Inner Earth

Dodging Bullets Part 3

In part 1 and part 2 of this story, I’ve told of how my wife, Marlyn had found some serious problems at our ranch during a surprise visit there. Part 2 explained how a couple of them were resolved.

To continue the story, we had returned together in September of 2013 with the primary goal of moving a small Native style house onto our property. On our first day back, we were approached by a delegation of our neighbors. The women who had been arguing during Marlyns’ earlier visit had resolved their differences and were working together again. They were joined by the group of men who hoped to be employed in the moving of our small house. The price they asked for doing the job far exceeded the estimate we had been quoted earlier. We told them that their price was outside of our budget, but they were insistent. We turned them down and told them that we would hire another crew for the job.

The next day, Marlyn turned to our business manager Glen, and some contacts in her hometown. It took another day from our schedule, but Glen found some folks who would do the job for a price within our range. It wasn’t a perfect arrangement. They had to travel from about 30 kilometers away, and part of the deal was that we had to feed them during the project.

 

Meanwhile, the original crew, consisting mostly of our immediate neighbors, had retired to the shade in front of a local sari-sari to commiserate with each other and soak up some Red Horse. This had all the makings of a long term nightmare. But do you remember they guy I mentioned in the first part of this series? The guy whose corn had been eaten by our escaped cow? Marlyn had met him when she paid out the damages at the barangay hall the year before. In addition to his farming activities, Mr. Suno works in the timber industry, and has frequent interaction with foreign businessmen. He sympathized with the fellows, but took the time to explain to them some of the intricacies of doing business with foreigners. This included an explanation of budgets and the fact that you can’t get money that isn’t there.

Early the next day, Mr. Suno rode up to our camp on his motorcycle. He explained his meeting with the guys at the sari-sari, and made us a counter offer. He offered to lead the crew at a price slightly above the original estimate, but still within our budget. His crew would also feed themselves, which freed Marlyn from a major headache. We accepted the offer, and Mr. Sunos’ crew got to work the following day. We had lost a few days of work in the process, but all turned out well in the end. It was rainy season, and work was necessarily slower. The job wasn’t finished by the time we had to leave, but Mr. Suno saw it through nicely. Within a few weeks of our departure the house was fully reconstructed, complete with some impressive stonework.

Before we left, we hosted a picnic to thank the building crew, their families, and some of the neighbors. Marlyn and her friends had cooked up a big pot of chili, some pancit, and Filipino style fruit salad. It was a happy scene. Our little hilltop was full of people, kids, and dogs, all enjoying the food and the now harmonious company.

Our caretaker has moved into the structure, with strict instructions that he is the only one allowed there. He has also been informed that we will take up residence there while our modern house is being built. Things seem to be running smoothly now. But we plan another surprise visit this spring, just to make sure.

10 comments

    • I plan on it John Power! The Native house is in place. Marlyn plans to set up a dirty kitchen in the bottom of it when we get there permanently. Once the modern house is built, the little Native house will become a guest cottage.

      Take care,
      Pete

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  3. Pete – I’m surprised that meals for workers in the provinces are being negotiated nowadays. It wasn’t always that way. In Salaza of my youth, Mom frequently hired workers to do odd jobs around the house and yard like repairing the roof and fencing the yard with boho. Meals were never discussed. They were automatic.

    But, the food were never what you would consider “gourmet” in the provincial sense. The meals were usually steamed rice and something else. That something else could be kamatis (tomato) and bagoong (fermented fish sauce), or plain tagapulot (hardened sugar made of sugar cane juice). The men were generally contented for having eaten a meal that day. Their work post-lunch, however, seemed uninspired..

    On rare occasions, Mom would serve them dinengdeng, pinakbet, malunggay with chicken, or fried fish. The workers immediately fall asleep after lunch and take longer than normal siestas. When they go back to work around 2PM, I could hear them from my perch atop a guava tree singing while working! LOL

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  4. Hello John! I’m not sure of the workers feeding themselves is a shift in how things are done nowadays, or just something Marlyn worked out to suit our own situation. When we are there, Marlyn has to tend to business at our boarding house, check on things at her mothers’ rice farm, and work out things on our ranch. She’s a far cry from the barrio housewife of yore. Some years ago, we had a fencing crew working for us. Marlyn coordinated meals to be cooked at the boarding house and transported to us at the ranch. More recently, we have paid extra and the workers have fed themselves. A crew of well diggers fed themselves rather simply. They cooked a pot of rice over a fire, and supplemented it with spam and tinned sardines. The house moving crew ate rather well. The foreman, Mr. Suno, used the additional money to hire a fellow whose main job was cooking for the crew. I think he provided the ingredients from his own garden also. One morning, I awoke to find a duck tethered in the camp. When we returned that afternoon, it was gone, save for a pile of feathers. Another day, a chicken met the same fate. Of course our last day on site, there was a big feast provided by us. We fed the crew, their families, and several of the close neighbors. I don’t recall them singing while working, but they were a happy bunch. Mr. Suno pushed them hard. One afternoon he rewarded them with a “jumbo and a four by four”, a large Red Horse and a square pint of cheap rum. We made an excuse to go to town, so as not to be around the guys as they were drinking. But that evening, as we were walking back up the hill in the dark, we met about 3 of them returning home. They were walking arm in arm and singing as they walked down the hill.

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  5. Good skills telling this story and great pictures too.

    Tis a shame the caretaker gets no respect and must live alone in that beautiful cabin?I do not think a little company would hurt you bottom line here.

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  6. Thank you Erik. My wife gets the credit for most of the photos. It’s a hobby of hers, and she is always looking for a good artistic shot.

    If you read part one of the story, you’ll see that our caretaker had abused the privilege of staying in the house before it was moved. He had allowed about 10 others to move in with him. We think it is safest to be very strict on the occupancy.

    Take care,
    Pete

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