Peanut Emporium in Palengke

Varying levels of roasting, all skinless.

On the left, a price change resolved by making dark circles with the markers on the old numbers.

Peanut vending from a permanent wet market space in Valencia Bukidnon. Peanut butter, freshly milled and sweetened a la Lily's Peanut Butter (put in cheap plastic cups and covered in foil-- a cheap way around a jar, in the tradition of using glasses as jars), skinless, sugarcoated, salted, raw, any way you like it. Get a kilo and it's cheaper, get a "salmon" (a term based on the measuring receptacle they use, an empty salmon tin). and it's a bit steeper.

Improvised Saddles, An Albino Horse

The flat lands before the rivers of Simsimon.

From the bustling center of Valencia, Bukidnon, we took a 3-hour motorcycle ride towards more mountains. We passed many muddy, half-made roads. Until there were no more.

We stopped in front of a small sari-sari store (where people were hanging out and talking, waiting for nothing in particular), made our way across the first river and started walking.

Poly sacks sewn roughly with plastic rope.

At that point, I wasn't thinking at all about horses. I'd seen a few along the way, but thought nothing of them. Later on in the trip (i.e. the next day), 9+ hours of walking under my belt, I was praying that my fanny pack would drop onto the ground, have a supernatural vibration of some sort, and morph into a savior horse, like a scene in some folktale. 

The sack is stuffed with more plastic and old clothes.

Horses are perfect companions in the variable landscape going to Simsimon, where the rivers change course every few months or so, and the mud can consume your slippers just like that. Horses eat wild plants, and create nitrogenous fertilizer as a byproduct. When they die, they compost right into the ground. How's that for "green" transportation?

A fancier saddle, still improvised, for an albino horse. The thing around its neck is part of a plastic water hose.

A closer view of the sack saddle, this one with elaborate machine-sewn padding and a wooden groin nest.

Chicken Feeder Maker

Welcome to a roadside chicken feeder fabrication and retail shop in Bukidnon.

The finished product.

A dude pounding the edges in.

Same dude, pounding the edges in.

Commercial plastic feeders that are probably prototypes for the in-house ones.

Wire-molding machine.

Unmolded wire.

Molded wire.