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Lopez de Legaspi #2420

Most of them live at the low end of the scale. They live in ramshackle, leaky houses and drive smoke-belching cars if and when they have enough money to buy gasoline. Yet they will pay $200 to $500 dollars for the latest, niftiest, shiniest cellular phone that just hit the market so they can show it off to their friends.

Ninth-grade educations are all that are required by law and it would cost you a small fortune to complete the high school levels. And college? Well, for most of them, they can just forget about college unless they gotta rich, sober daddy.

Corrupt politicians and corrupt policemen grace their lives with the sickening sense of dread and have all but killed their dreams of the 21st century. They flit from prosperity to scorn to forlorn loneliness at the mention of tomorrow. Dirty politicians won’t change laws and dirtier policemen and judges won’t arrest, charge, convict, nor imprison the corrupted because it would mean imprisoning themselves.

Two social classes exist: the haves, and the have-nots. What we’ve grown accustomed to knowing of as the "middle class" does exist, but their population is so sparse and their political power so weak that they are hardly worth mentioning, except as a side note.

Panhandlers and beggars litter the streets with their never-ending coke bottles, disposable plates, and pleas for alms. Woe unto one that wearies of their tactics, for they are strong and believe that those who have worked for their money have a responsibility to support those who refuse to. Feisty and aggressive, they wait for their chance to make those who work every day feel guilty about their success, as if they somehow should deserve it too.

Any monkey can complain, as often monkies do. Fighting for blood to find solutions takes a different calibre of character. I haven’t found that calibre here. And I'm going on four years here.

Perhaps I am looking in the wrong places.