Clad in her working clothes—an ensemble of rugged pants, cotton shirt and detachable sleeves—Chona Acope, 40, pedals her way through the daily burden of her chosen toil. As a pedicab driver, her sunburned skin has witnessed how her feminine stature endures muscle strain from hours of fetching students, in exchange for P200 in daily income.

She has no permanent home, no well-paying job and no television set for entertainment. Despite the stress and exhaustion of her daily grind, she shares her life story with ease through her nightly form of relaxation: Facebook.

“I usually spend an hour or two Facebook-ing,” Acope confessed in Filipino to The Manila Times.

Four months ago, a friend introduced the pedicab driver to the online crowd of social networking sites, chat rooms and e-mail.

After learning the basics of computer operation and online access, Acope became a habitué of a P12-per-hour computer rental store to go online and chat with foreign friends and long-lost relatives.

Hungry but connected - According to a survey conducted by Social Weather Stations (SWS), 21.1 percent of Filipino families or almost 4 million households experienced involuntary hunger during the past three months.

Another SWS survey conducted in March, meanwhile, revealed that 38 percent of Metro Manila households consider themselves poor.

Acoe agrees that she belongs to the urban poor majority.

But one might wonder why Acope allots a portion of her hard-earned bucks for Facebook when she could not even afford decent shelter.

“Kahit mahirap lang kami, pwede rin naman kami mag-relax. [Even if we are poor, we also have the right to relax],” she said.

Professor Bobi Luciano, a sociologist teaching at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, said that there are underlying reasons for this reality.

“Of course, we still have to consider social class. Not everybody has access to Internet, not everybody have their own computer at home. Though there are computer rentals, say at P10 per hour, still that’s P10. But do they have money to buy food? Syempre agrabyado palagi yung developing countries in terms of access. [Of course, developing countries are still deprived in terms of access to the Internet],” he added.

Ironically, according to the blog of Nick Burcher (nickburcher.com), Global Head of Social Media and Digital Innovation, ZenithOptimedia, the Philippines ranked 8th among countries with the most Facebook users (8,387,560 users) as of July 2010.

Luciano said that people find Facebook and the Internet a source of entertainment.

He, however, fears that while underprivileged users find joy in becoming one with the online crowd, they might fail to attend to their basic needs first.

Instead of finding ways to have food or shelter, Luciano said, they just entertain themselves.

But he added that he cannot blame the likes of Acope.

“Even [Karl] Marx said, ‘We need illusions in this illusory world.’ If the world can’t provide you with heavenly things, then at least dream about it, or create an illusion that you have it. In the Internet, they that say the rich and the poor suddenly become equal. That is illusion and we are happy with that,” Luciano said.

Online happiness - Luciano cited easier communication as the biggest advantage of Facebook and new digital technologies.

Before, searching for the Black-American father of Acope’s 17-year-old son was a hopeless case.

But through her friend’s advice, she keyed in the name of the father in Facebook’s Find People search engine. After sifting through several “Keith Washingtons,” she found the profile picture of her past love.

Her son has since been communicating with his father, who is based in Washington, D.C.

“I told him to take my son to his county because he has been influenced by friends into addiction,” Acope said. “But he asked me why I hadn’t told him about it earlier. He could have taken my son with him before.”

Now married to a security guard with whom she has a six year-old son, Acope said that she has also found friends and contacts from foreign lands through chat rooms.

“I have a foreigner chat mate who is an engineer in Qatar. Through Facebook chat, I was able to share the way we live here in the Philippines. I told him I am poor and that my family and I sleep inside jeepneys at night because we don’t have our own house. He [the Qatari chat mate] did not believe me, that’s why I took pictures and sent it to him,” she said, pointing to laminated photos hanging inside her pedicab.

When asked whether her husband is aware of the Qatari friend, she managed a nervous laughter, which leads to another story.

“Actually, the Qatari has also admitted love for me through chat, asking me to be his ‘Madam.’ He doesn’t know I’m married, I told him I got separated from my husband. If he can love my sons more than he can love me, I’m willing to be his wife. Bahala na [Let fate decide],” Acope said, adding that her husband deserves a better woman.

Luciano said that he has nothing against digital technology but added, “Not to be pessimistic but at the rate we’re going, we’re losing track of that sense of direction.”

Acope said that she would continue to use Facebook regardless of her sad plight.

After all, whenever she’s online, she explained, she’s happy.

It also helps her, the pedicab driver said, endure the daily grind of pedaling her way to meager earnings.