In a word, Family.
Family is everything in the Philippines. Most Filipinos are what in the United States, would be considered poor.
People get by by helping each other. There is no more cooperative people on the planet then Filipinos. And resourceful.
While we make jokes in the United States about redneck engineering, pretty much everything in the Philippines gets redneck engineered out of necessity.
But unlike redneck engineering in America, the quality of cobbling together fixes in the Philippines is simply amazing. It is absolutely nothing here to craft together an equivalent of a manufactured part when that part is not available.
Is a specialized switch broken? No problem! They will fix that thing. A dashboard switch, that Americans would simply throw away, Filipinos will spend an hour fixing. And it will work just as good as new. One A/C shop said that my A/C could not be repaired because parts are not available. He said the A/C on this car will never work again because of this broken, uniquely designed switch. So I went to another shop. They had it restored to perfect in one hour. Having worked with electronics for decades, I inspected the workmanship. It was virtually as good as new. With a guarantee.
Everybody teaches everybody everything they know. And everybody helps everybody through the hardest of times and through the most difficult challenges. This is a country that truly pulls together around family to make everything that couldn’t be possible without them.
What an incredible country!
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