Travels in the Philippines - Part 2 - Characters in wonderland " Neddy"

All credit goes to Scott Ruffenr for this Classic handcrafted piece of writing

Neddy - The Filipina Wife

Chubby brown cheeks behind a toothy smile, her broad flat nose features two flared nostrils that bear a striking resemblance to the business end of a double-barreled ,12 gauge shotgun. She ties her short, black hair up behind her head housemaid style. Prodigious and pendulous breasts hang unencumbered by any sort of brassiere under her oversize t-shirts. Happy and talkative, she is a cheerful ball of fat dragging her slippers as she walks across the driveway, chattering to the workers and her children.

One of her favorite pastimes is sitting on the terrace while one of the many women who help with cleaning the building, pick her scalp for white hairs. I sometimes think they are really looking for lice. This scene can go for a couple of hours some afternoons, with the chatter between the women never seeming to ebb. What do they talk about? Family, friends, and money are my guess.

She likes collecting the rent. She can neither read nor write in English or Tagalog , but she has a memory for payments due, like no other I have ever seen.

Money makes her happy like most people, but I suspect it has more meaning to a barrio girl who has made good by marrying a foreigner .Coming from a life of living on the equivalent of 5 or 6 dollars a day , to actually owning land and property, is quite a metamorphosis I suspect. New pathways in her brain must be taking place, receptors creating new connections.

What to do with all this new found wealth?

No longer is she just a mama-san in a girlie bar down near the port where the ships discharge their cargo of randy sailors; she now has status in the barrio as somewhat of a matriarch.

The husband Apocalypse Bill boasts that his Neddy is a great card player; and rarely loses. I have it on good account that this claim of his is bullshit. Filipina women play cards for money, not for fun, and my sources say she loses thousands of pesos on a regular basis. I suppose this is something to be expected of a matriarch in the barrio. Could this be something of a social tax on her wealth, to be shared with the more cunning of the women in her native circle? The other neighbors make regular visits to her doorstep with palms turned upwards as well.

So her money must go out to one and all as a rule. They just expect it. How much, and how fast one can only speculate. No one around here thinks AB knows either.