Welcome to the Philippines

I hadn’t been in Manila five minutes before someone was offering me sex.

My taxi driver from the airport, probably quite reasonably assuming that as a solo male arriving in the Philippines I might be one of the country’s many visiting ‘sex tourists’, could easily set me up, no problem. ‘You want beautiful girl, I can find you! Look here!’ (He pointed to one of the many sex clubs we were passing on the drive into town).

Outside my guest house, when I went searching for dinner, the propositions continued. Various men approached me, offering a choice of many beautiful girls, all assuredly aged between 16 and 24 (in reality, it’s thought that up to half of prostitutes working here are under the legal age). I’m used to being offered cigarettes or other drugs by street traders; here the trade was all for Cialis and Viagra.

Child prostitution and human sex trafficking are big business here in the Philippines, with the trade often controlled by organised crime syndicates. In Olongapo City, where I have mostly been staying, it’s estimated that up to 8% of the population are prostitutes; perhaps this is the sorriest legacy of all from the days when the US navy was based at nearby Subic Bay. Although the sailors have left, plenty of other western visitors have helped to keep the trade very much alive, including many paedophiles who know that this is one country where their desires will be easily satisfied. Poverty is another major driver; low rural income has led to a massive urban drift but in the cities work opportunities are very limited for people arriving from the countryside.

I’m actually here in the Philippines to meet with the Preda Foundation and with some of the farmers they work with near Mount Pinatubo, five hours to the north of Manila. Preda, which has a strong focus on winning freedom for underage sex workers, and on gaining legal justice for sex abuse victims, helps to support its operations through the sale of fair trade dried fruits including one of our most popular products, a delicious dried mango.

The farmer groups I visited had their own stories of oppression to tell; as indigenous Aeta, they have had to fight for decades to secure ownership rights to their traditional ancestral lands, and they regularly protest in an attempt to contain the spread of illegal mining activity in their region. Preda supports them in a number of ways and although these Aeta still feel discriminated against, they are now much more confident of their rights and feel more empowered to defend these rights.

Teresa de la Cruz illustrates the kind of difference her community has seen as a result of the legal advice they have received from Preda. ‘In the past, if we would go to a local hospital we would be turned away; now we know our rights better we are able to receive treatment as a result’. Another member of the group, Salvador, told me how a cousin of his had been offered Paracetamol as treatment for malaria and later died.

Reflecting on the stories I have heard from the Aeta community, and conscious that by staying at Preda’s headquarters in Olongapo I was sleeping under the same roof as dozens of young women who have been rescued from sex trafficking rings and are being provided protection and support, I’m comforted by the thought that at Trade Aid we are supporting the fight against both ethnic discrimination and sex slavery through our trade.

Heading back to Manila airport in a different taxi, I’ve been offered more girls by my driver. ‘Students’. Thinking of the thousands of taxi drivers who are, in effect, the country’s doormen peddling sex in this manner, it’s hard for me to foresee a day when the Philippine sex industry might shrink to a more moderate size. Preda’s work is far from done.

Three nights in Bangkok

After two weeks of long and occasionally gruelling days of working on the move, I’m taking what I believe to be a well-earned break for the next three nights and two days here in Bangkok. To my no great surprise, my body is shutting down now that time is my own again and I don’t expect to stray very far from the guest house – perhaps just to stroll as far as the street food sellers outside the nearby Ari Skytrain station for hot food and some cooling, sliced fruit.

I’ve been recommended some of the most popular tourist spots as places to go over the weekend; the Grand Palace, a river cruise, or perhaps the floating market at Damnoen Saduak, which is an hour or two from Bangkok by bus. The combination of Bangkok’s sultry heat and my general fatigue will probably scupper these plans but I’ve also already had good opportunities during the past week to visit numerous temples and some rather more authentic markets in small-town Thailand. However, it was not these experiences but the human encounters I’ve had here that have been so enjoyable and so inspiring for me.

The organic Jasmine rice harvest started this week in the Yasothorn region of eastern Thailand, and I was lucky enough with the timing of my visit to catch it in the company of staff from Green Net, from whom Trade Aid imports brown and white organic rice. The region was busy with farmers out bent forward in their paddies, sickles in hand, cutting ripe stalks of rice and laying them flat in the fields behind them to dry. Occasionally the puttering of a diesel-powered two-wheel tractor could be heard from the paddy of the rare farmer who could afford to use one to help to transport their dried and bundled rice stalks back to their home in a nearby village.

While the average age of rice farmers here continues to rise – it’s now over 50 – I also met with a number of younger farmers who still love the simpler, family-centred life out in the countryside and who are determined to remain self-sufficient on their tiny (by our standards) blocks of land. One young woman, Sawitri, particularly impressed me. She studied political science at her local university but sees her future to be on the land. ‘Studying at university helped me to develop an independent streak, and to become more proactive’ she explained. ‘I’ve bought just over a hectare of paddy of my own which I’ve planted out in rice. I may keep on with my part-time accounts role at the local rice mill but I don’t need to; the amount of land I have is sufficient and I can survive off it’.

A long day’s travel from Yasothorn, I also met with members of a small coconut farmer group who live near the coastal town of Ban Krut, more than five hour’s drive south of Bangkok. In a region where corrupt politicians own a lot of land and use their power and influence to create landscape-destroying development, the group originally formed six years ago to protest against plans to construct a lignite-fired power plant in their district. Their protests have been successful - so far – and the power plant is now off the agenda but their quiet, clean and sleepy part of the countryside is still under threat.

‘We’re still protesting!, explained Pongsak Budhruk, the leader of the group whose organic coconuts are now processed into milk and exported to fair trade organisations in Europe (and possibly soon to New Zealand, too). ‘Now our local politicians are trying to build a steel mill here. We’ve got an alternative idea – we want to make this region a coconut-growing capital instead!’

I often think about buying a piece of land and becoming more self-sufficient, but everyone I met in the rice and coconut farmer groups I‘ve visited is already doing it and although they admit the pay isn’t good – as low as $5 per day for a family in some cases – and the weather is unreliable, I don’t get the sense that any of them would want to trade places with me. If this doesn’t inspire me to grow more of my own food, too, then whatever would?