Urban Life
The Philippines’ 85 million people are distributed unevenly in the country. Forty percent of all Filipinos live in cities. The capital city,Manila, has an estimated population of about 18 million people, nearly one-fifth of the country’s people.Urban life in the Philippines has many qualities similar to living in cities anywhere. People are packed into a fairly small area and live most often in big concrete apartment buildings. They have a variety of jobs: taxi driving, entertaining, working in offices, peanut selling, and everything in between. Most of the workers in Manila lived somewhere in the provinces before moving to the crowded city, where they could make more money.
Forty percent of Filipinos live in cities, but the rest are scattered throughout
the countryside and earn a living off the land, like these fishermen
bringing their boats back to the shore of their remote fishing village after
a day of work.
Provincial Life
Many Filipinos live in the much less crowded countryside, called probincia (provinces). People in the provinces tend to earn a living more directly from the land. They have livelihoods of fishing, farming, and forestry and have individual
homes built out of local products like wood, bamboo, and thatch (strong leaves). Most thatch comes from a plant called nipa, which is a palm tree that grows on the coasts in saltwater marshes. Nearby there often are larger towns where farmers
go to do their shopping and banking and where they can sell their products.
On the coasts of the islands, most fishermen fish from their own bangkas, long, wooden, canoe-shaped boats with bamboo stabilizers on the sides. They head out to sea at night with their outboard motors purring, shine bright lights on the water, and wait for fish to get tangled in their long fishing nets. Then, in the early dawn, they gather the nets and bring the fish back to shore, selling them at the bustling morning markets.
Most of the agricultural land in the Philippines is in the flatfertile river valleys. These areas have rich soils, which promote easy farming of vegetables and fruit trees. They also have access to irrigation from the river, which is crucial for rice growing. Most family farms have a number of different crops growing to cover many of the food needs of the family, in addition to some chickens and pigs raised for eggs and meat. Often, a farmer will
choose a couple of crops to grow in bulk as cash crops. He or she also may have some extra pigs being fattened for later sale.
When these animals mature and the crops ripen, they are taken to market to be sold.The smallest numbers of Filipinos live high in the mountains. Communities in these regions are difficult to reach and therefore are very remote from the rest of the country. People in these regions are often of tribal descent, meaning that they come from different ethnic backgrounds than people of the lowland communities. Probably because they are so isolated, mountain communities are very dependent on local farming for much of their food. These communities use terraces to create flat fields on their hillsides to plant their rice and vegetables. Like lowlanders, they also have chickens and pigs for eggs and meat. Villages tend to be located along rivers, which they use for irrigation, to clean their laundry, and to hold small fish pens for freshwater fish like tilapia.
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