We all around the world, not only politicians, are subject to behave in a hypocritical way many times per day but when I was travelling around The Philippines I noticed a very subtle, almost refined, I might say joyful fashion to say/write something and behave in a totally opposite way.
So many times I read words like "Be even if the others are not, will not, can not" not to mention the so many statues of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Maria in the schools, in the squares or at the entrance of a village. Despite I am a catholic and comes from a very catholic country like Italy, I was astonished to take a ride with a taxi driver listening on the radio to a mass, as well as watching a mass celebrated inside a mall on a temporary church. So you would expect a country populated by devoted catholics where you can breath honesty all around the streets, a kind of Japan where you can leave your bicycle unlocked or where your forgot belongings will be immediately given back to you like it happened to me in Chiang Mai (Thailand). But the reality is totally different, it strikingly different because if you forget your wallet or your glasses on a restaurant table, you have the same chance to get it back as you would have in Brazil, because if you enter a wrong poor area of a big city you should be as careful as you were in Ecuador. Yet, as my friend Michael suggested me, the biggest and most widespread epidemic known in this country is that of young, if not very young, single mothers who have been, forgive me the rude verb, fucked and then kicked away by their young sweetheart or by their old uncle or neighbour. When locals or my friends who lived there I could not believe it, I mean, when you talk with those lovely, sweet, young students they are polite but they are or pretend to be so shy, modest, devoted to their family and to their future husband that I could barely believe how the real situation is. Elio, 35 years in The Philippines, told me that at the end of the month in Dumaguete City you can see many young students "waiting" on the street side in the hope that a foreigner or local man stop there offering a "monetary help" for their University fees in exchange of some good sex. Please be careful, I am NOT judging these girls, certainly poor, in a negative way, I just say that in the hypercatholic Philippines thefts, assaults and sex are not a taboo at all. On the other side, this is probably, along with Thailand the country where people were so enthusiast of the Francisco Pope arrival (every TV and radio program was for the pope and Manila airport was closed for His arrival), gays and transexuals are openly accepted, even youngsters show openly their sexual tastes and seem absolutely happy and at ease with their life. In this case many countries, Italy included has so much to learn from The Philippines.
