Filipino Fun Facts, Part 1

The process of international adoption is full of times of waiting. We are currently in one of those times. All of our paperwork is in the Philippines. We received an email on Friday saying that our case file had been given to one of the board members to review and then present to the full Inter-Country Adoption Board (ICAB). We also went to have our fingerprints done last Wednesday as part of our process of applying to US Immigration to bring a child from another country into the United States. So while we are in this time of waiting, we have been doing some reading and researching about the history and culture of the Philippines. Here are some of the interesting things we are learning:

The Filipino flag is shown above. The three stars represent the 3 regions of the country. Even though it is a country made of 7,000 islands, it is divided into 3 main regions. The sun with 8 rays represent the 8 provinces that originally stood against Spanish rule when they were a colony of Spain and desiring independence. The blue and red stand for generosity and courage, respectively.

This photo shows a boy sitting atop a caraboa which is a domesticated type of water buffalo. Caraboa are the main form of work animals that are used on farms. The Philippines is known for growing rice and corn as their two main crops. The caraboa is very important to this economy and can even be found in some of their art and sculpture.

We've also learned that the Philippines is one of the top Asian countries for population growth. It has a population of about 90 million. It is steeped in poverty and therefore hunger. I read about one gallup pole from 2008 that listed them as the 5th highest country in the world for hunger measured by the number of people going involuntarily with food on a daily basis. These factors lead to a lot of children that are orphaned or abandoned. Fortunately the Philippines has a pretty good system of foster care and well-trained caring orphanages to help these children. I am also currently reading a book entitled Not Yet Home: Where Filipino Children Wait for Adoption which is a book put together in 2007-2008 highlighting all of the orphanages and foster care agencies in the Phillipines. This book has been comforting and a good tool to help me pray for the people that are caring for our child before he or she comes home.