This is the worst I've seen it since living in the Philippines.

Añadido: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Welcome back to Inside the Philippines.

[00:00:03]I'm glad you're here because tonight's story isn't the one you're used to hearing on this channel.

[00:00:09]There's no bar girl in a short skirt.

[00:00:12]There's no dating app catfish with three other foreign boyfriends on the side.

[00:00:17]There's no villain at all, really. And that's exactly why I wanted to bring it to you.

[00:00:23]Tonight's protagonist is Brendan, 55 years old, a bricklayer from Limerick, Ireland, who spent 30 years on building sites across Dublin, Birmingham, and Manchester before his back gave out and the work disappeared.

[00:00:41]He's a quiet man.

[00:00:43]Big hands, soft voice, the kind of fellow who spent his whole life letting walls do his talking for him.

[00:00:51]And in February of 2024, he got on a plane to Cebu with a fortnight's holiday booked and absolutely no idea what he was walking into.

[00:01:03]What happened to Brendan isn't a scam.

[00:01:06]I want to be clear about that up front.

[00:01:08]He didn't get robbed. He didn't get blackmailed. He didn't catch anyone cheating.

[00:01:14]What happened to him is, in some ways, far more painful than that.

[00:01:20]Because there's no one to be angry at.

[00:01:22]And no clean ending where the bad guy gets his comeuppance.

[00:01:26]There's just a quiet bricklayer, a kind woman in a small town outside Cebu City, and a gap between two cultures that nobody bothered to point out before he stepped into it.

[00:01:38]By the time another expat sat him down in a bar in IT Park and said the words that became the title of this video, Brendan had already given away more than he could afford to lose. Not all at once, brick by brick, you could say.

[00:01:54]And that's the part of this story that's going to stick with some of you. Because if you've been watching late-night videos about retiring in the Philippines, if you've been chatting with someone on Messenger for the last few months, if you've been telling yourself you're too sensible to be one of those fellows, you need to hear what Brendan has to say.

[00:02:15]This one's a quiet heartbreak. No fireworks, just a man learning, very slowly, that love and money mean different things in different countries.

[00:02:26]Here's his story. In his own words.

[00:02:29]Right. So, where do I start? Sure. I suppose I start with the back.

[00:02:35]Because everything that happened happened because the back went.

[00:02:40]If I was still on the tools, I'd never have been on a plane to anywhere.

[00:02:45]I'd be on a job in Birmingham right now, complaining about the weather and the price of a pint, same as I'd done for 30 years.

[00:02:54]I left Limerick at 24.

[00:02:56]Bit of work at home, but not enough.

[00:02:59]Never enough. And the lads I knew were all going over to Dublin or across the water to Birmingham and Manchester.

[00:03:07]So, I went.

[00:03:08]Bricklayer. My da was a bricklayer. His da was a bricklayer. It wasn't really a decision, you know yourself, more like a thing that just happened to you if you came from where I came from.

[00:03:22]30 years on the tools. 5:00 in the morning, the alarm goes. Flask of tea, two slices of toast, out the door before it's light. On the site by 6:30, hod up, hod down, mix, lay, point. Lads taking the piss out of you all day long.

[00:03:42]The Cork lads slagging the Limerick lads. The Limerick lads slagging the Cork lads. Everyone slagging the English foreman. Stop for a brew at 10:00, stop for the lunch at 12:30, pack up at 4:00, pint or two on the way home if it was a Friday.

[00:04:00]That was my life.

[00:04:02]That was my whole life.

[00:04:05]I'm not going to pretend it was glamorous because it wasn't.

[00:04:09]But there was a thing about it.

[00:04:11]You'd stand back at the end of a day and there'd be a wall there.

[00:04:16]A wall that wasn't there in the morning.

[00:04:19]And you'd put it there.

[00:04:21]With your two hands.

[00:04:23]There's not many jobs in this world like that, sure.

[00:04:26]Never married.

[00:04:28]People always ask me about that. And I never have a good answer.

[00:04:33]The trade was the wife, I suppose.

[00:04:36]She was a jealous one. You're up before the wife on a Saturday to catch the 8:00 train to a job in Coventry. You're not exactly meeting many young ones.

[00:04:46]I had a long thing with a girl from Tipperary in my 30s, but she wanted kids and I wasn't ready.

[00:04:54]And by the time I was ready, she'd married a guard.

[00:04:58]That was that.

[00:05:00]The back went on a job in Salford.

[00:05:03]February 2023.

[00:05:06]Lifting a pallet I shouldn't have been lifting at 53 years of age.

[00:05:10]Felt something pop.

[00:05:12]Couldn't straighten up for 2 days.

[00:05:15]Surgery in May.

[00:05:17]Physio that summer.

[00:05:19]Specialist looks at me in the autumn and says, plainly, "Brendan, you'll not lay another course of brick in your life.

[00:05:27]Find something else."

[00:05:29]Like it was a brand of biscuit you could pick off a different shelf.

[00:05:34]I went home to Ennis. My sister Bridget had a spare room. Her lads were grown and gone. Her husband Mick was working away in Cork during the week.

[00:05:44]And she said, "Come and stay till you sort yourself out."

[00:05:48]"3 weeks," I said. I was there 6 months.

[00:05:53]I won't bore you with the 6 months.

[00:05:56]There's nothing to tell, sure. That's the thing about it. You get up at 10:30 because what's the point of getting up at 6:00? You watch Loose Women on the telly because what else are you going to watch? You start having a can of Bulmers at 1:00 in the afternoon, then 12:00, then 11:00. Bridget never said a word about it. God love her.

[00:06:18]But I'd see her glancing at the recycling on a Sunday and I'd feel the shame of it. It was the YouTube that done it in the end. I was up at 3:00 in the morning, couldn't sleep, the back at me, scrolling through videos. And one of those videos comes on the autoplay. Some fellow with an Australian accent showing a sunset over Mactan, drinking a San Miguel beer, talking about how a thousand euro a month went a long way out there. And I clicked another one.

[00:06:49]And another one.

[00:06:50]3 months of it, I was at it.

[00:06:53]The Philippines.

[00:06:55]Catholic country.

[00:06:56]They speak English.

[00:06:58]The women in the videos had soft eyes and they smiled like they meant it. Not like Thailand. I'd looked at Thailand, too.

[00:07:08]But it was all Germans in Speedos and drunk Brits falling out of go-go bars.

[00:07:13]And I knew myself. I'm not that fellow.

[00:07:17]I'm not built for that.

[00:07:19]I'm a mass on Sunday fellow, whether I go or not.

[00:07:22]I booked the flight at 3:00 in the morning.

[00:07:25]Didn't tell Bridget for a week.

[00:07:27]When I told her, she just looked at me for a long time and said, "Brendan, mind yourself out there, would you?"

[00:07:34]She knew. She always knew more than I did.

[00:07:38]That was January. By February the 2nd, I was on a plane to Cebu with a fortnight's holiday booked and a vague notion that maybe, if it was as nice as the videos, I'd extend. I extended. All right, I extended. Mactan Airport at 1:00 in the morning is a thing you don't forget. The plane door is open and the air comes in and it's like I don't know how to describe it to a fellow who's never been. It's not heat the way Spain is heat. It's wet. It's heavy.

[00:08:13]It sits on you.

[00:08:15]I'd been wearing a jumper because the plane was freezing.

[00:08:18]And inside of 2 minutes walking down that jet bridge, I was peeling it off and my shirt was stuck to my back already.

[00:08:27]And I thought, "Jesus, what have I done?"

