A Visit Home
The first thing to hit you is the crush
of people
With a population of almost 70 million today, the Philippines gained some 21 million people more from the time I left 30 years ago. Eleven million of these were milling around the Ninoy Aquino International Airport when we stepped out of the Customs and Immigration arrival area.
The other
ten million were milling around the departure area.
Where did all the people come from? They were everywhere. Walking around the boulevards; clogging lobbies of hotels, restaurants, shopping centers; hopscotching between cars and buses stuck in traffic.
I guess you can blame that on Ferdinand Marcos,too. When Marcos installed martial law for 14 years, he also imposed a curfew that forced Filipinos to go home early and stay indoors at night.
The result was a population boom.
Marcos also made it illegal to gather in groups of three or more to openly criticize the President and the government. He closed Congress. And as everyone knows, when Filipinos are barred from this favorite pastime, they turn their attention exclusively to sex.
That was good for another five, six million more Filipinos. The next President, Fidel V. Ramos, worried about the uncontrolled population growth, tried to slow it down with a birth control educational program. But this was offset by an energy crisis which brought almost daily electricity blackouts ( or as they label in the Philippines, brownouts ). The brownouts, some lasting five to seven hours, most overnight, again forced Filipinos to stay home. This time with no lights and television.
That was good for another five, six million Filipinos. Now they have a President, former actor Joseph Estrada who is known for an unabashed appreciation for the ladies.Erap, as everyone calls him,has publicly admitted to begetting some ten (and counting) children outside his own family. Project another five million by the time his term anf influence on other Filipino males end.
With that many people, the one amazing thing about the
country from one who comes from abroad is that you don't see any homeless like the
ones you see sleeping in parks and buildings and airports of almost every major city
in the U.S. and Europe.
That's because the homeless in the Philippines just move into every available vacant space they could find and build their homes on it.
These squatters
are everywhere; in private lots, lining railroad tracks, surrounding commercial buildings,
even on the international airport grounds. And no politician-- from a dictator like
Marcos to a no-nonsense military man like Ramos; from macho mayors to popular governors,
and a parade of cantankerous congressmen and city councils from the 1950's to today--
could or would do anything about it.
They all found out that the squatters have become a political party.
More people also begot more traffic.
