Has been a while... somehow I can’t write about NZ (even if for me, Auckland’s North Shore is as foreign as Mozambique or Armenia), but anyway… some e-mails asked for the travel log so here is back… (actually I don’t have copies of my old one, so I appreciate if somebody sent them back to me... One day all this would be history)
I guess all overseas development jobs are different, and that is what keeps drawing me back to it, particular after a quite pitiful attempt of having a “real” job in NZ, to which I fail miserably.
But this in Manila is more different than others… as I’m taking a step off fisheries (perhaps for 1st time in my working life!).
There are 2 main objectives to any fisheries activity, subsistence and trade (this in the broadest sense). Let leave subsistence aside this time... I always believed that if you are going to intervene on the fisheries resource under whatever management structure your country decided to use (and I’m not going to discuss the alternatives now), the outcome of that intervention has to maximize the potential benefit out of it. In other terms, if you are going to potentially f*#ck your resource, do it for the best outcome possible, if not there is a double waste.
There is where trade comes in... to trade fish internationally (where the big $ is) there are “rules” set by WTO, as many importing countries have Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standard (SPS) (mostly around food safety and biosecurity) to be oblige in order to accept those products. If you think that over 50% of the “development” world trade with the “developed” one is based on fish, fruit, meat, grains, nuts, and other low process food items, then any “failure” in achieving those SPS has massive consequences. Particularly, when there is the suspicion that those standards are used aTechnical Barriers to Trade (TBTs).
Good, where I’m trying to go, I have kind of specialized over the years on various aspects of fisheries, being the SPS related, one of my most common jobs… so in this occasion I was asked to be part of a team of 4 people that is assessing the needs at policy level, that the Philippines government and institutions have in order to maximise their potential for international trade under the WTO rules… in other words what they need to do in order to not get further screwed by opportunistic market forces at importing country level… my area is SPS in general (not only fish), and funnily do, I’m paid by the EU.
So I spent a lot of time in ministries, directorates, universities, factories, embassies, labs, and so on talking to people, and compiling the issues they have in order to rationalize the and suggest what type of assistance, would be needed to better address the problems… a long way from measuring fish, and training people in boats and factories…
Manila…. Over 10 million (10000000!) people in one big urban conglomerate. But I don’t think we can call it a city… is actually like 7 or 8 that re juggled into each other… what I see from my window in the 27th floor I could be in Hong Kong…
but then this is Makati, the business/embassy city… as soon as you leave things change big time. Is quite full on, (as most big Asian cities) but somehow has its enchantments mostly born out of it madness…
Snippets of it: barefoot basketball everywhere, children boxing in the streets off Malate, boxing is the 3rd most popular sport after basketball and Cockfights, going to the cockpit La Libertad… the massive amount and the painting on the jeepneys (like a bus made of extended Jeep) with winie the poo and Jesus painted together on the sides, or a girl with her mango (presumably the daughter of the driver) and the plane of top gun, Virgin Mary and Elvis on a hug…the “villages” low key compounds where the middle class live, in some sort of slow passed greenish oasis fenced out of the street madness… the openness of cross-dressing and prostitution everywhere, the toilet masseurs in “las reinas” a live band joint ( you go for pee and this blokes give you a neck massage while you go on with your business, just as part of the services of the place… you may leave some money on the way out), the helicopters cruising the sky in the morning and afternoon taking the very rich in and out of their office, the incredible amount of malls everywhere (megamall has 1 km long, 300 m wide and 4 floors!), the cheapness of the food (80 nz$ dinner for 3 with 2 bottles of wine in the poshest district of the country)… the night scene and the clubs going off at 3-4 am… and so on
people is cool… I find them holding a lot of dignity… they have the shitiest history of foreign domination … I guess 80% of their heroes were killed by some invader or another Spanish (for 333 years), Japanese, Americans) but they keep going on, and on… hard workers… no problems where, what and when… they just go and do it… honestly there are Filipino Overseas Workers (FOW) everywhere working their life to help the ones left here... actually there are over 8000 in Iraq (3rd biggest group of foreigners there?)
I find so moving the respect the have for education; you go to the smallest neighbourhood or villages in the other islands, and you see the banners across the road saying: “welcome xxxxx xxxxx graduate in “whatever” from such university or college or high school”, you make us proud… I think is so cool… particularly because I see how many people is see in the “development world“ take the right to education as a given and even waste it… while in countries like this one, is the difference in between a life with hope and one of just pure resilience.
I actually really like that I don’t have to repeat and spell my name all the time… Francisco is soo common… actually most names are Spanish… even if not many do speak Spanish at all… imagine you meet somebody named Jonathan Smith and he does not speaks English at all! Will not be a kind of funny situation?
Music is cool, I may not like a of the Pinoy (Filipino) Original Music and rock, but they cover all styles… I went to see some bands, and I have been really surprised by a free jazz kind of band theRadioactive Sago Project and a very cool dub combo by the name of Junior Kilat , worth to download some stuff from them.
Very much looking forward, to leave manila again… the weekend and the waves at Puraran where fantastic… even if I had the worst longboard ever… I’m keen to go for a dive… but then… I’m here working…
More to come
