I wonder if Macarthur felt this way when he steamed into the Gulf of Leyte. Somehow I don’t see him as shirtless and blasting Golden Earring, but who knows, maybe he was into that sort of thing. Anyways, we’re here; spent yesterday cruising through passes between Philippine Islands. Dodged every size boat from outrigger canoes with two stroke engines to big car ferries last night on the ten to two, moving from the radar to the binoculars to the tiller to make sure we were on course, not of the collision variety.
Arrived in Cebu this morning and squeezed into a drydocking facility. The shipyard is…functional. Ought to be interesting to spend the next month or so here. I’m not going to use the word squalor. Wait, yes I am. Shanty shacks of rusted corrugated and discarded boat fragments along the drydock slips serve for cooking, eating, and maybe some sleeping. A fine sheen of some petroleum product floats atop the water, and assorted garbage collects upon the banks, but that does not stop folks from bathing, washing clothes, and scrubbing their teeth in it. I am getting a bit ill typing this and thinking about it, actually. Dogs roam the shipyard making out as best they can. A guard tower consisting of a tin shack affixed atop a rusted water tower gives the armed guard sweltering inside a commanding view of the area where our boat is tied. Other boats are moored along the edges of the slip, and maneuvering within the strict confines is a tight squeeze. We pull up right behind a military patrol boat that has completed repairs and is getting ready to leave the yard, already bristling with guns and a new coat of navy grey paint.
The most striking feature about the yard is its workers. As we squeezed past other boats under repair, work ceased and heads poked out along the shoreline, the shanty shacks, the assorted decks of the large ferry boat under repair beside us, including, most comically, a hole cut out of the hull near the waterline. I got the impression that I was being scrutinized by a clan of thrift store ninjas. The workers are, of course, Filipino, but you cannot tell by the way they are done up. Most of them wear a t-shirt on their head, by poking their head through the head hole and tying the sleeves behind the head, allowing the body of the shirt to gather around the neck. They complete the look by pulling the bottom part of the t-shirt’s head hole over nose and mouth, exposing only the eyes, which many of them cover with sunglasses. The idea is to provide some protection from the sun and assorted dangers of the shipyard.
Said dangers are myriad. This place is not, repeat not OSHA approved. Welding grinding, cutting, painting, winching, scaffolding, hoisting all occurs with a lack of protection that would make an American job safety manager go apoplectic. No ventilators, hearing protection, eye protection beyond cheap plastic shades, or steel toed shoes. There are some hard hats around, but for the most part, a t-shirt on the head ninja style suffices. That is not to say that these guys are careless or in considerable danger, just that things aren’t run to stringent U.S. standards. Part of the reason we’re here, I guess.
