The Ark
Copyright © 2020 by VeryWellAged
What was and what will be...12
Author's note: These chapters are NOT stand-alones...The story starts here.
What was and what will be...13
Lorie is with child! We are sure of it now, as it has been four months since her last period. The gals have all decided this requires a party. … And, they tell me, it requires Lillian to attend.
Why? We will bring her for the birth. Why now, CiCi?
Don’t be difficult. This important. You must show respect.
That makes no sense. There’s nothing about this party that requires the ‘respect’ thing. Sure, when the baby arrives, then respect… sure… the grandmother can be here. That’s respect. … Besides, Jessa’s due date is in ten days. Why the fuck would I want Lillian here and the focus all on Ri at such an important time for Jessa? So, no. It’s not going to happen.
CiCi is not happy, but Lillian is a wildcard for any number of reasons, and I want to limit the time she will be with us. She will likely be here for a month or more once Lorie gives birth. If she comes now, will she ever leave? I can see the stay extending, and extending more, and then… No, uh-uh, not having that.
There’s a downside to building a really nice and large home here. People look at what they have, and what they might have if they move and… then they do the mental math. ‘What do I need to do to get that nicer place?’
Think I’m wrong? Move here and find out. Of course, if you are just scraping by as a pensioner in the UK, or Norway, or Germany, you probably don’t have the pesos to build a nice place. But if you own a decent home in the USA, where most of us own our homes rather than rent like they do in Europe, well then, you will have the funds to build something the locals here will call a mansion, even if you wouldn’t.
You know, it’s odd. I have, over the three years I’ve lived here, met a number of expats. They fall into five buckets for me.
The bucket with the fewest members holds those guys who got here decades ago, married, got employment and became part of the culture here. All of them speak the local languages. Most of these guys are from Europe and originally were seafarers. The Philippines was a port they would come to and, eventually, they found a Filipina and never left.
Their homes are pretty traditional Filipino-style places. Some of them are farmers now, and so, the homes are nicer than the basic Filipino home, but no one would call these places mansions.
The second bucket are those guys from Australia. There aren’t many of them. They tend to be a hybrid of sexual tourist / vacationer and local ne’er-do-well drunk. Typically, they have more money than brains, or they have pickled those brains. They have steady ‘family’ income from something in Australia, but are useless fucks, drunks, losers, con-artists or fighters. They live in meager accommodations, where they shack up with their local squeeze, before returning to Australia every so often for a long stay there.
The third bucket are ex-military guys from the US. Many of them are on double or triple pension schemes. They spent twenty-plus years in the service. That gives them their first pension. They have a disability payment from a seventy percent to over a ninety-five percent disability. Plus, many of them worked for a civilian company after their service, which generated yet another pension.
So, on a monthly basis, these guys have a shitload of money. But they never owned a damned thing. They either couldn’t settle down, or drank all the funds every month. In many ways, they behave like their Australian counterparts, other than they do not leave. They mostly live in tiny, hot, cramped little shitholes. While most of them have wives, and kids with those wives, they are rarely home other than to sleep before meeting up with their buddies at a bar. Eventually, they wear out their welcome at one establishment and have to find a new bar.
The fourth bucket are the guys from the EU and UK who got here for a woman and to retire. Their income is limited and they never owned a home in their lives. They brag about how much better healthcare is in their country than it is here, or in the US, but they ain’t in the EU or the UK, so why are they here if it’s all so peachy there?
These guys tend to hang together; the Brits with other Brits; the guys from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark tend to hang out as a group; the Norwegians floating between all of them. Their places are often modest and, while there are drunks in the group, others try to find work to supplement their meager pensions.
The fifth group is the one I guess I belong to. Guys who are non-military US citizens. We were stable in the US. We had homes. We had good employment or owned businesses. We have retired here and have female companionship. Because we had a nest-egg of savings in the form of a house we could sell, we live in nicer surroundings now. We are not drunks and we pretty much don’t mix much with the other expats, as we have nothing in common with them.
The ex-military guys look down their noses at us and we, I guess return the favor, as many of them are drunks and clueless asses who deride those useless welfare types in the US, who didn’t serve and live off the largess of the welfare tit, as they, at the same time, scheme to cook up new ways to increase their disability pay by making bullshit claims they cook up while getting polluted at the bars.
We don’t mix with the Europeans who think they are more cultured and worldly than are we. Oh, they are decent enough when talking to them, but it’s like oil and water in other ways.
I, and the others in the same bucket I seem to be in, don’t interact much with the other expats. We have families here and keep to ourselves. For me, it’s pretty much essential that I do so. But to get back to what I started out musing on, if you have the funds and build a nice place with enough room then, yeh, then others scheme to figure out how to move in.
