UW Study Abroad PI: Philippine Specialty

Let me begin this blog with a story.

A woman came to me after she had lost and later found her important belonging in Boracay Island. She told me that she couldn’t believe anyone would return it back to her especially because it’s the Philippines.

Hold on, what?

Especially?

The Philippines is known for a few things:

1. Manny Pacquiao

2. Lumpia

3. Karaoke

But apparently, our national specialty is stealing from other people.

Sadly, I was not offended nor did I counter her comment in defense to my own country. I simply…agreed.

And how can I not? Even before we arrived here in the Philippines I already knew of the conditions, the struggles that my homeland deal with everyday. Since my study abroad experience, I’ve learned that an ordinary worker at a fast food restaurant makes more or less than $10.00 per day. That’s me working for an hour in the states! Police men and women make about 14,000 Pesos for starting salaries. That’s about $325.00. The cost of living is higher than one of the highest paying jobs in the country. With this fact in mind, how can one expect the Filipinos to survive except for finding other ways to be able to support themselves and their family?

In the recent Philippine State of the Union Address (SONA), President Benigno Aquino III stated that by 2012, only 1.37 million families will experience poverty. His definition of poverty: anyone living above 46 pesos is not poor.

To save money, I eat at the University cafeteria to have a 53.00 peso meal (a cup of rice and a side of chicken). If eating one meal a day is his definition of being well-to-do, then there’s something wrong with his eyes. How can the president set the standard so low? The reason is political gain—to make it seem like the poverty level has gone down since his term of office. Furthermore, Aquino proudly flaunted that the unemployment rate has decreased by 0.8% since the year before his term. But again, the definition of unemployment has been greatly distorted—not counting citizens who are seeking work, families who own a small house store or to those who have only worked an hour in the past week.

It’s all politics, the rest is poverty.

In their psychological research, “The Colonial Mentality Scale (CMS) for Filipino Americans:

Scale Construction and Psychological Implications,” E. J. R. David and Sumie Okazaki concluded that the Filipinos are suffering from generational colonial mentality that affects the physical and mental health of the Filipinos even outside the country. They write: CM (colonial mentality) is passed on to later generations through socialization and continued oppression and that it negatively affects the mental health of modern day Filipino Americans. Nothing has stopped. The effects of American imperialism still seep through the veins of every Filipino. Consciously or subconsciously we, automatically and uncritically reject anything Filipino and automatically and uncritically prefer anything American (Sumie). I almost can’t blame the Filipinos for wanting anything else but their own culture—it’s not only depressing, it’s literally life threatening. Their study show that most eating disorders, HIV and drug use among the Filipino group is a result of colonial mentality. What’s more alarming is that they have the highest suicide rate in the United States. It’s sad to see that my own people are suffering through this as a result of another country’s selfish motives. We are victims even to this day, we were never liberated.

Michael Viola’s “Hip-Hop and Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy: Blue Scholarship to Challenge ‘The Miseducation of the Filipino,’” reveals that the Filipinos are destined for second class from the very start. The education system is designed so that we produce workers that will ultimately serve the “first class.” Viola writes that the education system is “tweaked” in an effort to create and sustain the role of Filipinos as “the best workers in the world.” I’ve always known that the Filipinos are one of the most hardworking people so I’m not surprise that others would try to exploit that characteristic. But it still disturbs me that we are doomed from the start. I can’t even call it a fight because we never had a chance of winning.

It’s no wonder why many of the people here are forced to steal and it’s sad that nothing I can say can ever justify that action. But just as my director said, people steal here not because it’s their hobby, it’s because they “gotta do what they gotta do” in order to survive in this fixed system.