[00:08:31]I got through immigration grand.

[00:08:34]The fellow stamped me in for 30 days, smiled, said, "Welcome to the Philippines, sir." And that was that.

[00:08:42]Pulled my one suitcase off the belt and walked out into the arrivals hall. And there's a wall of faces behind a barrier, all holding signs, and the noise of it.

[00:08:53]People shouting in Tagalog or Cebuano, I didn't know which. Babies crying. Some old fellow with a karaoke speaker selling, I don't know, SIM cards or something.

[00:09:07]I'd booked a Grab on the app the way the YouTube fellow told me to, and I stood there for 20 minutes trying to find the pickup zone, sweating like a pig, while a string of lads kept asking me, "Sir, taxi. Sir, taxi. Special price for you, sir."

[00:09:25]The hotel was in Mandaue. Mid-range place, nothing fancy. I'd booked it for 2 weeks because the YouTube fellow had said Mandaue was a good base, close enough to Cebu City, but cheaper. And I trusted the YouTube fellow because what else did I have?

[00:09:44]The Grab driver was a quiet young lad called Joseph, who put on country music for me when he heard the accent. Garth Brooks all the way from the airport to the hotel. Filipinos love the country music, I learned later.

[00:10:00]Half of them know more Kenny Rogers than I do.

[00:10:04]First few days, I just walked around in a daze. Sure, heat made me stupid.

[00:10:10]I'd go out at 10:00 in the morning and be back in the hotel by 11:00, lying under the air con, drinking water out of those big plastic bottles.

[00:10:20]I didn't know what I was doing.

[00:10:22]I'd no plan. I'd booked the flight on a feeling, and I was waiting for the feeling to tell me what to do next.

[00:10:30]Around the third day, I started getting my bearings. Found a little carenderia down the road that did chicken and rice for 90 pesos. That's about a euro 50, a euro 60 in real money.

[00:10:43]Found a 7-Eleven for the cans.

[00:10:46]Found the SM City Cebu mall, which was an experience and a half.

[00:10:51]It's the size of a small town with a chapel inside it, like a Catholic cathedral plonked between a Watsons and a National Bookstore.

[00:11:00]I went into mass there one afternoon just to sit down out of the heat, and there were maybe 200 people in attendance on a Wednesday in a shopping center.

[00:11:11]That stayed with me, I'll be honest with you.

[00:11:14]Anyway, the bakery. I'm getting to the bakery.

[00:11:18]There was a small place two blocks from the hotel, Julie's Bake Shop, I think it was, or one of those chains. I can't remember exactly. And on the fourth or fifth morning, I went in for the breakfast.

[00:11:31]Pandesal, which is the little bread roll they have, and a coffee.

[00:11:36]The girl behind the counter had her hair tied back, and she was reading a paperback book between customers.

[00:11:42]Didn't look up when I came in. Didn't smile at me. Didn't do the eye contact thing the girls in the bars do.

[00:11:50]And I'd been to one or two of those bars by then, just to see.

[00:11:54]And I'd come out feeling about a hundred years old and a bit dirty, if I'm honest.

[00:11:59]This one didn't even clock me.

[00:12:02]Took my order, gave me my change, went back to her book.

[00:12:07]That's why I went back the next morning.

[00:12:10]That's the truth of it. I went back because she didn't seem to care that I existed.

[00:12:16]Doesn't sound very romantic when you say it out loud, but there it is.

[00:12:21]Third morning, she remembered me.

[00:12:24]Pandesal, and a black coffee, sir.

[00:12:27]Just like that.

[00:12:29]Smiled this time, but it was a small smile. Professional, the way the girls in the supermarket at home would smile at a regular.

[00:12:38]Fourth morning, we exchanged about 10 words. What's your name, sir?

[00:12:43]Brendan.

[00:12:44]Where are you from, sir?

[00:12:46]Ireland.

[00:12:47]She nodded like she knew where Ireland was, which most of them did, I learned.

[00:12:53]Half of them have a cousin nursing in Galway.

[00:12:56]Her name was Marivic. She told me on the fifth day, when I asked.

[00:13:01]Marivic Tagalo, 29, though it turned out later she was 31.

[00:13:07]She'd shaved a few years off, and I don't blame her. Sure, women do that everywhere.

[00:13:14]She was from a place called Talisay, just south of the city. Lived with her mother and two nephews.

[00:13:22]Father had passed when she was 19.

[00:13:24]Eldest of four.

[00:13:26]Worked the bakery six days a week for 500 pesos a day.

[00:13:30]That's about 8 euro for a 12-hour shift.

[00:13:34]And I had to ask her to repeat that twice, because I thought I'd misheard. 8 euro a day.

[00:13:41]I'd spent more than that on a sandwich at Heathrow.

[00:13:44]I asked her on the sixth or seventh morning if she'd want to get a coffee somewhere that wasn't her workplace. I was red as a beetroot asking her, mumbling like a schoolboy.

[00:13:56]And she looked at me for a long second, and then said yes.

[00:14:01]But it would have to be a Sunday, because that was her only day off.

[00:14:05]And her mother would want to know who I was.

[00:14:09]Could I write down my name and where I was staying for her mother?

[00:14:14]That was the phrase.

[00:14:16]For her mother.

[00:14:17]Now, look, I know how this sounds sitting here telling you.

[00:14:22]I know what you're thinking.

[00:14:24]The mother thing, the writing down your name thing.

[00:14:28]That's a setup, Brendan.

[00:14:30]That's the start of the script.

[00:14:32]That's how it always goes.

[00:14:35]But you weren't there.

[00:14:36]You didn't see her face.

[00:14:38]She wasn't acting.

[00:14:40]I'd swear that on my own mother's grave, even now, after everything.

[00:14:46]She was just a young one whose mother had told her since she was 12 never to go anywhere with a man without telling somebody first.

[00:14:55]That's not a scam. That's how half the women in Limerick were brought up, too.

[00:15:00]When I was a young lad.

[00:15:02]We met on the Sunday at a Jollibee in Mandaue.

[00:15:06]She wore a yellow blouse and her hair down for the first time.

[00:15:10]Ordered a Chickenjoy meal.

[00:15:12]I had the same, because I didn't know what else to order.

[00:15:16]We talked for two hours about nothing.

[00:15:19]Her brothers, my work, Ireland, why I'd come.

[00:15:24]Towards the end of it, she reached over and put her hand on top of mine for just a second.

[00:15:29]Squeezed it. Said, Tito Brendan, you have a kind face.

[00:15:34]Tito.

[00:15:36]That word means uncle, I learned later.

[00:15:39]It's what children call their mother's brother.

[00:15:42]It's what families call a man who's older. A man who's been brought into the circle.

[00:15:47]I didn't know that sitting in that Jollibee.

[00:15:51]I just thought it was a sweet thing she said.

[00:15:54]I think about that word a lot now.

[00:15:57]Tito.

[00:15:58]Should have asked what it meant. Didn't.

[00:16:01]It was the second Sunday.

[00:16:03]I'd extended my hotel by another fortnight by then, told myself I needed the time to think.

[00:16:09]When she asked if I'd come down to Talisay to meet her mother.

[00:16:13]Just for the lunch, she said.

[00:16:16]Nanay was making adobo. The nephews wanted to meet the Irish man. I said yes before she finished the sentence.

[00:16:24]Talisay's about 30 minutes south of Cebu City, if the traffic's behaving itself, which it never is.

