is for more delicate items – a harsh bristled scrub brush is used for things like jeans and towels.  The small bottle to the right is bleach – many things here come in tiny quantities, probably because people don’t have the money for more than one laundering at a time.

 

My feet;  Brenda’s washed and expertly wrung, clothes.

Brenda, whom I call pandak (short) due to our greatly disparate heights.  My knees kill me if I sit like that, so I prefer the counter, which only hurts my back!

The hose is attached to a spigot and the rinse basin filled. 

This is how you rinse, so you can see the problem with getting all the soap out – especially when you use the same rinse water for several items.  I try to wring the soapy things as tight as I can, but there’s always a lot of soap left in them that goes into the rinse basin.  Maybe I’ll perfect my tactics, but I doubt it.

 

 The indoor hanging of more delicate items (at least during the dry season; during the wet season, everything will be packed in here).  The windows are into Jessa Mae’s room, where the electrical outlet is to work the machines.

 

 And this is Jane…posing for a picture…she has no idea how to do any of the laundry…but will in about 5 years when she turns 12.   

After Brenda washes, rinses and hangs the laundry…she is finished.  When Jessa Mae and Genesis come home from high school, they will take down all the laundry and take it to the kitchen where they will fold every last piece.  Then, they will take each stack of laundry into the proper person’s room and put it all away.   Both Brenda and Jessa Mae iron for the family, although even the men do this – ironing a work shirt for instance can be a man’s job, although Brenda does iron shirts on Fridays.

Brenda needs at least all day Thursday, and most weeks, two days, to complete her laundry.I try to do mine   twice a week, and it takes me about 2 hours to wash, rinse and hang.  I don’t have the knack that Brenda does, and I’m working on it; but this ain’t your normal Chinese Laundry.

"She's Leaving on a Multicab. Don't Know When She'll Be Back Again..."

So sang Jun as he hoisted my luggage into the multicab that Mario and he would transport me to my 2BR duplex in Santa Monica – about 5 minutes from my host family in Tiniguiban.

I was excited and ready to be out on my own.  My family was still slightly upset, but resigned that I was leaving (3,000 pesos each month is nice to receive, and I’m pretty easy to live with).  Brenda and I both shed a few tears, and she said, “Tita – thank you”…which I’ve rarely heard here.  I hugged her and told her how thankful I was for everything they had done for me and that I’d only be a few minutes away.  And then we were off.

About 20 minutes later I was alone – when Mario drove away I felt tears on my cheeks!  Wow, was it quiet.  And it was only 9am on a Saturday morning.

I had a list of things to purchase, so walked to the multicab stop (a lot farther than I thought) and hopped on.  Transferred about $150 from the US and purchased my refrigerator, blender, 2 electric fans and rice cooker (and they delivered it all!!).  However, realized I didn’t have enough money to buy a pad to put on the bamboo beds (which are pretty darned hard without a pad), cushions for the bamboo couch, curtains for the windows or mats for the floor.  And, found that there is no electric plug in the kitchen for the fridge, so found an extension cord that would reach from the bedroom through the window (although saw rat poop there and left the fridge inside).  Did buy a set of melamine plates, a protective dish-drainer for the dishes, cups and utensils from the yucky insects, etc, and laundry pails for the laundry which was long overdue.

I knew I couldn’t get it all on a multicab and needed a trike – the fare to Santa Monica he said was 100 pesos (wait – that was almost the fare to Aborlan!!!)  But, I was sooo tired that I said, fine, and we puttered out of the Unitop parking area onto Rizal Avenue, heading north to Santa Monica….

Oops – in San Pedro we were stopped for many minutes because the Hike for Life was starting – a 4 day walk from Puerto to Sabang (75 km), whereby young people speak about God and seeks converts.  Supposedly, every year Life Church (the born-again sponsor church) converts 200 or so out-of-school-youth to the church through this effort – funded entirely by the church.  The older girl (ate – “ah-tay”) and boy (kuya – “koo-ya”) in my family participated for the past 3 years.   But we finally moved through the crowd.

Oops - Only to be stopped again in San Jose at the Memorial Gardens for a funeral procession of a female barangay councilor.  That was something to behold – a white open air hearse carrying a white coffin beflowered with white lilies, and  50 people walking behind the hearse… followed by another 50 vehicles filled with people flooding the cemetery.  After perhaps 8 minutes, we proceeded.  I think he earned the 100 peso fare

…to my new home, where I fell exhausted into a hard bed.

….and awoke at 5:30am to the roosters, and perhaps 150 bug bites on my arms, legs and back.  Not mosquito bites – these were raised with clear liquid and painful as well as itchy.  Back to the store for bug spray.   I’ve asked several people what they are and have decided that they are either fleas – or, more likely, termites, which are really flying ants here!!!   Very upsetting to be seen as a piece of wood…I guess the Pilipino brand of termite likes blood as well as wood.  And, although I wear insect repellent, it hasn’t worked.

