lunch with a KILLER

Be in no doubt, SW wines and dines with souls from every point on the human spectrum. Yes indeed, it’s not uncommon for me to lunch with Fufu the crackwhore and dine with Imelda Marcos on the same day. Though maybe that’s not really evidence for my all-points-on-the-continuum claim.

Anyway.

A few weeks ago, SW lunched with a friend and her family. A couple of the family’s friends joined us. One of these – let us call him X – had worked as a handyman/gardener for my friend’s family, who come from a small town on one of the big Philippine islands. X became very close to the family, who treated him like a Godson.

By the way, the Godson/Godparent thing is alive and kicking and screaming here – some people nominate half-a-dozen or more people as a godparent to their newborn (even SW is a Godparent!). Often, they try to include friends or associates who are wealthy and/or influential, in the hope that the Godparent will help out financially or otherwise as the little tyke grows up (the people who nominated SW as a Godparent clearly failed to do their research). That’s not to say it’s a cynical attempt at currying favor. It’s partly just the way things are done, and given the Philippine concept of utang na loob, the new parents will be indebted to the Godparent for life. Here’s a little paragraph on this topic, which I jotted down just this minute off the top of my head:

A dyadic bond – between two individuals – may be formed based on the concept of utang na loob. Although it is expected that the debtor will attempt repayment, it is widely recognized that the debt (as in one's obligation to a parent) can never be fully repaid and the obligation can last for generations. Saving another's life, providing employment, or making it possible for another to become educated are "gifts" that incur utang na loob. Moreover, such gifts initiate a long-term reciprocal interdependency in which the grantor of the favor can expect help from the debtor whenever the need arises and the debtor can, in turn, ask other favors. Such reciprocal personal alliances have had obvious implications for the society in general and the political system in particular.

Actually, I DIDN’T write that myself. It came from here, and is originally from “the Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army.” But what is the internet if not a tool for making one look like one has book smarts when in fact one has NO book smarts?? Besides, I’m sure everyone assumes SW is book smart enough to PULL THIS SORT OF SHIT off the top of his head. Sorry for misleading youse, though.

But I digress.

A couple of years ago, X got into a drunken fight with another guy. He happened to have a gun, happened to fire it, and the bullet happened to kill the other guy. So X fled to another island (the one where I met him), where he lives and works today, having not so much as been charged with a crime.

This sort of thing happens quite a lot here. Unless it’s a high-profile case, police often don’t have the resources or inclination to pursue an arrest once someone leaves the area where it happened. But it’s not quite getting away with murder. There’s often a sort of community justice, which entails a deal between the family of the felon (I do love using the word “felon”) and the victim’s family. It’s usually a simple payment; in X’s case it was US$2-3000. Sounds cheap to my Australian ears, but 1) that sort of money goes along way here (to raise the cash, X's family sold their property), especially in the provinces, and 2) in some ways life is cheap here. I don’t mean that people don’t care about others’ lives as much as they do in, say, Australia, but – from my completely unresearched observations* – death is just way more common here and people deal with it differently.

I didn’t talk to X much. AND DON’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS. It wasn’t because he was PACKIN’ HEAT and I was scared he might POP ONE IN ME. He just didn’t speak much English.

But he seemed a thoroughly nice chap and I for one do not intend to hold the odd killing against him. So he whacked** a guy. So what? Haven’t we ALL killed, when we really stop to think about it? Hmm? Yeah, that’s right.

*It makes sense though – 1) The Philippines is a much poorer country than Australia, so people don’t have access to the same health care, education, etc and there are fewer policed health and safety rules and regulations; and 2) There’s more than four times the population of Australia in a fraction of the area and people tend to have larger families and inner-circle communities occupying smaller spaces – people are simply around more people more often. I would bet on the death rate here being much higher than in Oz (Indigenous population notwithstanding), but these two points alone make me think people just end up facing death far more than your average middle-class Australian.

** I watched an episode of The Sopranos for the first time the other day. Hence I have the right to authoritatively sprinkle my missives with Mafioso vernacular.