17. Around the Neighborhood

Hi Everyone,



Here's Lovely's children-- Rap-Rap and RJ-- sitting outside Denzil's house. Denzil's family occupies the left side both upper and lower. The upper right side is stunningly furnished and is reserved for the owners. Since they live in Hawaii and only use this for a summer home, they rarely are here. The three people on the right occupy the lower right part of the building. The dog we see on the left is Melko, one of Denzil's dogs. He's chained up to his shed on the left, but keeps breaking the chain. I had to think about how the rainbow light that envelopes Melko got into the picture. The picture really was very light because fog had settled in the scene. I had to bring the contrast up and the brightness down. I think the rainbow appeared from the mist in the fog. Heide says "It looks like the "mist in Avalon' (from King Arthur)".





Heide enjoys playing with Melko. He doesn't like me much. Notice the light socket on his neck. This is Denzil's temporary solution to keep Melko from breaking loose and running away. Sometimes Melko climbs the hill and gets the remainder of his chain tangled in the weeds. The weeds hold him until we can climb the hill to get him.




A couple of doors down-- in front of the jeep parked sideways-- is a guy burning a chicken with a propane torch. I don't know if he's just trying to singe the feathers off the chicken or trying to cook it.





You can always find jeeps, jeepneys and taxis on the side of the road being worked on. This turkey, who wanders freely in the neighborhood, contemplates this guy trying to fix his jeep. Can't get much advice from this turkey.




Our turkey also wanders around the street and steals food from the caged chickens.





I love this photo of a boy peering out from this unfinished house. Metal rods protrude everywhere from this concrete structure. The occupants treat the unfinished upper part like a patio and hang clothes there.





This is a set of condominiums in a gated complex. Although foreigners aren't allowed to own property in the Philippines, they are allowed to purchase condos. All these houses are identical and people are currently living in the finished units. There is a guard at the gate to monitor who enters and leaves this compound. Here we see concrete houses being given a wood finish.





Heide loves to smell flowers. Unfortunately, we've been told that these flowers are smoked by some people. It's supposedly more potent than marijuana. However, Heide says "You don't get high by just smelling."




These are some schoolgirls we encountered on our walk up the hill. I love seeing these uniformed school children walking home from school. It looks like it belongs to another era.


Duane and Heide.