Leaves Over Water

It seems I’m going to have to go through the tightest financial squeeze possible just to get this Quezon Project going. I’ve already paid the workers who planted the rice, I’ve paid my foreman Rene all his dues, and I was basically just waiting for harvest time this September. I was hoping to just rent one of the cottages beside the field as stockroom for the palay
(for, say, P500 a month), and so I thought I already put a ceiling to my expenditure.

But then it shot through the roof. I visited the lola who lives alone in the cottage just beside the field, hoping to negotiate and convince her to rent out her hut. It turned out though that her patched-up, plywood-and-tin-roof affair of a house is too rickety to hold up sacks of palay. It might hold 5 to 10 sacks, doubtfully at that, but certainly it would give way under the weight of 40 to 50 sacks. Just to test its frailty, I did a low jump (just two or three inches off the floor) — and the whole shack shook when I landed. I thought she was just holding out for a higher rent, but no, she was being realistic.

I inquired next from the other shanty owners if they had space available, but though they were willing, their shanties were just as frail. It dawned on me that I had no choice. I would have to suck it up and come up with money fast — or else harvest time would come and the palay would have no shelter against the elements. I absolutely loathe the thought of incurring more debt (for my pride and for the fact that the harvest earnings would just go to paying it off). But I gulped down the lump in my throat, scrambled for possible loan sources, and finally got the grace that I needed.

The hut is now being built. It’s a 12 ft x 12 ft structure of marine plywood wrapped around coco lumber, with a modest front deck just wide enought to accommodate two chairs, and supported by four cement posts underneath to ward it off against possible flooding.

It’s amazing that six or seven months ago, none of this was even in my mind. If I had known beforehand that the total cost of this project would send me in quite a debt like this, I might have balked. Sometimes it’s really better to just plunge ahead, plan for only so much, and just have enough faith to say that those out-of-the-blue obstacles will not derail you.

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