This picture gives a sense of what life on the frontier in the tropics was like.
This family had arrived about 10 years before from the island of Masbate in the Visayas and gradually cleared the forest -- by hand with metal axes and machetes -- for their swidden rice fields.
Most of the migrants came from overcrowded areas of the Philippines and 'homesteaded' on Palawan as a way to obtain land to support their families.