[00:16:31]We took a jeepney part of the way and a tricycle the rest, because that's what she did. And I wasn't going to call a Grab and have her walking up the road to her own house in front of me like the lord of the manor.

[00:16:45]The jeepney was packed.

[00:16:48]I'd say there were 16 people in a vehicle that maybe should hold 10.

[00:16:53]An old woman with a live chicken in a plastic bag on her lap. Two schoolgirls in blue uniforms texting on the same phone.

[00:17:01]A young fellow with a speaker playing OPM ballads at full volume.

[00:17:06]Marivic told me OPM stands for original Pilipino music, which I thought was a great phrase. Original Pilipino music.

[00:17:15]They've all the love songs in the world.

[00:17:18]The house was in a barangay off the main road. You went through this little maze of concrete laneways. Sari-sari stores on every corner. Kids playing basketball at a half-rusted hoop nailed to a coconut tree. Dogs everywhere. Roosters crowing, even though it was the middle of the day.

[00:17:40]Karaoke coming from somewhere.

[00:17:42]Total eclipse of the heart, I remember, because I laughed when I heard it.

[00:17:48]Bonnie Tyler in Talisay on a Sunday afternoon.

[00:17:52]Marivic's house was at the end of a row.

[00:17:55]Two rooms, concrete blocks rendered with that pebble-dash looking finish.

[00:18:00]Corrugated tin roof patched in three places with bits of plastic and old rice sacks.

[00:18:06]A small yard out the front with a hand pump well and a clothesline with the laundry already up. No glass in the windows, just wooden shutters propped open with sticks.

[00:18:17]A sari-sari store run by an auntie next door.

[00:18:21]I'd meet Auntie Linda properly soon enough.

[00:18:25]But that's getting ahead of myself.

[00:18:27]Nanay Cora was waiting at the door.

[00:18:30]Tiny woman, maybe 4 foot 11.

[00:18:33]Hair iron gray and tied back. Wearing a faded floral house dress.

[00:18:38]She took both my hands in hers when I walked up. Looked me dead in the eye and said, in better English than half my cousins, Tito Brendan, you are welcome in our home.

[00:18:51]Marivic has told me good things about you.

[00:18:54]Please, you sit.

[00:18:56]You eat.

[00:18:57]That was it for me, I think.

[00:19:00]The handshake at the door.

[00:19:02]I'd been a long time without anyone taking my hands in both of theirs and looking at me like I mattered.

[00:19:09]The two nephews, Jomar, who was eight, and Kit, who was 10, were on me inside of 10 minutes.

[00:19:16]I'd brought them a packet of Cadbury's chocolate fingers I'd picked up at the airport in Heathrow on a whim, and that was the master stroke, sure.

[00:19:25]They'd never seen anything like them.

[00:19:28]Jomar climbed up on the arm of the sofa to look at the writing on the box.

[00:19:33]Kit asked me if I had a son in Ireland.

[00:19:36]I said no.

[00:19:37]He looked at me serious as a judge and said, Tito Brendan, you can be our Tito here.

[00:19:44]I'm not going to lie to you.

[00:19:47]I had to look out the window for a minute. The adobo was the best thing I'd eaten in 20 years.

[00:19:53]Pork shoulder, soy and vinegar, garlic, bay leaves, served over rice with a fried egg on top.

[00:20:02]Nanay Cora kept ladling more onto my plate every time I made a dent in it, saying, "Eat, Tito. You are too thin.

[00:20:10]You need rice."

[00:20:12]I'm 16 stone, and I've never been called too thin in my life.

[00:20:17]I ate till I couldn't breathe, and she was still trying to feed me.

[00:20:22]Halfway through the meal, she pressed something into my hand under the table.

[00:20:26]Wooden rosary.

[00:20:28]The beads were dark, well-worn, smooth from somebody's fingers.

[00:20:33]She closed my hand around it and said, "This was my husband's, Tito.

[00:20:39]He went to God when Marivic was 19. I think he would have liked you.

[00:20:44]You take it. I'm not a man who cries easy.

[00:20:48]The lads in Birmingham would tell you that. The time I broke my finger laying lintel and didn't say a word for the rest of the shift.

[00:20:56]But I had to swallow hard and look at the wall a long time before I could thank her.

[00:21:02]We went to mass together the following Sunday.

[00:21:05]Palm Sunday, this would have been late March 2024.

[00:21:11]Marivic, Nanay Cora, the boys, and me walking up to the parish church in Talisay, palm fronds in our hands. The church was packed, standing room only at the back.

[00:21:24]And the heat in there was something fierce.

[00:21:27]Sweat running into my eyes.

[00:21:30]My only good shirt sticking to me.

[00:21:33]The priest gave the sermon half in English, half in Cebuano. And even though I didn't know the language, I knew the rhythm of it.

[00:21:41]Same mass I'd known since I was a child in St. John's parish in Limerick.

[00:21:47]Same gestures, same kneel, stand, kneel.

[00:21:52]I cried a small bit at the consecration.

[00:21:55]Just a small bit.

[00:21:57]Nobody saw, I don't think. Or if Nanay Cora saw, she had the kindness to pretend she didn't.

[00:22:04]I hadn't been to mass since my mother's funeral in 2018.

[00:22:08]I'd forgotten what it did to a man.

[00:22:11]The first money came 2 weeks after that.

[00:22:14]It wasn't a request, the way you might think.

[00:22:17]It was me.

[00:22:18]I asked her.

[00:22:20]"Marivic," I said one evening at the carinderia, "why are you killing yourself in that bakery for 500 pesos a day?

[00:22:28]Why don't you just pack it in.

[00:22:30]Be with me. I'll see you right."

[00:22:33]She went quiet for a long minute.

[00:22:35]Then she said, "Tito, are you sure?

[00:22:39]My mother, the boys, they need the money I bring home.

[00:22:44]I cannot just stop."

[00:22:46]I said, "How much do you need a month to keep things going at home?

[00:22:51]Just so you can be with me proper."

[00:22:53]She did the maths in her head, lips moving, and said 8,000 pesos.

[00:22:59]About 130 euro.

[00:23:01]Less than I used to spend on the lunch in a week back on site.

[00:23:05]Less than nothing.

[00:23:07]I gave it to her in cash that night in an envelope.

[00:23:11]She held it in both hands and started to cry.

[00:23:15]Real tears, I'm telling you.

[00:23:18]The kind that come up from somewhere deep.

[00:23:20]She said, "No man has ever been kind to me like this, Tito.

[00:23:25]No man has ever and she couldn't finish the sentence.

[00:23:30]I told her, "Don't be silly. Sure.

[00:23:33]It's only a small thing."

[00:23:35]I didn't understand, sitting in that carinderia, what I had just done.

[00:23:41]I thought I was helping a girl quit a bad job. I thought I was being kind. I had just become the man who paid the bills, not just hers, the whole house's, Nanay Cora's, the boys', the auntie next door's by extension, because the rice came from the same pot.

[00:24:00]I didn't know any of that.

[00:24:02]I just knew I'd made her cry the good way, and I'd be welcome at that table for as long as I wanted to sit at it.

[00:24:10]And God forgive me, that felt like everything.

[00:24:15]The phone went at 2:20 on a Tuesday morning in May.

[00:24:19]I remember that exactly, because I'd been asleep maybe an hour, and the air con in the hotel was on the blink, and I'd been lying there in my pants, sweating into the sheet, thinking about whether I should just buy a small fan.

[00:24:34]It was Marivic. She was crying so hard I couldn't make out the first three things she said.

[00:24:41]I sat up in the bed and tried to get her to slow down. "Tito, Jomar.

