Ain’t too white to beg

There are three things you can be sure of when summer hits these parts: the heat, the fiestas, and the letters of solicitation. The first is a given, the second a matter of tradition as much as practicality (why ruin a celebration by holding it during the rainy season?), while the third is, not to put it too harshly, a drain on one’s goodwill.

You can tell that that bothers me, no? Actually, it’s not the money part, or the sheer number of requests. It’s the monotony of it. The letters seem to follow a single template: So-and-so will be holding a/participating in such-and-such in honor of [patron saint here] and respectfully ask for your kind/benevolent/generous assistance to pay for this-and-that expense. You read one and you’ve read them all. By the time you entertain the thirtieth group of kids (they are usually teenagers) you don’t even bother to open the envelope. But you do wonder: “Wait — weren’t you here the other day?”

“No, sir. That was last year.”

I have always been lousy at faces, so shame on those kids if that weren’t actually the case. Sometimes people come up and talk to me in a tone that suggests we have spent time together. I flip through my mental Rolodex and come up empty. Sometimes I get by with a nod and a smile, but on occasion they catch on, and ask, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

So shoot me. A friend constantly reminds me that x brain cells die every time I light up. I remind her that she’s likely to die sooner from second-hand smoke, considering all her friends are nicotine fiends. And how many cells was that again?

But this is not about my habit. Or my treacherous memory. This is about yesterday, with summer in full swing, when someone knocked on the door.

It was a guy; looked to be on the wrong side of forty, tall but plump — not pleasingly so, as if he’d been spending too much time on the couch with the remote and a bowl of popcorn. My gaze instantly fixed on his teeth: I had never seen that many gaps before. Then I realized I was being rude and shifted my gaze downward. In his hand was a clipboard, which he handed to me. In it was a letter, endorsed by the governor, asking for financial assistance.

“We were robbed,” he said, no doubt sensing my bewilderment.

Reader: he was Caucasian. As in white.

“Huh?” was all I could muster. I scanned the letter: …with my wife… boat to Nasipit… luggage, wallet… stolen… kind assistance… I didn’t bother to finish it, burning was I with shame. A fellow Filipino did this, I thought, and somehow I felt complicit, if not responsible. I quickly handed the man some money and he left.

Without so much as a thank-you.

Not that I expected any. Just the facts, ma’am.

Alone again, I realized I was curious. How did it happen, exactly? Were they asleep when it happened? That was likely; a boat at sea is not the best place to rob people at gunpoint. Same goes for knives. Impractical for such a confined space. Good old-fashioned stealth would do. Spot a mark, wait until he’s asleep, then casually walk by, stop, stoop as if to fasten a shoelace, grab the loot, and off you go.

Then there’s the timing. Do it in the middle of the voyage and you run the risk of the victim waking up, finding out, and raising a stink. Of course he will. That’s why it has to be done when the boat has reached its destination, or just about to. The surprised cries will be indistinguishable from the general mayhem of the disembarkation process — maybe with our thief at the head of the queue, so that in no time at all he’s off the boat and basking in the free air of…

Nasipit?

That detail nagged at me. It didn’t make sense. Nasipit is a long way from our place. Wouldn’t it have been more practical for him to go back to Cebu and contact his embassy from there? Did he even do that? Contact his people, I mean? His family? His friends? Why waste money taking a bus to Surigao, then the boat to here? Was this guy for real? Was there even a wife? Or had I just been conned? He didn’t look it, but then the best ones usually don’t.

Imagine financing your trek through the tropics that way. You get to the Philippines and realize, Egads, these people are so trusting, so welcoming, so… naïve. Then you see a group of children knocking on doors. They have a letter with them. They hand it in and get some money in return. You’re suddenly seized by a brainstorm: Of course! You concoct a cover story; nothing too tragic or outrageous, just a little something to arouse sympathy, or, for added effect, guilt. And then you simply follow the kids doing their rounds.

And think to yourself: Hey, when in Rome…