So much of Filipino life happens in these jeepneys, in transit from one place to another. In some ways it is more of a metaphor for Banaue than the terraces; it is a symbol of the movement, the modernization, and the western influences that shape Banaue every day.
I climb into the jeepney today on my way home from an interview in Legawe. We will wind for an hour uphill into cooler air, but as I sit in the jeepney now, waiting for it to fill up with passengers, I am hot. I exit quickly and run across the street to a small stand where they sell buko (coconut) juice. I open the worn foam cooler and pull out a sealed plastic cup from under a few chunks of melting ice. The stall, a wooden shack with a corrugated plastic roof, specializes in candy. A small group of young girls in school uniforms—red pleated skirts that brush their calves and loose white collared blouses—gather on their lunch break to buy hard candies and sweets. Some suck on blue popsicles, the dyed water running down their chins, and look up at me with large brown eyes. I duck out of the shack, away from their stares, and head back into the jeepney.
We wait for another few minutes as people crowd inside. An elder man climbs in with a chicken in his hands, her feet bound. He shoves her under the seat and I wince. To the man she is not an animal anymore, not a living breathing thing. She is food.
The jeepney driver counts heads to affirm that he has enough passengers to make the one hour ride profitable. I suck down small strips of coconut in a hurry, coaxing them from the bottom of my cup and into my mouth. A young school girl sits across from me—she looks about eight but could be ten or twelve. She wears a red and white checked dress, which reminds me of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and her hair is pulled up at the sides with two clips. She watches me as I pull the coconut strips out of my cup with my fingers and I wonder if I am being impolite.
The driver starts the engine, now that the jeepney is almost full. Diesel bellows out of the exhaust; the engine chokes and gasps but somehow catches. The driver honks his horn and several men shout: Banaue! Banaue! We jerk forward and head up the road.
Jeepneys have been an integral part of Filipino life since World War II. The first jeepneys were surplus jeeps that departing American soldiers sold or gave away after the war. Locals stripped them down to accommodate more passengers, added metal roofs for shade, and decorated them with bright colors, hood ornaments, and sometimes lights. They became a popular form of inexpensive public transportation—something virtually destroyed during the war.
But much like the past traditions of the Ifugao, the jeepneys face threats to their survival. Because the prices of steel and other jeepney materials have increased, many small jeepney manufacturers have gone out of business. Many larger producers have gone bankrupt as well or have switched to making other products. Jeepneys aren’t very fuel efficient either. A recent study in a Metro Manila newspaper found that fuel use for a 16 passenger jeepney and a 64 person bus were the same. Because so many jeepney drivers cruise the traffic-clogged streets half empty, looking for customers, policy makers in Manila have received a lot of pressure to remove them from Manila entirely. In addition, jeepney businesses struggle to compete with newly imported models: modern looking jeepneys with Hummer-like structures, or Toyota-type vans. It seems that the loud, boisterous jeepney may soon be an icon of the past, transformed into something more modern, more efficient.
On this jeepney, life continues on, unaware of itself. I watch the passengers and soak in their details. The girl across from me in the red-checked dress and I both have our feet propped on a spare tire. She has collapsed across her mother’s lap during the drive, napping as many children do. Her arm hangs loosely over her mother’s knees, and her wrist glitters with two bracelets—one a strand of small pictures of saints, and the other a thin rainbow of fake jewels. Her mother stares out the window, her fingers absently brush her daughter’s hair. Her mother has a denim jacket on, and sky blue dress slippers with blue sequined flowers. They seem like they are from a well-off family.
Next to them another mother clutches her child, but this one is awake. He looks about two years old, and it takes a moment before I notice the I.V. tube bandaged at his wrist. I never find out why he has the tube but I wonder what he suffers from that they would leave the tube there, permanently. He looks around the jeepney with wide eyes. I smile at him but he only stares back at me, wary and uncertain. I must look strange to him—so white and tall.
About a half hour into the drive a woman climbs on the back of the jeepney. She has a wide metal bowl in her hands, one that’s used to cook large portions of food for family gatherings. She has stacked bundles of pechay, a local green, which she places at the feet of the people near the door. Her young daughter, I assume, runs after her on the street, crying. She shouts at her and the girl runs off the road and into the grass, her face streaked with tears. The mother, a small woman with a thin, pretty face, chuckles with the other passengers.
Sometimes I can see the driver’s face in the rear view mirror. I sit behind him, so every time a passenger pays I hand him the money. He reaches his hand back without looking at me, and I lay the coins and thin paper bills on his grease-coated palm. It is small, this moment, but I like the physical connection, just as I like the way the young man next to me rests his leg against mine as he sleeps. It normalizes me somehow. The driver has a handkerchief around his head and a rash of acne on his jaw. He stares out the window intensely, weaving his way around squawking chickens and dogs lying in the sun, men breaking boulders on the side of the road, and children screaming across the street in dirty tee shirts. I wonder what he thinks about.
I sit there, observing, though no one knows it. I think about my short time here, how I will capture these people in this moment and it will make no difference to them; it will not have any direct affect. I think about all the forces interacting with these people—the tourists, the United Nations, policy makers in Manila, writers, anthropologists, and me. We all see something important here, something rare, but to these people this is just their life. Things may change for the Ifugao, but they will continue on like this road we wind around.
What strikes me most here is the will to live. With so many in poverty; life is often mere survival, and you can feel that energy, that drive, that desperation in the air. You can see it in the hungry eyes of a dog, as she carries a plastic cookie wrapper to the side of the road and licks the sugar off it. You can see it in the children who hold their hands out to me when I walk by—money please, they say. You can see it in the mother who holds her child with the I.V. line close to her breast, as she speaks to him softly, brushing the bangs out of his eyes. You can even see it in the white feathered chickens—the ones that will be eaten later—as they nest at the edge of the road, as they lay their eggs on a pile of dirt and ash.
