Village Life in Philippines: A Struggle to Survive : Poverty: Unemployment is high, in part because young men often quit jobs. ‘When you work, you still earn nothing,’ one said.

As the first rays of morning burst over the verdant mountains, villagers awaken to nature’s alarm clock, the cacophony of hundreds of roosters signaling a new day.

Women in simple house dresses shuffle along the concrete streets to the neighborhood sari-sari stores to buy food for breakfast, usually rice with fish caught in nearby Laguna de Bay, a huge freshwater lake.

Men and women crowd around outdoor hand-cranked water pumps to bathe in the cool morning.

For the 25,000 people in this town 30 miles southeast of Manila, this day will be much like the thousands that preceded it, a search for sustenance.

During the last decade, the Philippine Islands have been shaken by political turmoil, economic dislocation and social unrest, including the 1986 “people power revolution” that toppled the late President Ferdinand Marcos and propelled Corazon Aquino into the presidency.

But in this town and the thousands like it where 70% of the 60 million Filipinos live, the rhythm of life has remained unchanged despite the upheavals in the capital, Manila. Life here is governed by customs and traditions shaped over the centuries.

Critics complain that many aspects of that lifestyle--including fatalism, family commitments and respect for authority--deter social progress.

But the timeless quality of Filipino life also provides a degree of stability in a nation still struggling to define its system of governing 44 years after independence from the United States.

Urban Filipinos, grappling with pollution, overcrowding and horrific traffic, tend to romanticize about the simple beauty of life in the provinces.

During religious festivals or public holidays, thousands of urban dwellers return to the provinces to visit relatives and tend the graves of ancestors. The better-off urban relatives often give money to their less-fortunate kin or, if possible, help them get jobs in the city.

For those who stay in the provinces, life is a struggle.

“It seems that nothing much has changed,” says Nita Bolante, a housewife. “Life is hard these days. Everything is expensive.”

Pililla, a farming and fishing village in a relatively prosperous province, is not faced with the kind of hopeless poverty seen in the mountain communities of Luzon Island or the hinterlands of Mindanao, the second largest of the 7,100 Philippine Islands.

But by Western standards, life here is grim.

Most people live in two-story, tin-roofed homes of wood and stone built close to one another. The ground floor houses chickens or an occasional pig and goat.

The second story serves by day as a sitting room, by night as a common bedroom where family members sleep on woven mats of palm leaves. Many residents tend small vegetable plots in a country with virtually a year-round growing season.

During the day, crowds of young men, dressed in T-shirts and shorts, loiter in the streets, unable to find work. So common is the phenomenon that the Filipino language has a word for them-- istambay, a Philippinized version of the English phrase “I stand by.”

Most istambays work occasionally, helping out in the fields during harvests, fishing or hustling cigarettes in the streets of larger towns.

When they accumulate a little money, they quit and fritter away their time drinking local whiskey until the cash is gone. Then they work again.

The Rev. Leonardo Legazpi, archbishop of Naga, attributes the istambay phenomenon to climate and centuries of colonial rule, which discouraged personal initiative.

“You build your house, then the typhoon blows it down, and you build it again,” Legazpi says. “The Filipino can work very hard, but there’s never a feeling that you work to improve your condition.”

One istambay, Ronnie Tejade, 28, says he worked most recently at an appliance factory until he accumulated enough seniority to qualify for severance pay.

He then quit, collected his money and used it to pay off his debts because his salary of $36 a month fell short of his expenses.

“When I don’t work, I earn nothing,” Tejade says. “When you work, you still earn nothing. It comes to that.”

But fatalism has prevented this sense of hopelessness from becoming the catalyst for social revolution.

“I’m not blaming the government,” Tejade says as he sips his whiskey. “We were born this way. We have to live our lives this way.”

Lack of educational opportunities contribute to the cycle. Pililla has a free, state-run elementary school, but the nearest public high school is 15 miles away in Morong.

There is no free school bus service, and many parents cannot afford the $14-a-month transportation charge, as well as fees for books, meals and uniforms.

For the more ambitious provinciano , the ticket to a better life has traditionally been a job abroad, especially in the Middle East. About 500,000 Filipinos work in Saudi Arabia and send home their savings to families in the provinces.

Many “Saudi boys,” as they are known locally, return with savings that they invest in small businesses, such as neighborhood stores.

“I have a dream, but it’s still unfulfilled,” says Hermi Retuerna, 28, a foreman on a small farm. “I want to join my brother in Saudi Arabia. I want to leave for the future of my two children.”

Long-term separations strain family ties, but the alternatives are worse.

“You may be together but you have nothing to eat and you cannot send your children to school,” says Mrs. Bolante, whose husband works in Saudi Arabia and sends $200 a month to his wife and five children. “At least there’s an assurance you’ll be able to eat.”

Family ties, strong in Philippine culture, keep many villagers from leaving. As in other Asian societies, Filipinos often live in extended families, with aged parents, breadwinners and children under the same roof.

Breadwinners pool their resources for the family’s livelihood. Those who cannot work are rarely turned away. The system inhibits a natural flow of workers to available jobs and keeps unemployment rates high in impoverished areas.

But it also provides an economic and psychological cushion in a country where few earn pensions or collect welfare.