Filipino Culture

I get asked this a lot: How do foreigners view the Philippines and how do you respond?

Most white Europeans and Americans I come across have a high estimation of Filipinos.  Specially those that work with Pinoys in professional/corporate settings.  They talk highly about our ability to get along with others.  Our sense of family.  The sense of shame for badly executed work.

However, I have come across a few whites who wonder why certain parts of the Philippines are dirt poor.  One particular retiree from a European country married a Pinay in his country and moved back here to retire.  A neighbor of mine introduced me to him.  A very amiable and obviously accomplished and intellectual fellow.   However, he keeps dumping on Bicol and asking why its “men are so lazy.”  He keeps going on and on about how its the women that actually heads the households and if it weren’t for them taking charge things would be in worse shape.

He says he has given over six figures (over $xxx,xxx dollars) to his in laws/wife’s family and nothing has changed.  Example: He’d spend money on a water pump and generator, it would break down due to bad maintenance/bad operations, etc and they would sell the equipment for pennies on the dollar.  The same with education–he has sponsored countless kamaganaks to school even paying for miscellaneous expenses, same story–go to school for 1 to 2 years and drop out.   He even came for a peanut harvest at his wife’s family’s farm and told me how through simple process changes, he got them to process more peanuts in a fraction of the time they were doing before.  They became so efficient that they finished their work before lunch time!  He was very sad that they abandoned this efficient, no machine neded, process shortly after he left.

I can tell by the tone of his voice that he truly cares for his inlaws and LOVES them but he is very frustrated by the fact that they are stuck in their ways and are very dependent.  Hence, they are still very much mired in bone grinding poverty. He has since stopped giving money since it appears that it doesn’t have much effect.

Since I’m not Bicolano and hence could NOT speak from the particulars of the situation, the best I could say in response was that maybe he’s looking at a relatively small sample of the population in order to infer a possibly mistaken generalization.  His wife is the daughter of farmers, hence his inlaws are subsistence farmers and maybe his view is shaped by this.  I’m sure if his inlaws and extended family had different backgrounds, he’d have a differing impression.  Also, I pointed out that not all people from a particular area or background are fated to share the same destiny–indeed, within most extended filipino family networks, there’s a few that manage to finish college, a few that manage to start their businesses and prosper or at least be independent, there’s a few that work abroad as OFWs, there’s a few that migrate, etc.