I’m not sure which is more upsetting – the bites and termites that leave mounds of wood shavings on my countertops, or the rats which poop in my shower.   As Scarlett said, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

To Petra’s in Aborlan and Onward to Narra and Will’s

 There is one navigable north-south road on Palawan – The National Highway.  Actually, it is not completely navigable the entire year…the dirt from El Nido to Taytay often washes out or is an impassable sludge during the heavy rains from June-December, when travelers have to boat from El Nido around to Taytay and resume the macadam there.  From Puerto Princesa, ginto sa Palawan (in the middle of Palawan), it is a 7-9 hour journey to El Nido - and I’ve heard more than one story about passengers getting out and pushing the bus to surmount some obstacle, adding another 2 hours to the journey.  From the Southern tip of the island (bawal, or forbidden to us in Peace Corps because of possible activity to protect highly controversial mining - google Gerry Ortega, Palawan to see just how controversial), it is another 8 hour drive to Puerto.  This is one large island.

Although we are “volunteers” in the Peace Corps, we have strict rules – one of which is that we have to phone our regional manager if we leave the city limits for an overnight during the week.  The wonderful thing about being in Puerto Princesa is that it is one of the largest geographical areas of any city in the world and you can drive 2 hours north and still be within the city limits.

This past weekend, though, I traveled to visit two of my ‘batch mates’ (graduating classes here in the Philippines are called “batches” and the Peace Corps adopted that terminology – we are Batch 269 of Peace Corps volunteers) – Petra lives about 1.5 hours south in a tiny town named Aborlan, where she teaches high school and another teacher, Will, lives another 45 minutes south of that in the rice bowl of Palawan - Narra.

This is Holy Week in the Philippines and, as for Christmas (although for only a week; not the whole month) – most of businesses are closed…certainly for the last few days:  Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Black Saturday and Easter Sunday.  I was told that even most of the transport, multicabs as well as tricycles, halt.  However, the weekend prior to Easter was fair game, and I was thrilled to be finally striking out on my own to see some of the island.

I caught a trike from my new place (I’d moved in the day before) at 6:30am to the San Jose terminal and headed for the bus….but everyone told me that it didn’t go to Aborlan today.  So, I headed back to Lexus, who said they would leave within an hour – we packed in and launched.  Notorious for their lead footed drivers, Lexus must have quite a maintenance bill – we zoomed along between 60-70 miles per hour – exhilarating from the back seat, and unimaginable from the front!

It took us quite a while to pass the enormous expanse of land where the Iwahig prison is situated….  “prisoners” were in the fields working – some with goats, others with cows and some plowing.  Begun during the American era, this prison has a gate, but no cells – many prisoners live on the land with their families.  They claim a better recidivism rate than most jails.  Strangely, the elder brother of the Pastor/Executive Director at my site was a guard at Iwahig for years….and became the only casualty to date.  Two years ago the inmates attacked him and stabbed him repeatedly with forks and whatever they had until they killed him.  He remains the only death at the prison.

Petra met me at her “terminal” (her terminology – it just looked like a street corner to me) and we crossed the street to the Aborlan market.  Lots of fun – bought a walis (broom), some bawang and sibuyas (garlic and onions),  kalamansi (yummy little limes),  pakwan (watermelon), and clams.  Returned to Petra’s nice, clean, tiled apartment and CR and made banana shakes – yummy – before getting into another Lexus van for the 45 minute rollercoaster ride to Will’s in Narra.  Petra says I had a broad grin on my face as we carromed down the road…there are 9 bridges between Aborlan and Narra and the rivers – especially the Irawan River - are gorgeous.  Palawan surprised me with its high mountains, and the 2^nd highest peak is in Narra.  As on other roads, the added benefit of a road trip is a rigorous massage which can actually leave bruises. 

Will met us on his bike at the Narra market where we proceeded to the bakery for banana bread (passing up a custard cake, sigh) and we triked to his place – 100 meters from the ocean.  This is the Palawan of my dreams – like Matthew said, we hardly feel like we are on an island where we live.  Will, on the other hand, has a view of tall palms and water from his 2^nd floor bedroom. 

The enviable view from Will's 2nd floor bedroom

 



In Will's Kitchen



We cooked the clams and made guacamole from fresh avocados,  met his counterpart, who lives next door, and set off for the beach – Petra and I headed out for a swim…sandy bottom and really warm water. And then, Wham!  - nearly decapitated by a flying fish – man those things pack a velocity!   Red Horse all around and I searched for shells….weaving badly (Red Horse beer has one of the highest alcohol contents and gets me every time).  Returned to find Petra napping and Will gone for fish for dinner.  Yummy grilled fish stuffed with garlic and tomatoes, and a walk on the beach at night. 

Found out that we could stay in a room at the beach for 300 pesos (150/each) – so, for $3 each, Petra and I shared a beach bungalow.  After a morning swim and more shelling (when Petra shot this amazing 2” long bug)



The amazing bug

A plethora of shells

We flagged another Lexus van returning to Puerto.

The fare from Puerto to Narra is 160 pesos, or $4, and I’ll be back.