“Give me some money, Maa’am!” A small boy, maybe 6 years old appeared from nowhere, looks at me with his beautiful black eyes. I smile at him: “Sorry darling, I cannot give you any money”.
I would give all that I have if I knew it will help him. But poverty is a tough problem to solve, much more complicated than you think when a small boy is simply begging for money. The boy reminds me of the movie called Slumdog Millionaire. Except that here it’s not a movie, it’s reality that stupid foreigners like me really know nothing about. I wish I will not see any blind beggars.
I can see the poverty on the streets but it’s more difficult for a foreigner to identify than for instance in Europe. Poor people here are usually clean and they wear normal, clean clothes. Opposite to many poor countries in Africa, most poor people here have at least water. Only disabled beggars who cannot wash themselves might have a dirty appearance. The other day I saw an older lady between the cars in the traffic lights, begging for money from the passengers when traffic stopped on red light. She was wearing such a nice top that I could wear it, too. It’s confusing.
Beauty in braces
Wealth, as it is a relatively new phenomenon in Philippines compared to the developed world, has quite unusual forms to manifest itself. I was told that office workers are raised above the ordinary people just by wearing a name badge that tells the world they work in an Office. I see coffee shop workers every day wearing their uniforms when they go home from Starbucks. In Finland you would hide the badge and change clothes before you leave your work.
I was wondering why so many people seem to have dental problems here until someone explained it to me. Typically a young woman who makes more money than average or has good fringe benefits, wears braces. Not to fix her teeth but as a status symbol. I wonder when these individuals are planning to remove those uncomfortable things from their mouths. Well, at least bad guys cannot steel the braces so easily as they could if you wore a beautiful necklace. But the hissing accent that comes with the braces, makes it definitely more difficult to understand what someone is trying to say to you.
Many of us don’t remember any more those days in Finland when people were wearing a special White Hat all the summer to show they were something special. Today the funny white hat is only used shortly when you have your high school graduation party and the grannies want to take photos of you wearing the white hat. Then the expensive garment goes to the back of the wardrobe and is forgotten for good.
Small boys begging for money don’t know anything about that, they just want money from the Maa’am who looks so rich in their eyes. Maybe they dream about braces.
Manila's Many Faces 