Five Weeks in the Philippines

 

Well, I left the last blog entry with the "nipa" house under construction.  It's nearly finished now and is a nice place to hang out in evenings, plus provides a shady place in mid- to late afternoon.  I am always interested in design and construction projects so I will include a few more photo's.  What impresses me most is that this is not some primitive hut but a rather complicated and labor-intensive project which involves quite a lot carefully-cut joints to hold it all together.

The small "tab" on this piece will be fitted into a slot on an upright piece, then
the two pieces will be "pegged" clear through the larger "c"-shaped tab for a
strong, secure joint.

This detail shows how the "nipa" roof-covering is lashed to the rafters.

The front wall is nearly complete, open with "bars" at the top.  Other walls will
be solid, with "c" shaped sections of bamboo nailed vertically overlapping like
 box-and-strip construction.  As of  today, Dec. 22, the walls are mostly complete.

This gives an idea of the spaciousness of the high-pitched roof, and shows some
of the cross-bracing in place.

Sometime in the next few days I'll run the electric wiring out to the "nipa" as we call it, and we will have it finished.

 

At just over five weeks in the Philippines I've pretty well adapted to conditions here.  I'm fairly comfortable as I sit here, and I just noticed I'd not turned on the electric fan.  The humidity seems to be low today, as I'd usually have the fan going because daytime temps are mid-80s.  Things aren't the same here as they were in Kentucky; it would be pointless to move 12,000 miles and then expect to have everything the same.  So I'm getting used to different transportation, different cuisine (it helps that I already like fish), different ways of doing things, and to having my time pretty much be my own. Almost anything I could want in the areas of food, conveniences, etc., is all available. I occasionally do some "American" or "Tex-Mex-Southwest" style cooking.  I will probably air-condition part of the "new" house we're planning. But I'm mostly satisfied with the way things are, and looking forward to some ongoing projects mostly centered around workshop tinkering,  gardening and small live-stock, with all the possibilities that will open for learning how to make sourdough bread, cheese, and all kinds of other naturally wholesome food.

 

I have ideas for some future postings, but I'm just now getting some of the photo's I'll need to share.  I'll try to post fairly soon about how the Christmas and New Year holidays turned out, and later on about marketing and food, transportation, customs and other topics as I begin to notice them.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2013!     Tim and Bernadette







Arrival in Philippines

This is the first attempt at a blog EVER.  I'm having some trouble understanding how to set up the page etc., and nobody around with experience to help me figure things out.  Hopefully I will get together a script-message at least, and will try to figure out how to include photos.

Much of our first week after arrival in the Philippines went to just trying to get first-level items taken care of.  We spent 3 days on a trip to Iloilo taking care of immigration issues.  The actual bureaucratic work was easily done with very cooperative civil servants,  the major complication being that the Quarantine Doctor was called out-of-office on two apparently complicated field-issues, and not available until mid-afternoon on the second day we were in town; after his 10-minute OK of the paperwork we carried, the rest of the process was fairly easy.  We had used the time meanwhile to go various places around the city seeing what goods and services are available, etc.  Iloilo is more than 300,000 population, so a lot is there available - just not necessarily in the format that homestead-desirous transplants would expect to find.  We will have our work cut out for us if we insist on doing much that is different from how the usual semi-rural folk live here.

The Philippines is a beautiful place to be.  Everything is all shades of green at the moment - you wonder if you've arrived in the Emerald Land from The Wizard of Oz.  I know I'm definitely not in KY anymore.  Looking one direction from the National Highway, all you see is palm trees and beach with ocean in the background.  The other direction, there are more palm trees, usually with some cultivated fields in the foreground and mountains in the background.  Walking inland through rice-fields and then up into some low hills, I arrive at the farmland we own which is hilly but has terraces  covering several acres, and are soon to be cleared and plowed so we can begin raising tomatoes, beans, squash, melons,corn and probably some rice (Bernadette is already starting some herbs in pots, and we have roots on a couple vine-snippets from red-seedless grapes we bought). Once we have the place into production we will begin to acquire some small livestock (chickens and other easy-keepers first), hoping to be as food self-sufficient as possible in a year or two.

A brief description of  just where we are: Malabor Barangay (neighborhood), Tibiao district, Antique (ann-tee-kay like Spanish) Province, on the Island of Panay, Philippines.  If I can figure out how to stick a map on this blog I will. Otherwise, Google Maps pulls us up pretty quickly.  Panay Island is just about in the middle of the Philippine chain, towards the west, and looks roughly equilateral triangular.  We're about halfway up the west coast.  We're 40 miles from San Jose (de Buenavista) Antique, the provincial capitol (100,000+ pop.), and about 100 miles from above-mentioned Iloilo.  A major resort area, Boracay Island, is about 60 miles north of us, and we hope to go check it out when we get a little leisure from settling-in.  Guess that's about it for now.





On the road to the farm.

 

Typical view of farm and property nearby.
 

Comfortable 2 bedroom concrete-block house - hopefully soon to be
duplicated on a lot nearby.



Philippine egg-plant? Nope. Sis-in-law Gina likes to grow orchids, and they are
parasites - grafted into another plant and protected by these shells.

 

Mostly Photos

In the last blog,I  didn't think to tell you much about the place we're actually living here.  Tibiao (tibby-ow), and almost any place nearby, pulls up easily on Wikipedia.  The municipality seems to cover about 5 or 6 square miles and has a little over 20,000 people.  Quite a number of permanent business are here, mostly street-front convenience stores (seems like about every 50 feet) and the place is large enough to have a 3- day (Tue., Thur., Sat.) "Market" which is a combination of farmers market, flea market, swap meet, food court, butcher, etc. pretty much like you've heard or read about in such partly-rural settings all over the world. Buildings are more and more substantial concrete structures, but still a fair mixture of bamboo-construction is evident. Most people do a mixture of gardening, fishing, larger farming, crafts/ construction, small livestock raising, to make a living however they can.  In the last few years a lot of retirees, both Philipino and foreign, are coming here and building quite large and fancy houses with all conveniences.  OK, OK, I said mostly photos, so here starts the gallery:
                                                                            

I didn't get any coastal/beach scenes in last time.  I see this nearly every day,
looking southwest from Malabor beach to the point at Barbosa, the next settled
 area south of here.

A few steps back, the beach view is more typically framed by trees at the back
or a vacant property, 75 feet from the main road.

This place is medium-fancy; quite a few places are 2-story with balconies, and
multi-room Euro-USA standard,  lots of square footage inside.
 

Meanwhile, the first of several loads of bamboo poles have arrived for building
our "nipa (neepah)" yard-house. We will have something like a "screen-porch"
to relax in the shade or to overnight where it's cooler than the house.

3-foot long palm leaves are folded over slats and stitched in place with long grass-
like fiber, making "nipas" which are tied to the frame for roof- and wall-covering.

Post-hole digger.
 

Upright posts are carefully cut to receive cross-posts (like a post & beam barn).
 

Test fit looks OK.

Pegs split and shaped from large-end bamboo will secure major joints.
 

Detail of upper post and crosspiece corner, pegged together.

Tying sections of nipa onto the rafters.

                                                                            
That's about where the project is for now - roof is a little over half-finished as I type.

I probably won't manade a blog every week - I'm aiming at about one per month, but we'll see how things work out.  I have several ideas for future editions already, but a shortage of photo's (and time) to work on them.  May you each have a blessed day!     Tim Larson,