[00:24:47]Jomar, he is sick. He is in the hospital. The dengue. They say maybe he is dying. They want 45,000 pesos for the deposit, and we don't have Mama is crying. Please, please, can you come?"

[00:25:02]I was in a Grab inside 10 minutes.

[00:25:05]Pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I'd worn the day before, didn't even brush the teeth.

[00:25:11]The driver looked at me, wild-haired, no shoes, just flip-flops, and didn't ask any questions.

[00:25:20]"Vicente Sotto Memorial, please. Fast as you can."

[00:25:24]It's a public hospital, Vicente Sotto.

[00:25:28]Big concrete place down on B. Rodriguez Street.

[00:25:32]I'd never been in a Filipino hospital before that night, and I'll tell you, it's not Limerick Regional.

[00:25:39]The corridors were crammed.

[00:25:41]Families sleeping on the floor on cardboard mats.

[00:25:45]A woman feeding a baby in a plastic chair. The smell of disinfectant and something underneath it I didn't want to think about.

[00:25:54]The fluorescent lights buzzing.

[00:25:56]I found them in a ward up on the second floor.

[00:25:59]Six beds, no curtains between them. The windows open with no screens.

[00:26:05]Jomar was in the bed by the wall.

[00:26:08]He had an IV taped to the back of his small hand, and his little face was the color of putty. And he looked at me when I came in and gave me this weak little smile, like I was the cavalry come over the hill.

[00:26:22]And Jesus, that smile.

[00:26:26]Marivic was crying.

[00:26:28]Nanay Cora was praying the rosary on the wooden one she'd given me, which I'd given back so she could pray with it.

[00:26:36]There was a fellow in scrubs at the nurse's station who told me, polite enough, sir, "The deposit is 45,000 pesos. Without it, we cannot continue the platelet treatment. We have a counter on the ground floor. You can pay there. GCash, card, cash, it's all the same."

[00:26:55]I went down to the counter and tapped my Revolut card.

[00:26:59]45,000 pesos, about 730 euros.

[00:27:04]The reader beeped, the receipt printed.

[00:27:07]The fellow behind the desk gave me a little nod, like he'd seen the scene a thousand times before, which I'm sure he had.

[00:27:15]I went back upstairs.

[00:27:17]That's the thing I keep coming back to.

[00:27:19]Jomar was actually sick.

[00:27:21]He had actual dengue. He was actually in an actual bed with an actual IV.

[00:27:28]Whatever else happened later, that part was real.

[00:27:32]One saw the boy.

[00:27:33]I held his small hand.

[00:27:35]He was an 8-year-old child, and he was very, very ill. And I had a bank card that could fix it.

[00:27:42]What was I going to do?

[00:27:44]Sit there with my hands in my pockets?

[00:27:48]He came home from the hospital 5 days later.

[00:27:51]Nanay Cora made me come down to Talisay and sit at the table and eat the kare-kare she'd cooked. And she wouldn't stop saying, "Tito Brendan, you saved him. God sent you to us. You saved him."

[00:28:06]It went straight to my head.

[00:28:08]Of course it did.

[00:28:10]A fortnight after that, Typhoon Agaton came through.

[00:28:14]It wasn't a direct hit on Cebu, more of a clip, but it was enough.

[00:28:19]The wind came in for 2 nights, and the rain was sideways, and the patched roof on the Talisay house, which I'd seen for myself was held together with rice sacks and prayer, gave way over Nanay Cora's bedroom.

[00:28:34]Half of it just opened up to the sky.

[00:28:37]They had to move her bed into the front room and put basins everywhere.

[00:28:42]Marivic didn't ask me.

[00:28:44]I want that on the record.

[00:28:46]She did not ask. She rang me to tell me they were all fine. The boys were fine.

[00:28:52]The cousins from up the road were over helping with the tarpaulins, and they'd manage. It was the cousin Tito boy, older fellow, ran a small motorbike repair place, who said it on the third day, in passing, when I was over there helping shift wet furniture.

[00:29:11]"Kuya," he said, "maybe over the next year, year and a half, we can fix it slowly, eh?

[00:29:18]Piece by piece.

[00:29:20]Get it done."

[00:29:21]I went back to the hotel that night and didn't sleep.

[00:29:25]Lay there staring at the ceiling.

[00:29:28]And what I was seeing was that small woman, that tiny woman who'd taken my hands and put her dead husband's rosary in my palm, sleeping in her front room with a pail catching the drip from the ceiling. And I'd been a bricklayer for 30 years.

[00:29:45]I knew exactly what that roof needed.

[00:29:48]I could cost it out in my head before the sun came up.

[00:29:52]New trusses, galvanized steel sheets, proper guttering, redo that scabby bathroom while you're at it because the wall there's gone.

[00:30:03]In the morning, I went down to Talisay with a notebook. I priced the materials at a place in Talisay called City Hardware, and I got a recommendation for a local mason from Tito Boy.

[00:30:15]Fella called Joel, ran a small crew, three lads under him.

[00:30:20]I sat with Joel under a mango tree drinking instant coffee, and we talked it through, mason to mason.

[00:30:28]He didn't know what I was at first.

[00:30:31]When I pointed out where the old trusses had failed and why, his eyebrows went up and he said, "Kuya, you are in the building, diba?"

[00:30:41]I told him about the 30 years. He grinned and said, "Okay, then we do this proper, you and me."

[00:30:50]The total came in at 180,000 pesos, about 2,900 euros. I paid Joel half up front, half on completion, and I went there every single day for 11 days while the lads worked, and I made the tea and ran the materials, and at the end of it, Nanay Cora's bedroom had a proper roof over it for the first time in 20 years.

[00:31:15]I felt better than I'd felt since the back went.

[00:31:19]I'm not going to pretend I didn't.

[00:31:21]Standing there at the end of the 11th day, looking at a finished roof I'd had a hand in, with Joel slapping me on the shoulder, and Jomar running up to show me a drawing he'd made of the house with me standing beside it.

[00:31:36]That was a proper day.

[00:31:38]That was a man being useful again.

[00:31:41]By July, I'd given up the hotel and moved into a small condo in IT Park.

[00:31:47]28,000 pesos a month, about 450 euros, modern building, decent security, a little gym I never used.

[00:31:57]Marivic stayed over four nights a week, went home to Nanay Cora the other three.

[00:32:03]We went out for proper dinners. There was a place at Ayala Center called Abaca. Lovely seafood, 2,500 pesos for the two of us.

[00:32:13]And I started sending Nanay Cora her own 20,000 pesos a month separately.

[00:32:19]The mother shouldn't have to ask the daughter, I told myself.

[00:32:24]The mother should have her own dignity.

[00:32:26]I had 60,000 euros in the bank when I extended the lease.

[00:32:31]I did the rough sums on the back of an envelope one Sunday afternoon over a San Miguel.

[00:32:37]8,000 pesos to Marivic, 20,000 pesos to Nanay, rent, food, the odd dinner.

[00:32:46]I figured I was good for years at that rate.

[00:32:49]Years.

[00:32:50]It was around then that Tito Boy clapped me on the shoulder one evening and said, "Kuya, you know, your generosity, it is famous now in the barangay. Everybody knows about Tito Brendan and the roof.

[00:33:04]Everybody." He meant it as a compliment.

[00:33:08]I took it as one.

[00:33:10]I think about that line a lot now.

[00:33:12]Famous in the barangay.

[00:33:14]There is a kind of fame you don't want, sure. The kind where word gets around that there's a soft-handed Irishman down the end of the row who'll fix your roof if you ask nicely.

