The unfortunate cocks

In the end, the typhoon Ruby/ Hagupit only caused one night of rain and a few days of overcast weather. Nothing scary. The day after the typhoon we found out that if the typhoon does not come to you, it doesn't mean that it will not affect you. We wanted to get our Filipino drivers licenses, but that was not possible because they could not make internet contact with the head office (?? We had internet). Their working hours are already interesting. We were warned not to come before 9 (computers are still off) and not after 11 (early lunch time), but even within this limited time frame we were told to come back another day. That was the start sign of 2 days without internet, which gave Dolf the time to mess around with our new second hand car. After blowing some fuses he did manage to change the car radio all by himself. All other small stuff which had to be repaired was done by the mechanic (who does not necessarily do a better job than Dolf).

I forgot to mention that I visited the national sport in the Philippines a few weeks ago, the cock fighting. This is a brutal fight between to cocks, who both wear a knife at one of their legs, so they can slice open the other cock. I went with Marvin, the dive master of Bongo Bongo, who used to work there before. Taking an insider with you definitely improves your understanding.

Each Sunday afternoon, there are cock fights in the pit, the stadium. Dauin only has 5000 inhabitants and is not very rich, but the pit is some like a small concrete football stadium with a ring in the middle for the fights. Before each fight the most interesting part of the process takes place. Everybody starts shouting like crazy to place bets on other one of the cocks. A bet on one cock can be has high as 20.000 pesos (around 400 euros, all bets combined) on a normal Sunday. Before the betting starts, both owners of the cocks show how aggressive their cock is by letting him pick at the other cock three times and let the cock prance around on the ground for 30 seconds.

The actual fight can be over in less than 30 seconds if one of the cocks jumps on the other and slices open his whole belly/ neck/ other body parts so the wounded cock can't do anything anymore and sags through his legs. Both cocks are picked up from the ground and dropped again. If one of them does not attack anymore, there is a winner. The looser ends up in the owners frying pan in the evening. After watching 8 fights you get the general idea and it was time to leave again.

Because you are sitting 5 m from the ring and the arena is surrounded by a 1.5 m plastic wall it doesn't look that bad, because you only see the feathers flying around and only a limited amount of blood. After each fight, the blood and feathers are swept away and the blood is removed from the wall. If you visit an illegal cock fight in the garden of the neighbor, it looks a bit more bloody. The looser was showed around with blood leaking from him and the entrails hanging out...

On Super Sunday which is once every 1-2 months, cock fighters from a much bigger area come and fight, sometimes even from Manila. The entrance alone is already 500 pesos (the average payment for a job like construction worker is 300 pesos a day) and people (males) wager their whole salary on a fight.

When your house is on fire, you first save your cocks and only then your wife and children. This common joke shows how important cocks are in Filipino society. Half of the families in Dauin have 5 or more cocks in a cage or on a leash in their garden.

When you see a large group of people making a lot of noise you think they are watching a fight between two people, but most of the time it is just trading or selling cocks or an actual cock fight.