23
VOODOO

On my very first trip to the Philippines, my flight was scheduled to arrive in the wee hours of the morning. I was a bit uneasy about landing in the middle of the night, but I had arranged for a hotel driver to pick me up. The instructions were to find the driver with a red coat which sounded like a sufficiently detailed description at the time. Little did I know, my flight had hundreds of passengers all exiting the airport at the same time. I stood out like a sore thumb in a swarm of locals but managed to find my driver with the red coat.
I got in the car and we drove off on our journey to the hotel. There are two important pieces of information to add context to this story. Firstly, the area surrounding the Manila airport is not the greatest. Secondly, traffic lights in developing countries are multiple minutes long. Soon after our drive began, we arrived at a red light. Out of nowhere, an emaciated man emerged and was attempting to sell trinkets to the cars stopped at the intersection. He then saw me (clearly not a local) through the windshield and made a beeline for me. The man approached my window, put his face right up against the glass and slowly repeated “Ma’am, ma’am, ma’am” over and over again. He tapped slowly on the window with his index finger and shook the trinkets in his other hand - what looked like voodoo dolls - to entice me to purchase one. It felt like eons for the traffic light to change, but I sat there without responding or making eye contact the whole time. He stayed there tapping slowly and repeating “Ma’am” and waving the voo doo dolls until the light turned green. I was shaken by the experience and doubted that I could last the entire two weeks with those sorts of encounters happening daily. Can you imagine going to an important meeting after that kind of thing?
The next day, I was ultra paranoid about having a similar experience. I was checking over my shoulder suspiciously, gripping on to my purse and dreading another solo cab ride. I continued this behaviour for a couple of days until a colleague mentioned that the city was safe for female travellers. I loosened up and never had a similar experience during the rest of my trip - only pleasant experiences. I learned two things: to not judge a place based on a first impression and that my instinct to not buy voodoo dolls was right!