What Swiss Hates

What can you say about the Philippines?

This was one of my questions asked to my Swiss friend. He said, “Philippines in general is good, but what I don’t like in Manila is that there are lots of thieves!” When I heard his answer, I couldn’t deny myself to divert our conversation to other topic. However, this made me think why Manila has lots of thieves.

I was numb. Dumb. I couldn’t utter even a single word. I was embarrassed.

I remembered when I have had my first adventure in Manila, I was very afraid when I saw the man how he forcefully grabbed the pair of earings of the old woman while we were riding in a jeepney. This made me think several twice why people are like that. I couldn’t exactly give an exact answer to my question instead I presumed that this is the cause of poverty.

When I was already in the province, then I coincidentally recalled this incident as part of our discussion, one of my students replied me that the reason why people said to be thieves because this is how the parents shape their lives. Another one answered that people used to be robber because they didn’t like to exert more effort to earn money except to steal wealth from others. All of my students were disagree, they said, this is the cause of poverty.