Travel in Palawan is largely
linear, and most of the travel I and other Palawan
residents do is confined to the north-south national highway that runs from the
island’s southern terminus of Bataraza for 280 miles before reaching El Nido in
the north. There’s very little reason to travel down the unpaved roads leading
into the interior of other municipalities unless you’re visiting someone who
lives there. Because of this, most of my impressions of towns other than Narra
are confined to what can be observed from the highway as I pass through. It’s
easy to jump to conclusions about towns of tens of thousands based on one or
two big houses that you see next to the highway.
But
observation is usually all we have. Socio-economic and demographic data that is
reliable, or existent at all, is hard to come by in developing countries. The
data we do have is national, or at best provincial. Given any country’s
diversity, by telling us about every place, we learn very little about any
single place. It doesn’t tell us, for example, whether my municipality of Narra,
is better or worse off than its neighbors.
So I was
excited when I got the maps posted below from an ex-pat in Puerto Princesa who
was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 60s in Pakistan
and now does NGO work here in Palawan. Data is
divided by municipality; I’m in Narra:
