Two Pleasant Surprises

Leaving the apartment this morning with my son for our daily walk to the market, I received two very pleasant surprises. As mentioned in yesterday's post, the crew doing the repair work on the bridge near our apartment began pouring concrete into the wooden frames. When I saw the amount of work done this morning, I could hardly believe my eyes. The men had accomplished much more than I had expected them to do.

I have no idea how long the crew worked yesterday, but we can be sure that it could not have been past 5:30. They certainly would not have been out there working after the sun went down. For all I know, they could have completed their work much earlier than that.

The two photos show a before and after of the bridge. The angle of the two shots is not exactly identical, but one can see the progress made after one day of bucket brigade cement pouring.

The 2nd surprise of the morning came as we left the market area in Poblacion headed home; there I saw a crew of three men and one woman, wearing bright yellow vests, and carrying yellow trash bags, removing the political signs that had practically blanketed the town since before Monday's election. It was really nice to see the local government taking the initiative. I'm assuming - although I could be mistaken - that the crew was being paid by the Poblacion barangay. When we entered Cangmating, there were still quite a few political signs. Granted, most the the sari sari stores in Cangmating had removed the signs in front of their businesses, but there were a lot of signs stapled to random trees and isolated walls. If the crew was being paid by the Poblacion barangay, it would be understandable that they would not be removing signs in another barangay.

There is still much to be done in Philippines in order to clean up the litter and general untidiness, but the removal of these political signs so soon after the election is a step in the right direction.