Day One: Household Interviews

Meeting Mrs Panaso 

We reached our final respondent for the day, Mrs Panaso at almost 1 pm. Her house was a typical traditional house. It had no rooms, some wooden shelves inside and a lot of bundles. The walls were made of kalakat which is woven oil palm fronds. The fronds are woven and painted over with shellac to make it water proof. Oil palm the fronds are dried until they turn yellow and then used for kalakat. 

Mrs Panaso was a very slim woman of 60 with a shock of dyed brown hair. She is cheerful by nature and very accomodating. She was about to start her lunch of small dried fish, rice and fluffy brown dish of something I did not recognize. 

Mrs Panaso's deep well

Her house had an open air kitchen which was a cheerful and warm place. She used fire wood for her cooking. She also had a deep well from which she obtained her water supply. The metal pump looked unwieldy to manoeuvre and I wondered how she managed.

Mrs Panaso's open stove

I had to take the pictures with my mobile phone as I had run out of battery for my camera. I found out Mrs Panaso did not have electricity supply in her house when I asked to recharge my camera battery. I saw a bulb hanging in her house but I think the supply was cut off. Zenia hastily cautioned me that we could recharge in her home.  Mrs Panaso's was dilapidated and she mentioned that she was planning to renovate it. She intended to rebuild her home, however maintain its size as it was.

She gestured to her beautiful nipah roof which was made of 400 individual woven panels of nipah. She explained that she had paid P 400 for them. Each panel cost P 1 which was actually quite surprising to me. The work was so fine and detailed, I was staring in fascination for a long time. 

She had an eclectic garden of fruit trees (coconut), vegetation (subsistence) and some decorative plants. The vegetation she had were spinach, moringa and egg plants. She mentioned that she depended on them for her daily meals.

                                            Mrs Panaso's egg plants 

One of her sons who lived with her was hearing impaired, he worked as a casual labourer on the plantation. He walked in on the interview and stood by silently watching us. He looked very fit and strong. I offered him some of the biscuits Bibing had supplied me for lunch. We were taking about some of teh dishes she liked to make which consisted of fish and vegetables. She abstained from meat. It was then I discovered blenders were a luxury in a kitchen in these parts. Another fact was, most Phillipine dishes did not require spices but they are delicious, nonetheless. 

Mrs Panaso talked about contracting pneumonia recently. She had been out looking for firewood when it started to rain very heavily. She was unable to take shelter from the pouring rain. She became very ill and had to be admitted to the hospital. Her membership in MAPARBEMPCO entitles her to PhilHealth insurance coverage. She was admitted to a private hospital nearby and had to only pay P 2000 in excess. But she did admit this was a lot considering, she only received about P 4000 honorarium for her duties in a committee. 

She has a young grandchild whose mother was an OFW, working in Dubai. The child's school expenses were borne by the grandmother. She enjoyed looking after her grandchild. At the time of the interview, the child was nowhere to be seen.