Photos et lettres des Philippines, de France et d'ailleurs

We were in August 2001; he was called, let us say Eddie, and was 68 years old. We had met at the terrace of the Why Not, a restaurant that was the headquarters of many Westerners and in particular those for which thirst was difficult to slake.

He was a Belgian of the area of Antwerp, former chemical engineer and who spoke Dutch, French, German, English and Polish. After some cups of coffee, we ended up becoming buddies and he confided in me. He was not in the Philippines on vacations or by love of the tropics, he liked too his Flemish climate for that, but to find a wife there. Indeed he was a widower for more than twenty years and his children had encouraged him to find a companion for his old days. One of his Belgian friends had advised him of the Philippines for that. Judicious choice in theory because it is the most westernized country of Southeast Asia, 85% Christian, and where many girls do not hesitate there to marry men 30 to 40 their seniors to escape poverty and to help their family. In addition it should be said that the flightiness and the irresponsibility of the young Filipinos men also push them to seek more stability with more mature men, sometimes the age of their grandfathers.

Thus upon arriving, Eddie started seeking his soul mate. To do so, he just informed the many waitresses of the Why Not restaurant of his matrimonial project. Therefore they brought him dozens of application letters from their friends, cousins, relations etc. Consequently Eddie spent his days meeting these young ladies He was in a hurry because he had given himself only one month to find a fiancé. Finally, he succeeded in finding his soul mate and the marriage was scheduled for the end August 2001. The happy one selected was a 25 years old girl with a good education and ordinary looks. The marriage thus took place a few days after my departure for France.

Eddie left a week later for Belgium without his wife as they had just started the heavy and difficult task to process all the necessary papers before she could join him.

During my few months stay in Paris, Eddie and I exchanged phone calls a few times and then it is again my departure to the Philippines.

In January 2002, I arrived in Dumaguete and Eddie had asked me as a favor to invite his young wife from time to time at the restaurant and to be some kind of liaison officer between the two of them. Of course, she always met me in public places accompanied by a cousin as is proper for a decent young woman.

To greet his darling, Eddie was renovating his house and some of his requests surprised me, for example asking his wife if she preferred a shower or a bathtub in their bathroom. Why wasn't he asking these questions himself? It's still an enigma.

At the end of May 2002, I was ready to leave again but I wanted to say goodbye to his wife whom I have forgotten the name. She said that her papers should finally be ready by July and she could thus rejoin her husband in Antwerp. Meanwhile Eddie has many projects for her and amongst other things to go to school to learn the Dutch language.

In January 2003, without any news of the newly for quite a time whereas they were supposed to visit me in Paris, I gave Eddie a phone call he broke the news.

Her wife had left him after three months, once she had gotten both her residence and work permits, and was now working for a hotel of Antwerp. He told me that since he first met her, he had invested 10 000 euros for the wedding ceremony, papers, travel expenses, wardrobe etc. Poor Eddie! She had used him to migrate in Europe in a legal way.

The icing cake was that he learned that she was already the mother of a child and that the Belgian law prohibited their divorce before two years.

It is not alas an isolated story involving haste and credulity. The reverse side is also true for poor Filipinas who marry true bastards in order to escape their condition and who in the worst cases finish as homeless or prostitutes.

And who knows? Hadn't Eddie become too difficult to live with after so many years of widowhood? And then weren't 33 years of age gap too difficult to fill in bed?