A few days ago I decided to go with a friend to buy a new power steering pump and window actuator for the car we had just bought. It seems so simple, and I had been to this part of town before with another missionary. A busy and fascinating area, the street is lined on both sides with vendors selling parts – car parts, truck parts, motorcycle parts, new parts, used parts, high quality parts fake parts – ok, I know I sound like Dr. Seuss but you get the idea. We arrived about 2:00 in the afternoon and immediately found someone who said he could get us the power steering pump and also a part for a window actuator that I needed. We parked on the side of the street in front of a little hole-in-the-wall shop, and a couple of guys quickly began removing the old pump and working on the window actuator. I felt pretty safe when we arrived because I noticed a policeman standing a few yards away obviously keeping an eye on things, but the situation changed rapidly once he walked around the corner. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by men claiming “Sir! You are missing screws from your fender flares!”, “Sir! You need new door seals!”, “Sir, your shocks are bad, I can give you a bargain on a new set!”. Not only was the sheer volume of it overwhelming, but it was all in Tagalog. I made the mistake of allowing one man to replace a few screws that actually were missing, and despite my best efforts, the rest descended in force. After a few minutes of “fixing” my car, they all assailed me again, this time with their “bills”. Written on the backs of candy wrappers, and even on the back of receipts taken from my own car, they claimed I owed them from $10 to $30 for a few minutes of “work” and a few cents worth of screws or rubber pieces, most of which were unnecessary or totally wrong. I began to realize what was happening when the normal friendly haggling over price led only to raised voices, angry looks and more aggressive attempts to “get paid for their work”. By that time it was getting dark, the genuine mechanic was not yet finished with my power steering pump, and we were outnumbered 2 to 10 by angry men intent on taking us for everything they could. I tried to pay the few who I knew had actually done legitimate work, and each time I pulled a bill from my pocket, a dozen frantic hands snatched it away, actually tearing a few of them as they fought over them. I finally pulled the last of the bills I had with me from my pocket, told them that was all I had and that they needed to divide those bills up among themselves, and so they moved on down the street fighting among themselves over the bills I had passed out. It turned out to be an expensive power steering pump by the time I paid off all of the swindlers, but I learned a lot from the experience, and gained about 5 hours of the most intense Tagalog exposure I have had yet. I was thankful to leave poorer but with my skin intact, and thankful too that this experience, like any of it’s kind, was because of a few greedy men in an otherwise incredibly kind and generous culture.
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