Lillian may not be in that mode right now, with her sari-sari business, but should she stay here long enough, I can see that changing. So, no, I don’t want her here for a party next week, and while we do need to show our happiness for Lorie, I don’t want Jessa’s time to shine to be diminished.
Jessa was three days early. I have another son, Ira Victor Arroyo Courtwright. And yes, this is the second of my sons with the first name of Ira, if you see names as we do in the USA. But this is not the USA, and he is Ira Victor. The other is Ira Edgar. See? Different names!
So, maybe you ask, which one will I call Ira? Neither. We have Ed and Vic. And, most likely, they will get nicknames that they will use on most occasions. Welcome to the Philippines.
I haven’t written much about Niana and, in truth, there hasn’t been reason to do so. She is Bim’s kid, and is here for that reason alone. She goes to school, is a good student, and is respectful. Yes, she eats the food that comes from my money, but that is inconsequential. She does need uniforms, shoes, books and school supplies, and other clothing, but those expenditures are minimal. Her presence is simply a function of my loving her mother.
She is nine years old now. Another new baby in our home is yet another opportunity for her to learn to mother, according to the gals. She has been mothering her little sister, Elenora Arlene, for a year, Ira Edgar for a year and a half, as well as Iris Rose, Mark James, and Mac. In fact, each of the mothers of these kids has been asking Niana to act as the Ate so often that she is in constant demand.
I’ve been becoming increasingly worried that all this is far too much to place on the kid’s shoulders. But, until now, Bim has warned me off of saying anything to the others.
There are times that I hit the bullshit button.
As I hear the gals, once again, kidding Niana that she has yet another kid to care for, I pretty much unload on all of them. OK, so the kid is not my daughter, but she lives in my home, and this has gone on long enough.
No! Niana is not your yaya1. Not for any of you! She is a student and a child in my home. If she has time and it doesn’t interfere with her responsibilities as a student or to her own baby sister, she may choose to help you, but you may not assign or ask her for assistance. Are we clear?
Bim is uncomfortable and Niana doesn’t want the gals to be angry with her. Is she afraid they will think she came to me and complained?
Ira, it is OK for Ana to help others, please. She not complain, I sure of it.
Niana is making noises of agreement with her mother, but I really don’t care.
I never said you, or Ana, came to me. I know you don’t want me to say what I have said. I don’t care. Ana lives in this house. She may not be my daughter but she is my responsibility and this is my rule. She is to have all the time she needs to be the best student she can be. You all want children? OK, that’s fine but Ana is not your yaya. Are we clear?
Tito, I want!
I know, Ana. I know, but your school work comes first. After you satisfy that, your next obligation is to your own sister. If you find you have time during breaks to help with others, OK, but they need to stop assigning you duties. And if you offer too much I’ll limit that. I may not be your father, but in a way I must act like it. Do you understand?
Yes, Tito.
Bim, are we going to have a problem, you and me, over this?
She is crying. No, Ira, no problem. Thank you for loving my daughter. I not argue with you.
No one else is arguing either. Sometimes a guy just has to be an asshole.
Ann has been keeping an eye on land we might find worth considering. It’s not a full-time activity, but when she finds an opportunity, she will mention it. Most of the time we just discuss the thing but take no action, or talk about which contact she knows might make the best use of her find.
This time, she has brought news that a parcel of land adjacent to our land is delinquent in taxes. Someone working in provincial government has been quietly paying the tax, in hopes of getting the land deed for the delinquency. The actual land owner can’t cover the taxes, as he has diabetes and is in failing health with large medical bills.
Ann suggests we intercede, give him a price for the land he will accept with the understanding that some of it will be used to pay the back taxes, which a proxy for Ann will pay in his name. He will get the balance and will not lose everything.
I ask her why he hasn’t sold it already.
No one want to buy. Land not on a road. No access unless through our property.
You do see landlocked properties here on occasion. I guess he could have come to me for a variance or donation for a road, but he didn’t. I can’t help that. But adding land behind our current property that is good for farming is a fine idea. There are eight hectares (about 20 acres) in the parcel. I have Ann make an offer via the proxy, to hide who is offering to buy the land. If Ann’s name is known, my involvement will be known and more money will be demanded. The proxy we use is an attorney from Tacloban. And the buyer is our trust. The landowner will not know that name, so the sale can proceed without the actual owners being identified.
We have five hectares (12 acres) now. Of that, two hectares are used for our home and grounds. The balance, three hectares, is being used for farming. We currently lease the farm land on a yearly basis. These extra eight hectares will create a far larger farm.