[00:33:28]I just didn't know that yet.

[00:33:30]I was too pleased with myself to know.

[00:33:33]August was when I stopped counting.

[00:33:36]That's the honest way of putting it.

[00:33:38]Up until July, I'd had the rough sums on the back of an envelope.

[00:33:43]By August, the envelope was gone, and the requests had folded themselves into the week the way the laundry does.

[00:33:51]You didn't think about them anymore.

[00:33:54]You just dealt with them as they came.

[00:33:57]The school fees were the first thing.

[00:34:00]Kit was starting grade five. Jomar was going into grade three, and there was a Catholic school up the road from the house, Sacred Heart something, I forget the full name, that did them better than the public one.

[00:34:15]Marivic mentioned it over a Sunday lunch like she was thinking aloud.

[00:34:19]18,000 pesos for the term, both boys, about 290 euros.

[00:34:26]I said, "Put them in. Sure. Of course, put them in. What else would they do?"

[00:34:32]I sent it from my Revolut to her Gcash that same afternoon, and didn't think about it for 10 seconds.

[00:34:40]Then, Auntie Linda's sorry sorry store, the one next door, run by Marivic's mother's sister. Sorry sorry stores, if you don't know, they're these little shops in the front of people's houses. A counter with bars on it, packets of crisps and shampoo sachets and Lucky Me noodles and single cigarettes, ice in a polystyrene box for the soft drinks.

[00:35:08]Auntie Linda's stock had been running thin all summer because her supplier wanted cash up front, and she didn't have it.

[00:35:15]Marivic said it one evening over a San Miguel, "Kuya, if Auntie has steady stock, then she has steady income, and she will not need to ask Mama, and Mama will not need to ask me."

[00:35:29]Made perfect sense the way she said it.

[00:35:31]15,000 pesos, about 240 euros, to lay in 3 months of stock.

[00:35:38]I paid it.

[00:35:40]The cousin, Reymark.

[00:35:42]He was 24, the son of another aunt I'd not yet met, and he had a job interview in Manila, call center work in Ortigas, a real opportunity, a fresh start.

[00:35:55]He needed the bus fare to Manila, the boat fare from Cebu to Manila actually, because the flights were all booked out. 4,500 pesos. He needed a place to stay for the first week.

[00:36:08]8,000 pesos.

[00:36:10]He needed clothes for the interview because his only good pair of trousers had a tear in them.

[00:36:17]2,000 pesos.

[00:36:19]Total, about 14,500 pesos, 235 euros.

[00:36:26]I paid it.

[00:36:27]He went to Manila.

[00:36:29]He came back 2 weeks later.

[00:36:31]He hadn't got the job.

[00:36:33]There was, apparently, another interview the following month, in Makati this time.

[00:36:39]Would I?

[00:36:40]And I paid that one, too.

[00:36:42]The washing machine for the house.

[00:36:44]Their old one had finally given up.

[00:36:47]A top loader that had been third hand when Marivic's father bought it in the '90s, and the laundry of three growing boys and three women was getting on top of them.

[00:36:58]22,000 pesos, 350 euros.

[00:37:02]I bought it at SM Appliance.

[00:37:05]The Globe load.

[00:37:06]They were always running out of phone load.

[00:37:09]500 pesos here, 500 pesos there. It was nothing per transaction, but I'd see four or five of them a week on my Revolut history.

[00:37:20]The fiesta in the province.

[00:37:23]Marivic's mother's home village in northern Cebu had its town fiesta in late August, and the whole family was going up for 3 days, and it was a big deal.

[00:37:33]Pasalubong gifts to bring, the family contribution to the lechon, the hire of the van to drive them all up there.

[00:37:42]25,000 pesos, 400 euros. The death anniversary mass for Marivic's father.

[00:37:50]4 months on from the typhoon roof.

[00:37:54]Anniversary of his passing, 15th year. There would be a mass at the church in Talisay, and a meal afterwards at the house.

[00:38:04]And you can't have a death anniversary meal in the Philippines without lechon.

[00:38:08]A whole roast pig.

[00:38:11]8,000 pesos for the pig alone.

[00:38:15]Plus, the rice, the noodles, the cake, the drinks for 40 odd relatives.

[00:38:22]Came in around 18,000 pesos all in.

[00:38:25]290 euros.

[00:38:28]I'm reading these numbers off now, and they sound Christ, they sound bad.

[00:38:33]They didn't sound bad at the time.

[00:38:35]They came one at a time.

[00:38:38]18,000 pesos here, 22,000 pesos there, 4,500 pesos for a bus fare.

[00:38:47]None of them on their own would make you blink.

[00:38:51]I could spend 22,000 pesos on a washing machine for a small woman who'd had her own break for 20 years and feel I'd done a decent thing on a Tuesday morning.

[00:39:02]It was only when you stood back from the wall, sure, that you could see what you'd built.

[00:39:07]By the start of September, I was sending or paying out about 90,000 pesos a month, give or take.

[00:39:14]Roughly 1,450 euros. That was on top of my 28,000 peso condo, on top of my own food and beer and grabs and the odd dinner at Abaca or wherever Marivic fancied.

[00:39:30]Call it 2,200 euros a month all in. I'd been in the country 7 months. I had my Irish state pension supplements coming in, but I'm not at full state age yet, and the union pension was only kicking in at 900 euros a month.

[00:39:46]The rest of it was eating my savings.

[00:39:49]I'd never made a spreadsheet in my life.

[00:39:52]A bricklayer doesn't budget the year. A bricklayer thinks in weeks wages. End of the week, the money goes in. The bills come out. What's left is what's left.

[00:40:03]And if it's tight, you pick up a Saturday job.

[00:40:07]That's how I'd lived for 30 years.

[00:40:10]I had no muscle for any of this.

[00:40:14]Then, there was the brother.

[00:40:16]It was a Wednesday evening at the condo.

[00:40:19]We'd had Mang Inasal, the chicken places, you know the ones with the unlimited rice. And Marivic was sat cross-legged on the sofa scrolling Facebook.

[00:40:29]And she said, casual as anything, "Kuya, my brother Edwin, he is coming home next month from Bohol. He has been away."

[00:40:40]I hadn't known there was a brother. I said, "Oh, I, away where?"

[00:40:46]She didn't look up from the phone.

[00:40:48]"He was in CIW," she said, "Cebu provincial. Just a small thing, Kuya.

[00:40:54]Drugs. But he has changed now. He found God in there. The chaplain wrote a letter for the parole."

[00:41:01]I just sort of sat there.

[00:41:03]There were other Cebu jails I knew the name of, and I knew Bohol had its own.

[00:41:09]I knew CIW was one for women, actually, even at the time. But I didn't say anything.

[00:41:16]I think she meant CPDRC, or maybe she just got the letters wrong.

[00:41:21]The point was, prison. Drugs, brother, coming home.

[00:41:27]I should have asked more.

[00:41:29]The 30-year-old me, the lad on the Birmingham sites, would have asked more.

[00:41:34]He'd have wanted to know what kind of drugs and how long, and what was the family situation now. And was there a wife, kids, debts?

[00:41:44]The 55-year-old me at the condo just said, "Oh, right." Well, every family has its black sheep. The lads on my own father's side in Limerick, God knows.

[00:41:57]Two cousins of mine had done time in Cork prison in the '90s.

[00:42:01]It happens.

[00:42:02]She looked up at me then, and her eyes were a bit wet, and she said, "Kuya, thank you for not being angry.

