God's Unheplful Interference

As I continue to be flabbergasted each day as to why so many people here with so little money want to do so little work, I have come to understand God's very unhelpful interference with life here for the ordinary Filipino.

Whilst I could provide a thousand and one examples in my short stay of attempting to pay money for a service and then be rejected because of an unwillingness to provide that service because staff are either too tired, no available change, about to go home, haven't yet began work etc etc, I will stick to one example particularly close to home.

A large chunk of money is owed to my beloved that had been incurred by close relatives last October. Despite promises of "next week...next week....next week" the debt of course is still outstanding. It seems the relatives in question had made no effort at all to ever try to source the funds to repay the debt despite promises to the contrary. Like all things here, a problem now is one that can be solved later.

Relocating to another continent is never cheap even if it is to The Philippines and my beloved set a very firm deadline to receive the funds by Sunday 25th January. Of course, the debt was not paid.

But why I have come to so despise the culture of sheer laziness here was best epitomised in an sms my beloved received from one of the relatives in question last night. The sms was not a further promise to pay, it was not a proposed payment plan and it wasn't even an apology for failing once again to deliver the funds as promised. It was instead a parable about a man who requested a flower from God but instead was delivered a cactus. An when that man then asked instead for a butterfly, he received a worm. The man was deeply saddened by God's rejection of his request but when he woke the next morning, the cactus had borne a beautiful flower and the worm had turned into a beautiful butterfly.

The short of all this bullshit was that his conscious was absolutely crystal clear; if God had wanted him to repay the funds he would have been provided the money. My beloved wanted her money back (read: flower) but had been delivered zip (read: a cactus). But that was for the best, according to God. At least, his interpretation of God.

So sure was he of God's will, the ring leader had pointed out to my beloved that he had been consistently praying for the funds since last October when they first incurred the debt. No doubt he and the other relatives have plenty of time to pray, indeed in a household of 7 adults only one of them has a job - the live in maid. Must be all that praying they are doing because it seems unemployed people here don't even have the time to cook or clean for themselves.

Hallelujah for overseas remittances.

It is difficult to shake our terribly pc liberal values being raised in a country like Australia but let's give ourselves a break and not feel too guilty.