Many things are unseen to the untrained eye…..sometimes it feels like that is best in terms of ones sanity. Some of us have begun to see the less obvious things happening around the city….behind the scenes of Dumaguete. We are fighting with the desparation and the reality that we can’t seem to do enough….that there is so much left unattended. Let me try to play it out as I see it for you….I warn you that this blog may be a bit blunt……but it’s real…..
It’s nighttime, we are ordering dinner at a Hotel restaurant on the Boulevard. Most of the team is immersed in laughter, while making sure dinner orders are correctly taken. Two of us are distracted by what ‘appears’ to be innocent behavior, all around us. Older men drinking beers with younger, more exotic looking women. As the night wears on, we start to focus more and more on the interactions…..on the chaos.
Filipino girls arrive, Filipino girls leave…….with a man in tow. It becomes a game of charades and I can’t help but pull my camara out to ‘innocently’ video record it. At one point, someone beckons a man to the hotel entrance. He enters and follows a girl to the rooms……he is white and much older…..she is Filipino and much younger. We leave that night feeling a sense of unease over everything we witnessed that night.
We meet Sunny for coffee one day……there is an older white man sitting nearby, drinking his coffee. Hanging on to his arm is a pretty Filipino girl……she doesn’t even look 20…..she just stares at him, not drinking anything. He gets up to pay and she waits for him to beckon her over……they leave…..she is hanging on to his arm. Later that night, a white man 
walks down the street with three younger local girls on his arms……they wear skin tight mini dresses.
Who is the wrong one? Are these men perverted and seeking younger women, preying on their vulnerability? Are the women inviting it…..desperate for a better life? One contact I met said many of the hotels around here are known to function somewhat like brothels. Another said child prostitution is not unknown…..the pimps will even go to the mountain villages to seek out children. What does that say for many of the beautiful children we meet and there future. How do we intervene? Many organizations are already starting to work on the root: poverty. International Care Ministries and Little 
Children of the Philippines are two of the groups that focus on education and improving the hunger in this country.