[00:42:11]He will need help when he comes out.

[00:42:13]Just a little to get on his feet."

[00:42:17]I said, "Sure, of course.

[00:42:19]We'll see what's needed."

[00:42:21]It was that same week the bank app pinged.

[00:42:24]I was on the toilet.

[00:42:26]I'm sorry, but that's where it happened.

[00:42:29]I was sitting on the toilet at half 10 at night scrolling on the phone, and the AIB notification came through. Account balance update. 24,800 euros. I'd had 60,000 euros sitting there in July. I'd burned through 35,000 euros in 2 months without without seeing it, without keeping count. The roof, the hospital, the school fees, the fiesta, the washing machine, Auntie Linda's stock, the cousin's bus fares, my own rent, my own dinners.

[00:43:06]180,000 pesos here, 45,000 pesos there.

[00:43:11]90,000 pesos a month bleeding out and out and out.

[00:43:17]I sat on the toilet for a long time.

[00:43:19]Then I went out to the kitchen and opened a San Miguel, and stood at the sliding door looking out at the lights of IT Park. The office building still half lit at 11:00 at night. The basketball court down below where the lads were still playing under the floodlights.

[00:43:36]And I said to myself out loud, I actually said this out loud into an empty condo, "Brendan, you need to have a serious conversation with that girl this week." I didn't have it that week, or the week after. Bridget messaged me from Ennis on the Sunday. Just a short one.

[00:43:56]"Brendan, are you home for Christmas?

[00:43:59]Mick's brother is back from Australia for a fortnight. Would be lovely to have everyone round. Let us know."

[00:44:06]I read it three times and put the phone face down on the counter. I didn't know what to type.

[00:44:11]It was a Tuesday in the second week of October when I walked into the Walkabout.

[00:44:17]I want to be clear. I hadn't been planning it.

[00:44:21]I'd spent 8 months in Cebu by then keeping clear of the expat scene on purpose.

[00:44:27]One had seen them in the Ayala food court. The red-faced fellows in their '60s with the cheap polo shirts and the much younger Filipinas complaining loudly about the air con or the price of a steak.

[00:44:40]I'd think, "That's not me. I'm not that.

[00:44:44]I've a girlfriend who goes to mass. I've a family I have Sunday lunch with. I'm different." Pride, sure.

[00:44:52]The deadliest of the seven, my mother used to say. That Tuesday, I just couldn't face the Talisay run.

[00:44:59]Marivic had asked me down for the dinner because Auntie Linda's husband, Tito Reggie, was over from Bohol and wanted to meet the famous Tito Brendan.

[00:45:09]I knew what that meeting would be. I'd be charmed.

[00:45:13]I'd be poured a Tanduay.

[00:45:15]I'd be told, around the second drink, that Tito Reggie's wee niece, Princess, needed money for her enrollment at a college in Tagbilaran.

[00:45:24]And would Tito Brendan be a blessing?

[00:45:28]I rang Marivic and said I had a bit of a head. I'd come down Friday instead.

[00:45:34]She was disappointed, but she didn't push.

[00:45:37]That was the thing about her.

[00:45:39]She never pushed.

[00:45:41]The push was always somebody else, and that was the genius of it. Even though I don't think anybody planned it that way.

[00:45:49]I walked the four blocks from the condo over to the Walkabout. It's an Australian-themed bar in IT Park. Fake corrugated iron on the ceiling, schooner glasses, NRL on the telly, even though half the lads in there couldn't have named two clubs.

[00:46:07]I sat at the corner of the bar and ordered a San Miguel and a steak sandwich.

[00:46:12]Trev was on the next stool but one.

[00:46:15]Geordie accent thick as treacle.

[00:46:19]'60s, leather face, white hair shaved tight, wedding ring.

[00:46:24]He had a folder of paperwork in front of him and was making notes in a Biro.

[00:46:29]And we got chatting because he asked the barman for HP sauce, and I laughed and said, "You'll not find HP sauce in IT Park, mate."

[00:46:39]And he said, "Son, I've found HP sauce in worse places than this."

[00:46:45]And that was that.

[00:46:47]He was a diver.

[00:46:48]Ran a small dive shop in Moalboal, about 3 hours south of Cebu City. Good wreck diving down there. 12 years in the Philippines. Married to a woman called Imelda from Negros. Two grown stepchildren, both at university now.

[00:47:06]He'd come up to the city to renew some paperwork at the BI office.

[00:47:10]We talked about nothing for a while. The football, the price of San Miguel compared to 10 years ago, the state of the roads in the south.

[00:47:20]Then he asked me how long I'd been over, and I said 8 months, and he raised an eyebrow and said, "Oh, I, just visiting or" I said the word girlfriend, and he gave me the small, careful smile.

[00:47:34]"Where she from, son?"

[00:47:36]"Talisay," I said.

[00:47:39]"Family there.

[00:47:40]Mother, two nephews, the lot."

[00:47:44]He nodded slowly. He didn't lecture.

[00:47:47]He just asked the questions, and he asked them the way a doctor asks a patient where it hurts, soft and methodical, like he already knew where they were going to land.

[00:47:58]"How long have you two been together?

[00:48:01]Where do you live? In the condo or with her?

[00:48:05]The mother, does she live with you or in her own place?

[00:48:10]Are you sending her 20,000 pesos a month, or is it more?

[00:48:15]The roof, that was you, was it?

[00:48:18]The cousin, the one going for interviews in Manila, has he got the job yet?

[00:48:23]The brother, he'd not asked about a brother.

[00:48:27]I'd mentioned it without meaning to.

[00:48:29]He clocked it.

[00:48:30]He said, "The brother, from where? Bohol.

[00:48:35]What was he in for?

[00:48:37]And have you been asked yet, son?" I answered every question honest.

[00:48:42]I'd been carrying it around long enough.

[00:48:45]I watched his face the whole time.

[00:48:47]He was very good.

[00:48:49]He kept it neutral until about the third or fourth question, and then something started to go in him.

[00:48:56]Not anger. Something like I want to say grief, but that's a big word.

[00:49:02]Something close to it.

[00:49:05]When I'd finished, he didn't say anything for a long minute.

[00:49:08]He took a slow drink of his beer.

[00:49:11]He looked at the NRL on the telly.

[00:49:14]Then he said it.

[00:49:15]"Brendan, mate."

[00:49:17]He said it quiet.

[00:49:19]"This is the worst I've seen it since living in the Philippines."

[00:49:23]I started to push back, the way you would. "Trev, sure, it's not."

[00:49:28]And he just held up his hand, polite, said, "Listen to me a minute, son."

[00:49:34]He said the thing nobody had said to me yet.

[00:49:38]He said, "Mate, here's what nobody tells you fellas, and what nobody tells the girls, either.

[00:49:44]Most of these girls aren't scamming you.

[00:49:47]That's the part that breaks people.

[00:49:50]If she was a scammer, it would be easy.

[00:49:53]You'd see it. You'd leave. You'd come into a place like this and have a few pints and call yourself an eejit and go on with your life.

[00:50:02]The ones that destroy you are the ones who genuinely love you, because they've grown up watching their aunties and their cousins land foreigners and put four kids through college and build a house in the province.

[00:50:15]That's marriage to them.

[00:50:17]That's love.

[00:50:19]The husband provides for the family, not just the wife.

[00:50:23]The whole bloody family.

[00:50:25]Cousins, nephews, the auntie's husband's nephew, the lot.

[00:50:30]He said, "You've fixed the roof, son.

