Rea’s entry: The first encounter

Rea’s Entry
The First Encounter
April 30, 2005

This day serves as a learning experience for me. This is my first day of interview and I have three people lined up.

At around 9 in the morning, I went to our neighbor for an interview regarding CAP. When I got there, their house is still messy and she was washing clothes at their backyard. She’s doing a hand wash so when she opened the door, she still got soap and bubbles all over her arms. When she saw me, she let me in and apologized for the mess. I told her if it was ok to do the interview and she said yes. She asked me if it was all right for me to do the interview while she’s washing clothes so I agreed. She is actually not an OFW but I wanted to know about her experience with CAP. She was really cheerful although she looks a little teary to me. She had worked as a CAP agent for 8 years to get a plan for her eldest son and she completed the payment by working in the company. It was her only chance to get her son ready for college since her way of living is by selling Avon products and Tupperware. She’s really worried about her son’s education. Her son is the valedictorian of their batch when he was in grade school and he is really intelligent for all the medals hanging on their Santo Nino’s neck. He’s a sophomore in a private high school. The school offered scholarship for his secondary education. Now her problem is where to get money for her son’s college education. It is not everyday that you can get a scholarship.

At 2 in the afternoon, I went to get another interview. This time she was a former nurse in Libya. She lives in Abucay Bataan, 20 kilometers away from the capital of the province. It is a two-story house but the façade is still not painted. She let me into the house which was fully furnished. And there are her two kids who are turning college freshmen a year from now. They are not twins but she got them to school at the same time. She is a widow. She is wearing a white collared-blouse tucked in her maong pants. She looks young for her age and she is currently involved in raising pigs. She usually drives her owner-type jeep which is actually air-conditioned. Her name is Precy Sangcal and she paid for the plans before she stopped working abroad. When I start asking questions about CAP, she really looks distressed and she looks serious about the topic. She did not get angry and start shouting and so. She just took it seriously and she was very formal about the whole situation.

I went to my last interview with Mr. Jun Canlas at around 5:30. The stretch of the road that leads out of the city, passing three towns before I got to Mr. Canlas’ house, runs through fields that are a sickly yellowish color with smoke almost everywhere. Dried rice stalks are being burned after they were harvested. When I got to their house, Mr. Canlas was already waiting for me and he let me in. His house is not that big and it is not yet painted and furniture is not the luxurious type. Looking at their house, I could see a middle-class family, living just right. They have a little farm away from home and they would spend their free time there. He was wearing a white Hanes shirt and a maong short with Beachwalk slippers on his feet. When we start conversing about the educational plans for his children, he seems teary and worried. He thought that he was not able to invest his earnings for a good business where they could get a great deal of money for them though he was able to buy three tricycles and a little farm. He was shaking his head while complaining about CAP and all that. In his last statement, he actually stood up and walked away from me. He was just staring out of their window while asking me if his children will be able to get the benefits intended for them in due time. He knows that he would not be able to get a decent job here in our country at the age of 55 so he is really exasperated where to get the money for his kids’ tuition fee in the future.