Letter from "women on the run" in Baguio City, Philippines

Dear Sisters,

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are a group of grassroots women living here in Baguio City, Philippines. Our e-mail address describes quite aptly the lives we live. The day starts with us waking up at four o'clock in the morning to do our routine work of fetching water, washing the family's dirty clothes, cooking the family's food for the day, preparing what the children need for school and other work. Even before the family wakes up, we are already out running from the house to earn a living. We earn the family's daily subsistence from selling fruits and vegetables in the city markets streets and other busy streets of the city. The work we do is illegal from the government's eyes. You see you need a permit and to rent a stall in the market where you can display your goods to be allowed to sell. That is expensive. Only the moneyed business people can afford it. In a city that prides itself as a premier tourist destination, women like us are considered an eyesore in the city's busy streets. But when you have children to feed and faced with no choice, what is illegal becomes a necessity. We go ahead and sell our goods anyway. When the police comes, we just carry our goods in the basket in our heads and run. If you are unlucky and the police catches up with you, your goods gets confiscated and made to pay a heavy fine. If you are lucky to have survived the police and able to sell your goods, you could only thank your god. So at the end of the day, with the little money you have earned, you run to the market to buy family food for the next day and again fruits and vegetables to sell the next day. From the market, you must run home to check on the children, cook, wash, clean the house and prepare for the next day. Most often, we sleep at eleven o'clock in the evening at the earliest. But even sleeping is a luxury. When you have bills and rent to pay, the children's school expense to think of and not knowing where to get the money to pay them, sleep comes hard.

If you had a bad luck with the police, you must borrow money from private lenders who charge you interest of twenty percent a month and just close your eyes and pray that tomorrow you make a good sale so you could pay back. It is also to these private lenders that you run to for money to pay the bills. For many of us, we are trapped in debts, we do not seem to be able to get out off.

Many of us dream of seeing our children finish school, get a degree and land a good job that they may able to live a more human life we never had the chance to have. But that is all a dream. School is expensive so most of our children drop out in the grades and go on to relive the lives we went through.

You do not know our group, but we heard much about your group from Tex when we were still being organized by the then Tahanang Walang Rehas (Home Without Bars) which Tex headed. Matter of fact, you inspired our activism as a group. When Tex was discussing with us your campaign to have housework be paid, we told him with no reservations we wanted in. We were I believe the only group among those organized by TWR to go on no work strike on women's day, the first time the strike was introduced. Unfortunately, Tex left when we were just getting started and needed someone to lead us through. We were hoping the women's movement would pick this up and give the necessary lift but this never happened. And for many years, we only hear of your group if ever from some NGOs which used to network with TWR.

Recently, we came into contact with a small NGO called People's Action. They are helping us with our campaign to have the city government give us some time in the day to be free to sell our goods. People's Action was very active in the campaign to stop the war in Iraq and when they gave us one of your fliers, we asked them to help us initiate contact with your group. It was they that helped us secure your contact e-mail address for us. We also asked them to help us draft this letter since we cannot write English that well although we can understand it. Most us finished an average of five years in school.

We could go on and on but this should do in the meantime. We hope to hear from you.

Together in the struggle to give us women what we justly deserve

Irene T. Marconi
Samahan ng mga Kababaihang Nagtitinda Sa Lansangan ng Baguio

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