[00:50:33]You've paid the hospital.

[00:50:35]You've put the kids in the Catholic school.

[00:50:38]You're sending the mother her own envelope.

[00:50:41]You're famous in the barangay, yes?

[00:50:44]Somebody said that to you?"

[00:50:46]I nodded. He said, "Mate, you're three rungs down a ladder you can't climb back up. The brother coming home with no job, the auntie's stock, the cousin's interviews, that's just the next 20 years.

[00:51:01]There's no version of this where you stop and you stay.

[00:51:04]The minute you stop, you don't love them anymore.

[00:51:08]That's how it reads to her.

[00:51:10]That's how it reads to all of them.

[00:51:13]And there's no malice in it.

[00:51:15]That's the worst part."

[00:51:17]He drank his beer.

[00:51:19]He looked at me.

[00:51:20]He said, "I'm not telling you to do anything.

[00:51:25]I'm telling you what you're in."

[00:51:28]I went home to the condo about 10.

[00:51:31]Didn't get a Grab, walked.

[00:51:33]The streets were still hot. The smell of grilled aso from the carts at the corner of West Geonzon.

[00:51:39]The lads at the basketball court still playing. Somebody karaokeing My Way two streets over.

[00:51:47]I got back to the condo and I sat at the kitchen counter and I opened the AIB app and I went back, transaction by transaction, eight months of it.

[00:51:59]I added it up by hand on the back of a Mercury Drug receipt.

[00:52:03]38,000 euros, give or take.

[00:52:07]I sat on the edge of the bed for a very long time.

[00:52:10]I didn't cry.

[00:52:12]I didn't drink.

[00:52:13]I just sat.

[00:52:16]The next afternoon, I asked Marivic to meet me at the Starbucks at the third level of Ayala Center.

[00:52:22]She thought we were going to talk about Christmas.

[00:52:25]She wore a white blouse and her hair tied back the way she had it the day we'd met at the bakery.

[00:52:31]I didn't accuse her.

[00:52:33]I didn't shout.

[00:52:35]I'd worked out on the walk over that there was no version of this where I shouted that wasn't a kind of cowardice.

[00:52:42]I bought us two coffees and I sat down opposite her and I slid the AIB statement across the table.

[00:52:49]I'd printed it at a print shop on the way.

[00:52:52]And I said, "Marivic, this is the eight months.

[00:52:56]38,000 euros.

[00:52:59]I have 22,000 euros left in the world.

[00:53:02]I cannot do this anymore.

[00:53:04]I am not blaming you.

[00:53:06]I am telling you the number."

[00:53:09]She looked at the page.

[00:53:11]Her lips moved.

[00:53:12]I think she was converting in her head.

[00:53:15]She started to cry.

[00:53:17]Not loud, just tears falling on the page, smudging the print.

[00:53:22]She said, and I will never forget the way she said it, kindly, like she was explaining something to a child, "Kuya, I thought you understood.

[00:53:33]A man who loves a woman, he takes care of her family.

[00:53:37]That is what love is in our country.

[00:53:40]If you cannot, it means you do not love us."

[00:53:44]She wasn't lying.

[00:53:46]That's the worst part.

[00:53:48]That's still the worst part now, sitting here. I walked out of Ayala Center into the 4:00 heat of Cebu City in October and I genuinely could not feel my legs.

[00:54:01]I walked for about an hour, past the Sacred Heart Parish, past the IT Park gate, past a man selling balut from a bucket on a corner.

[00:54:13]I ended up in a small carinderia somewhere in Lahug eating a bowl of something one don't remember.

[00:54:19]And I rang Bridget at home in Ennis from the table.

[00:54:23]She picked up on the third ring.

[00:54:25]I said, "Bridget, I'm going to come home soon as I can sort it."

[00:54:31]She didn't say I told you so.

[00:54:33]She said, "All right, Brendan. You come home, sure.

[00:54:38]Mick'll collect you at Shannon. Just tell us the day."

[00:54:41]I cried into the bowl.

[00:54:43]The carinderia woman pretended she didn't see.

[00:54:47]I'd never felt so relieved and so stupid in the one breath in all my life.

[00:54:53]I booked the flight that night, Cebu to Doha to Dublin, the 8th of November, one way.

[00:55:01]Then I went down to Talisay the next morning to do the thing properly.

[00:55:05]I thought about it half the night.

[00:55:08]There were two ways to leave a family in the Philippines.

[00:55:11]One was the way half the fellas on the YouTube videos do it.

[00:55:15]Block the number. Change the SIM. Fly out at 3:00 in the morning. Never look back.

[00:55:22]The other was the harder way.

[00:55:24]I picked the harder way because of Nanay Cora, mostly.

[00:55:27]She'd put her dead husband's rosary in my hand.

[00:55:31]I couldn't disappear on a woman who'd done that.

[00:55:34]I went down on a Saturday.

[00:55:36]Marivic met me at the gate. She'd been crying. You could see it.

[00:55:41]The boys were at school.

[00:55:43]Nanay Cora was in the back making coffee.

[00:55:46]And when I came in, she didn't say anything, just put a mug in front of me and sat down across the table with her hands folded.

[00:55:54]I told them I was going home.

[00:55:57]I told them I couldn't keep up with we were doing.

[00:56:00]I wasn't going to pretend it was a temporary thing.

[00:56:04]I said, "Nanay, I'm 55. I've a back that's gone. I've a pension that's not even mine yet for years. And I'm not the man I made myself out to be. I'm sorry for that.

[00:56:17]That's on me, not on you."

[00:56:20]Nanay Cora nodded the whole time.

[00:56:23]She didn't argue.

[00:56:25]She didn't ask me for anything.

[00:56:27]I'd put together what I could before I came down.

[00:56:31]I paid the rent on the house two months forward, 14,000 pesos, direct to the landlord on GCash, so it couldn't go anywhere else.

[00:56:41]I paid the boys' school fees through the end of the term, 18,000 pesos.

[00:56:47]I gave Marivic 30,000 pesos in cash, about 480 euros, in an envelope and I said, "Marivic, this is the last one, but I want you to have it.

[00:57:00]Don't argue with me.

[00:57:01]Take it.

[00:57:03]Find a man whose pockets are deeper than mine.

[00:57:06]I mean that.

[00:57:07]You're a good young one and you deserve a fella who can be what you need him to be.

[00:57:13]I'm not him.

[00:57:15]I tried, but I'm not."

[00:57:17]She cried at the door.

[00:57:19]So did I, I'll be honest.

[00:57:22]Nanay Cora hugged me and said, "God bless you, Tito Brendan. You were good to us. Even now you are good to us."

[00:57:30]She gave me back the rosary. I tried to refuse it, but she pressed it into my hand the way she'd done the first day and said, "This stays with you. You keep it."

[00:57:42]So I did.

[00:57:43]I walked away from that house and I didn't look back because I couldn't.

[00:57:48]I'd have folded if I had.

[00:57:51]The flight on the 8th of November was about 30 hours, all in.

[00:57:56]Cebu to Doha was eight. Then a 4-hour layover. Then Doha to Dublin was 7 and 1/2.

[00:58:03]I drank one beer at the airport in Cebu and water for the rest of it.

[00:58:09]I watched two Liam Neeson films I'd already seen.

[00:58:13]I tried to sleep and didn't.

[00:58:15]I cried at one point somewhere over Saudi Arabia. The lights down low. The cabin all snoring around me.

[00:58:23]Just a quiet bit of crying for a few minutes and then I was all right.

