Gary and his FX:
I’ve decided that I’ll write a few posts from time to time about real-world Flipinos I have met and interacted with … the kind of folks that you will very likely meet and interact with too if you decide someday to "make the move."
Last Sunday I wrote about the bus boy at our table in Market Market, Manila … I thought it was a good story and others did too. I think it’s really important to point out to foreigners that real Filipinos are not at all the liars, crooks and cheats that are the staple ingredient of most American TV shows and movies.
One of the people I’ve met several times since I came to live here is a fellow named Gary. He’s a long-time friend of my brother-in-law, Philip (commonly known as ChiCong … I think I need to do a couple posts on Filipino nicknames and their origins 
) so he’s often been around the family home when I’ve been there.
Gary earns his living as an FX driver. I wrote a bit about the FX business here. It’s commonly called a ‘car service’ and the operators make regular trips from a terminal nearby to designated locations in Manila every morning and back home at night. As jobs go it’s not bad for Filipino jobs .. working six days a week fighting the traffic 9 or 10 hours a day Gary can probably clear about 800 Pesos a day … if the price of gas doesn’t shoot up too much more.
Many readers …
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already know that my wife Carmita and I began our romance by meeting online and it blossomed over time as I made a numbe rof trips to the Philippines and finally "popped the question" and sponsored her for a K1 fiancee visa to the US after she honored me by accepting.
The K1 process is time consuming and uses up a lot of pager. especially on the foreigner end of the process there is a lot of documentation and forms to collect, get certified, make innumerable copies of, get the copies certified and carry around from place to place.
Just before the final step in the process Mita had quite a bundle of papers in preparation for her interview at the US Embassy, Manila where they would decide if she was ‘good enough’ to enter the US to marry me. One morning back in Colorado, the time when Mita would usually be commuting home from her job in Manila I received a frantic phone call from her.
She was in tears and very upset. After I finally got the story, my heart sank as well. What had happened was, she had commuted home in an FX and when she got to the terminal had unconsciously done one of those ‘spaced out’ things and walked off leaving the special bag with all those precious papers … even her Philippine passport in the anonymous FX … never to be seen again, we both thought. After she regained her composure she agreed to go back to the FX terminal and ask around but we both thought we were hearing that Brooks and Dunn song in the background … you know the one …
It’s kinda like a lost and found In a border town Askin’ bout a diamond ring They just look at you Like you’ve lost your mind Say they haven’t seen a thing…
Sure enough, the fellow running the FX terminal had absolutely no idea .. "No ma/am, no one has turned anything like that in at all."
Oh well, we both thought, at least it wasn’t a diamond ring or thousands of dollars. It’ll just take the best part of another year and waiting out another INS visa petition before we can get this job finished.
But while we were bemoaning the incident, the unknown driver of Mita’s FX had seen the bag, taken one quick look at the contents and rushed it to the home of the president on the local FX driver’s association. The president had the (to us) precious package in his hand but didn’t immediately know how to find Carmita Sevilla or David Starr. But he did recognize Mita’s family name … he new Gary had gone to school with someone with that name … you’ll find family names and school ties here in the Philippines are a big thing .. so he called Gary and asked him to drop by at the end of Gary’s run.
When Mita got back home after a disappointing trip to ask the terminal operations folks about her precious bag, Gary was waiting in front of the house to take her to the association president’s house and claim her belongings. He could have been on the road making his last trip/profits of the day, but he new how important those papers must be, so they were not going to let her spend a sleepless night worrying.
Just an ordinary day in a Manila suburb … not really the same as a border town at all, in my view.
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Nice story, Dave. I bet that when you have been with Gary at the times that he hangs around with the family, you have really been nice to the guy! I know that I would! Guys like Gary are more common here than guys who would try to sell you the package back, or somehow try to benefit from it.
Exactly … Gary is good people. And a part of the story I may not have made quite clar … the whole process took longer than it might of, because several levels of ‘supervison’ had to get into the game. Not, as the average American might think, to grab some cash … the only guy in the whole affair that ever got aything was a small reward Mita gave the original driver … but becuase their organizations, like the driver’s association, are important to the guys who have formed it. I’ve learned a valuable lesson several times since now … how could I phrase it … let people do it their way, the Filipino way is not always wrong but it is almost always different.
As long as the package came back, unharmed, what difference did it make that several levels of the ‘chain of command’ had to get involved?
I think I just suggested another whole blog post, really, this is a country of organizations, elections, politics in the strangest places and delicadesa … a lot to learn at times.