A Cultural Experience

Four days after arriving in country, we drove back up to Manila (yes, we are driving here already - even Jen!) for some orientation and other appointments. While there, we did a lot of shopping to set up our new home. After filling up the bed of our truck with household items, we began to hurry back to the office/guest home because it looked like it was going to rain; and we don't have a topper on our truck. In our haste, we ended up on the wrong road, headed in the opposite direction. Turning around here isn't as simple as it sounds. So I searched the map, figured out where I thought we were and determined a route to get us back on track. So we started following the roads on the map (which is an adventure in itself since none of the roads are marked here). While the roads were plotted correctly on the map, it failed to show that one of the roads we had chosen was taken over every night by a night market. By the time we realized the error of our ways, it was too late to do anything about it. So we inched along through the night market for 2 hours and traveled nearly 1/2 a mile. Since we were surrounded by throngs of people, and not going anywhere, Steve unbuckled so as to keep a better eye on all our stuff in the bed of the truck. After 2 hours of inching along and trying to console 3 hungry, tired kids, traffic suddenly started moving. Steve threw it into gear and hurried to keep up, lest we lose our chance. What he forgot to do was put his seat belt back on. As rampant as crime and corruption is here, it has recently become extremely important to them that everyone buckles up. So we immediately got pulled over (they have several people at each intersection specifically for this purpose). Try though we might to explain the situation, the officer wanted a very large bribe ($50 or 2 weeks' good wage) and threatened to take away our license if we did not pay on the spot. We haggled and stalled and finally said that it was a "company car" and we needed to call our "boss" about what to do. So we called our business manager on the phone and he tried talking to them. When that didn't work, he said he would come down. After 30 minutes, he arrived decked out in his biker gear (he was headed to lead a biker Bible Study); he did not exactly fit the profile of a professional "boss", but we were thankful for his presence. He haggled with them some more (he confirmed that they were only looking for a bribe), and then we waited them out. Eventually they gave Steve's license back, and we went on our way. A trip that should have taken 15 minutes took 3 1/2 hours. Welcome to the Philippines! But we were just thankful to have arrived safely with all our stuff - and our licenses!