There’s talk that we should be farming it with hired labor. How we use the farm in the future is only being talked about but, for now, we will continue to lease our farmland.
Ann thinks that, as time passes, there are other adjacent parcels that may become available. If that is true, we may be forced to operate the farm ourselves. Managing multiple independent leases with farmers might prove to be more of a hassle, and the profits insufficient to the task.
I’m concerned that the offer to purchase will make the owner curious. Ann has a solution. The owner will be led to believe that the parties seeking to buy the land are hostile to the gal in the provincial government office that is quietly trying to gather up all sorts of properties in a stealthy manner. This is more of a war between a pissed-off citizen and the provincial government. The landowner is simply the sick but lucky fuck… between warring factions.
It sounds like a stretch to me, but it does appear to work. It takes only three weeks to make the purchase. It’ll take far longer to get a new clean title, but it’ll happen.
As Nelia’s second child, a daughter with the name of Maria Fernada Lopez Courtwright, enters the world on the twenty-ninth of February, 2008, her mother is part of a trust controlling thirteen hectares of good land. For Nelia, it’s quite a turn of life’s possible outcomes from her days before she came into my life. For our daughter, it’s a fate that will be unlike most Filipinas she will know as she grows into her own adulthood. Though there are other large landholders here, the percentage of them to the general public is very small.
Lorie’s due date is in two months. There have been no other pregnancies mentioned, but that does not mean there aren’t any. I typically don’t get the word until the third or fourth month.
We have been in the house long enough for me to know what our regular energy production is like, as well as how low it’ll go during bad times, and how much excess we produce at other times. I also have a sense of where I need to be in storage to manage it correctly.
I need to add storage as, in good times we produce a shitload more energy than we use and, while we do dip into the reserves each night, there are days where we are dipping for a prolonged period of time.
It’s not that we aren’t generating anything, it’s just that at those times we aren’t generating enough. By increasing our storage capacity by eighteen percent, it appears that I’ve solved that problem.
It also means that I can add another large refrigerator and another large freezer.
There’s another benefit that my gals had not considered when I told them that we were going to be completely off-grid. There are frequent power outages here. Such things happen for a variety of reasons, from rebuilding the infrastructure to equipment failures. At times we are the only place with power, with the notable exceptions where someone is running a generator.
I had thought about adding a generator but decided against it. There were a number of reasons. First, unless I elevated the generator, it would be at risk of inundation from water just when we might need it. Elevate it and you have to be hauling fuel up, plus the noise up here would be horrendous. It was simply better to increase storage capacity.
Allow me to introduce you to Lorie’s little girl, Cherry Joy Cruz Courtwright. She arrived on the evening of April 30th. Lillian arrived four days earlier and was with Lorie for the delivery. Mom and Lola2 are beyond happy. My initially underage love is twenty-one now and very much an adult.
And on this day I have nine children! Nine, for God’s sake. For a guy who will turn seventy in six months, it’s beyond crazy, right? It’s a damned good thing that there will be the large farm to support my family because I’ve no idea how much longer I’ll live, but I can’t imagine I’ll see all, or any, into adulthood.
With so many little ones, each a little younger than the next, we don’t have to buy a lot of new things for each as the next child comes along. What one grows out of, the next grows into. While folks swear that clothing for infants never wears out, here we seem to be trying to find out if there’s a limit to that.
There are interesting challenges, like feeding the kiddies. Sure, the younger ones are on a mixture of breast milk and formula, but the older ones are eating cooked food. And since there are a number of them, cooking a meal for so many little ones becomes a special daily activity of creativity.
And… if one of the kiddies starts to bawl, other kiddies seem duty bound to chime in. Luckily, that doesn’t happen often. They are pretty happy little tykes, and crying is at a minimum.
One other thing I note is that, while in the US, a kid wants ‘mommy’ and no one else. Here all eight gals seem to qualify as mommy and, when Lillian showed up, they accepted her as a surrogate mommy, too. Not a one of them seems to need a specific mommy. And, as a number of mommies have milk, finding the official mommy is not normally needed. It makes for happier kiddies and less stressed mommies.
All the little ones are OK in my arms as well, and I have to say I enjoy getting time with them. When I can hold a little one who has been fussing, he or she often enough just slumps into my arms, rests their head on my shoulder and goes to sleep. It feels damned good.
That happens on occasion when we are out shopping. Other women look, smile and make sweet comments to whichever gal is with me at the moment. My gals get a kick from it and seem proud.
Is it silly to say, it makes me happy too?
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