Darn, Knit, Sew, and Patch

One more thing that I love about the Philippines. I was just chatting with Malu online and she updated me on a car repair that they had to do about a week and a half ago. In the U.S. we would just replace the starter. But there in the Philippines, well just replace the carbon in the starter, that's all.

In the Philippines every repair shop that does every repair will do things that no one in the US would reasonbly do. The starter for her car is about Php2,500 which is about $49US (There is roughly fifty-one filipino pesos per US dollar). So what do you do; well you just get the carbon in the starter replaced. I had never heard of such a thing.

I didn't even know that my starter had carbon in it. I never had to think about it. Even when I had an old car and did the repairs myself, all I did was pick up a starter from the junk yard and put it in myself. And the cost of the total repair of putting carbon into a starter? Parts plus labor in the Philippines cost a grand total of P600. That's only $11.76U.S.

And that's not the only thing. Shoes, bags, clothing, whatever you can think of is darned, knitted, sewed, patched. And doing this kind of thing is not only at a reasonable price for their economy, but it provided a fair livelyhood for those that do it as well. I am grateful that they don't have the throw away society that we have in the U.S.

But hmm, I suppose if we keep working on it we'll get the recycling matter taken care of here. I just pray that we seek the benefit of others first before we look to benefit ourselves. Though my main objective isn't trying to save the world anymore, I'm not so foolish as to not give my personal time and effort to the matter. After all, planet earth is where God put me :-)