The poor people among the Filipinos live in a poverty, a misery, and
a happiness inconceivable to our people who have not seen it. Their
poverty is real--not only relative. Their houses are barely a covering
from rain or sun. A single rude bamboo bedstead and a stool or two
constitute their furniture. There is an earthen water jar, another
earthen pot for cooking rice, a bolo for cutting, one or two wooden
spoons, and a cup made of cocoanut shells. The stove consists of three
stones laid under the house, or back of it, where a rice-pot may be
balanced over the fire laid between. There are no tables, no linen,
no dishes, no towels. The family eat with their fingers while sitting
about on the ground with some broken banana leaves for plates. Coffee,
tea, and chocolate are unknown luxuries to them. Fish and rice, with
lumps of salt and sometimes a bit of fruit, constitute their only
diet. In the babies this mass of undigested half-cooked rice remains
in the abdomen and produces what is called "rice belly." In the adults
it brings beriberi, from which they die quickly. They suffer from
boils and impure blood and many skin diseases. Consumption is rife,
and rheumatism attacks old and young alike. They are tormented by
gnats and mosquitoes, and frequently to rid themselves of the pests
build fires under the house and sleep away the hot tropical night in
the smoke.
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