On the plane ride to Manila I sat next to a man who had never flown before. He made many signs of the cross as we took off, ate, and landed. In addition, when we spoke and he didn't understand what I was saying, he would open his mouth and eyes very wide and say nothing as if he expected me to regurgitate my response into him.
Manila seems to be a country of extremes.
It features an overabundance of nurses. Nona, a teacher at one of Manila's many nursing schools, explained that probably three members of the waitstaff at our hotel dining room graduated from nursing school. Many Philipino doctors will live abroad just to be a nurse in a foreign country. Trained nurses in Manila will pay hospitals to let them come and volunteer. So the Philipines have a ton of nurses, but not many qualified doctors.
Other than medical professions, there is an incredible amount of outsourcing here. While from her room my mom can see the slums, on my side of the hotel there are hundreds of company skyscrapers such as IBm and Citibank. Nona said that when she worked on the graveyard shift as an outsourced employee, the office would break into applause as the sun rose and they knew their shift was nearly over.
During the day, many Philipinos take Catholicism verys seriously and attend mass it seems nearly every day. It seems that many people plan their week around which church to pilgrim to.
The separation between church and state here is thin due to a 90% catholic population believing in absolutely no contraception. As a result, Manila's population is increasing and slums abound. The shopping mall featuring a staff singing YMCA outside Johnny Rocket's (no joke) lies just 200 meters across the river from a fishing family living in a dirt-floored, stucco shack. There is no social security here, and when I asked her how the poor survive, Nona didn't know, but said that the social inequality is "nothing like Mumai". We'll see tomorrow...