[00:58:28]Mick collected me at Shannon.

[00:58:30]Bridget had sent him because she said she'd cry too much if she came herself.

[00:58:35]He didn't say much in the car, Mick.

[00:58:38]He's a Cork man. The Cork men don't talk unless they have to. He just clapped me on the shoulder at the arrivals barrier and said, "All right, Brendan." And put my one bag in the boot and drove me home to Ennis with the heat on full because I was shivering in a T-shirt in the Irish November.

[00:58:57]Bridget had a stew on.

[00:58:59]She put a bowl of it in front of me and didn't ask a single question.

[00:59:04]She just sat across the table and let me eat.

[00:59:08]That winter was hard.

[00:59:10]I won't lie to you.

[00:59:12]The first six weeks I slept 12 hours a night and woke up exhausted.

[00:59:18]I had my 22,000 euros in the AIB account and the union pension at 900 euros a month.

[00:59:25]And that was that.

[00:59:27]I was lucky in one way.

[00:59:29]I'd never owned a house, so I'd nothing to have lost.

[00:59:33]I'd just been renting in Birmingham for years before the back went.

[00:59:38]The drinking thing that I had to face.

[00:59:41]I'd been at it again on the way home in the condo by myself that last [snorts] fortnight.

[00:59:47]I took the Pioneer pin out of my mother's old jewelry box at Bridget's and I pinned it on the inside of my jacket.

[00:59:55]I'm not saying I'm a saint. I'm saying I made a decision and I stuck to it the way I'd stuck to a wall when I had to.

[01:00:04]3 weeks at a time, then 6, then I stopped counting.

[01:00:09]It's been over a year now. I started walking out the back lane in Ennis down by the inch. Half an hour at first, then an hour.

[01:00:19]Then I started swimming at the leisure center at Lee's Road twice a week. Slow lengths because of the back, but lengths nonetheless.

[01:00:29]The young one at the front desk knew me by name after a month.

[01:00:32]That's a kind of medicine you can't buy.

[01:00:36]In February of 2025, 3 months after I got home, I got a part-time job at McNamara's Builders Merchants out on the Tulla Road behind the counter advising young lads on materials. The fellow who hired me, Pat McNamara, he'd known my da years ago in the trade. He said, "Brendan, I can't have you on the tools, but I can have you on the stool and I'll pay you a fair wage. 20 hours a week, 13 euros an hour.

[01:01:07]It's not much. It's enough. I sit on a stool behind the counter at McNamara's 3 days a week now.

[01:01:14]The smell of cement dust comes in off the yard every time the door opens.

[01:01:20]The young lads come in for their lintels and their plaster board and their bags of mortar.

[01:01:26]And half the time they don't know what they want and I get to tell them.

[01:01:31]I get to be the old fellow who knows.

[01:01:34]The one who says, "No, son. That's not the right joist for that span.

[01:01:39]You'll want this one."

[01:01:41]I'd say it's the closest thing to a wall I've built in 3 years about Marivic.

[01:01:47]We exchanged a few messages over the months.

[01:01:51]Friendly enough.

[01:01:52]She told me in February of 2025 that she'd met an Australian fellow, Darren, who was working out in Cebu on a mining contract.

[01:02:02]They got engaged in March. I sent her a wee message saying congratulations and meant it.

[01:02:08]I hope, genuine, that Darren's pockets were deeper than mine.

[01:02:13]I hope Nanay Cora's roof holds.

[01:02:16]I hope the boys finish at Sacred Heart and go to a decent university one day.

[01:02:21]None of that's mine to fix anymore, but I hope it.

[01:02:24]Now look, the lesson, if there is one, I've thought about this a lot sitting on the stool at McNamara's. It's not a dating tip. There's a thousand fellows on YouTube giving dating tips.

[01:02:38]Don't send money in the first 6 months.

[01:02:40]Don't pay for the family. Don't agree to the fiesta.

[01:02:44]They're not wrong, but they're missing the point in my opinion.

[01:02:49]Sure, it's a cultural thing.

[01:02:52]You're not dating a woman over there the way you'd be dating a woman in Limerick or Leeds or Liverpool.

[01:02:58]You're being adopted by a family.

[01:03:01]The girl's the door, but the family's the house and the house comes with a roof that needs fixing and an auntie who needs stock and a brother who's coming home from somewhere. That's not them being bad. That's them being them.

[01:03:16]That's how the country works. They wouldn't be the people they are without it.

[01:03:21]The mistake, my mistake, is I walked through the door without reading what was written above it.

[01:03:28]Nobody handed me a contract.

[01:03:31]Nobody sat me down and said, "Brendan, here are the terms."

[01:03:36]I just nodded yes to a second cup of tea and a third and a fourth and by the time I looked up I was on the deeds of a house I couldn't afford to live in.

[01:03:47]So that's all I have to say about it. If you can afford to feed three generations for the rest of your life, off you go with my blessing.

[01:03:56]If you can't, and most of us can't, sure, then walk careful.

[01:04:01]Walk slow.

[01:04:03]And when somebody tells you you're famous in the barangay, take it as a warning, not a compliment.

[01:04:09]That's it. That's all of it.

[01:04:12]That was Brendan, a bricklayer from Limerick who flew to Cebu looking for a second chance and found something he didn't have a name for.

[01:04:21]I want to say a few things before we go.

[01:04:24]The reason this story matters, the reason I asked Brendan to tell it, is that it doesn't fit the shape of most stories on this channel.

[01:04:33]There's no scammer to point at.

[01:04:35]There's no betrayal you can dramatize.

[01:04:38]Marivic isn't a villain. Nanay Cora isn't a villain.

[01:04:43]Even the cousin Reymark, who never did get the call center job, isn't a villain.

[01:04:48]They're a family who have lived for generations on the assumption that when a foreigner enters the picture, the whole family rises with him.

[01:04:57]That's not malice.

[01:05:00]That's a country with no welfare net and a hundred years of OFW culture and a Catholic faith that says you take care of your own.

[01:05:10]It's not wrong. It's just expensive.

[01:05:13]And most of you watching this can't afford it.

[01:05:17]I'm sorry to be plain about that. Most of you can't.

[01:05:20]If you've been chatting to a kind woman on Messenger every morning, if you've been telling yourself you're different from the lads in the videos, if you've got a flight tab open on the laptop right now, pause. Read the room.

[01:05:34]Ask yourself the question Trev asked Brendan.

[01:05:37]Have you been told yet about the brother?

[01:05:40]Have you been told yet about the roof?

[01:05:43]Have you been told yet about the cousin?

[01:05:46]Because they're coming.

[01:05:47]Not because you're being conned, because that's what family means in the place you're walking into.

[01:05:53]Brendan got out with 22,000 euros and his back and his sister and a part-time job on a stool at a Builders Merchants in Ennis.

[01:06:03]He's one of the lucky ones.

[01:06:05]A lot of fellows in his position end up with nothing. And a lot of them can't go home because home is gone, too.

[01:06:13]Thank you, Brendan, genuinely, for telling us this.

[01:06:18]It takes a particular kind of honesty to sit and recount a story where you can't blame anyone but yourself for what you said yes to.

[01:06:27]If this story struck a chord with you, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and share it with the lad in your life who's been a bit too quiet about his Messenger conversations lately.

[01:06:40]If you've got a story of your own, drop it in the comments.

[01:06:44]We read them and a lot of our episodes start there.

[01:06:48]Stay safe out there, lads. Be kind to yourselves and the people you love.

[01:06:54]And we'll see you next time inside the Philippines.