I climb into the jeepney today on my way home from an interview in Legawe. We will wind for an hour uphill into cooler air, but as I sit in the jeepney now, waiting for it to fill up with passengers, I am hot. I exit quickly and run across the street to a small stand where they sell buko (coconut) juice. I open the worn foam cooler and pull out a sealed plastic cup from under a few chunks of melting ice. The stall, a wooden shack with a corrugated plastic roof, specializes in candy. A small group of young girls in school uniforms—red pleated skirts that brush their calves and loose white collared blouses—gather on their lunch break to buy hard candies and sweets. Some suck on blue popsicles, the dyed water running down their chins, and look up at me with large brown eyes. I duck out of the shack, away from their stares, and head back into the jeepney.
We wait for another few minutes as people crowd inside. An elder man climbs in with a chicken in his hands, her feet bound. He shoves her under the seat and I wince. To the man she is not an animal anymore, not a living breathing thing. She is food.
The jeepney driver counts heads to affirm that he has enough passengers to make the one hour ride profitable. I suck down small strips of coconut in a hurry, coaxing them from the bottom of my cup and into my mouth. A young school girl sits across from me—she looks about eight but could be ten or twelve. She wears a red and white checked dress, which reminds me of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and her hair is pulled up at the sides with two clips. She watches me as I pull the coconut strips out of my cup with my fingers and I wonder if I am being impolite.
The driver starts the engine, now that the jeepney is almost full. Diesel bellows out of the exhaust; the engine chokes and gasps but somehow catches. The driver honks his horn and several men shout: Banaue! Banaue! We jerk forward and head up the road.
Jeepneys have been an integral part of Filipino life since World War II. The first jeepneys were surplus jeeps that departing American soldiers sold or gave away after the war. Locals stripped them down to accommodate more passengers, added metal roofs for shade, and decorated them with bright colors, hood ornaments, and sometimes lights. They became a popular form of inexpensive public transportation—something virtually destroyed during the war.
But much like the past traditions of the Ifugao, the jeepneys face threats to their survival. Because the prices of steel and other jeepney materials have increased, many small jeepney manufacturers have gone out of business. Many larger producers have gone bankrupt as well or have switched to making other products. Jeepneys aren’t very fuel efficient either. A recent study in a Metro Manila newspaper found that fuel use for a 16 passenger jeepney and a 64 person bus were the same. Because so many jeepney drivers cruise the traffic-clogged streets half empty, looking for customers, policy makers in Manila have received a lot of pressure to remove them from Manila entirely. In addition, jeepney businesses struggle to compete with newly imported models: modern looking jeepneys with Hummer-like structures, or Toyota-type vans. It seems that the loud, boisterous jeepney may soon be an icon of the past, transformed into something more modern, more efficient.
On this jeepney, life continues on, unaware of itself. I watch the passengers and soak in their details. The girl across from me in the red-checked dress and I both have our feet propped on a spare tire. She has collapsed across her mother’s lap during the drive, napping as many children do. Her arm hangs loosely over her mother’s knees, and her wrist glitters with two bracelets—one a strand of small pictures of saints, and the other a thin rainbow of fake jewels. Her mother stares out the window, her fingers absently brush her daughter’s hair. Her mother has a denim jacket on, and sky blue dress slippers with blue sequined flowers. They seem like they are from a well-off family.
Next to them another mother clutches her child, but this one is awake. He looks about two years old, and it takes a moment before I notice the I.V. tube bandaged at his wrist. I never find out why he has the tube but I wonder what he suffers from that they would leave the tube there, permanently. He looks around the jeepney with wide eyes. I smile at him but he only stares back at me, wary and uncertain. I must look strange to him—so white and tall.
About a half hour into the drive a woman climbs on the back of the jeepney. She has a wide metal bowl in her hands, one that’s used to cook large portions of food for family gatherings. She has stacked bundles of pechay, a local green, which she places at the feet of the people near the door. Her young daughter, I assume, runs after her on the street, crying. She shouts at her and the girl runs off the road and into the grass, her face streaked with tears. The mother, a small woman with a thin, pretty face, chuckles with the other passengers.
Sometimes I can see the driver’s face in the rear view mirror. I sit behind him, so every time a passenger pays I hand him the money. He reaches his hand back without looking at me, and I lay the coins and thin paper bills on his grease-coated palm. It is small, this moment, but I like the physical connection, just as I like the way the young man next to me rests his leg against mine as he sleeps. It normalizes me somehow. The driver has a handkerchief around his head and a rash of acne on his jaw. He stares out the window intensely, weaving his way around squawking chickens and dogs lying in the sun, men breaking boulders on the side of the road, and children screaming across the street in dirty tee shirts. I wonder what he thinks about.
I sit there, observing, though no one knows it. I think about my short time here, how I will capture these people in this moment and it will make no difference to them; it will not have any direct affect. I think about all the forces interacting with these people—the tourists, the United Nations, policy makers in Manila, writers, anthropologists, and me. We all see something important here, something rare, but to these people this is just their life. Things may change for the Ifugao, but they will continue on like this road we wind around.
What strikes me most here is the will to live. With so many in poverty; life is often mere survival, and you can feel that energy, that drive, that desperation in the air. You can see it in the hungry eyes of a dog, as she carries a plastic cookie wrapper to the side of the road and licks the sugar off it. You can see it in the children who hold their hands out to me when I walk by—money please, they say. You can see it in the mother who holds her child with the I.V. line close to her breast, as she speaks to him softly, brushing the bangs out of his eyes. You can even see it in the white feathered chickens—the ones that will be eaten later—as they nest at the edge of the road, as they lay their eggs on a pile of dirt and ash.
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