Another rainy night in Manila

I intended to sit down yesterday and write this blog, but I was interrupted by a little something called a typhoon. Don't worry, I'm alive. Otherwise this blog would be a little eerie and from beyond.

Just to give you a quick rundown of what actually is a funny story from my side (not from others as 14 people died as a cause of the storm)....

The day started out after a night of continuous rain. We woke up and decided to go, where else, but the internet cafe. We tried to do the quick e-mailing and what not before we sat down to write our blogs and newsletters, except that we were being continuously interrupted by quick, brief, power outtages. So the rebooting was getting annoying and expensive (it takes time) so we decided, Martha, Helen, and I, to take a trip to a coffee shop a few blocks away.

At this point it wasn't really raining all that hard, but it wasn't the usual blistering heat and there was an out of place wind. Mind you, at this point we had no idea what we were in store for. So we get to the coffee shop, which is attached to a hotel, and sit down, order some drinks, and start to warm ourselves up (imagine!). About that time, someone draws our attention outside. What we see is a torrential downpour and the obvious effects of huge, fast winds (since you can't really SEE wind). And actually it wasn't a downpour, per se. It was more of a completely horizontal-pour. We were amazed at what, we thought, was a common experience during the rainy season (which we are actually at the end of). So we decided we would wait it out in the shop. We ended up staying through lunch. At about the end of lunch we hear this shattering sound and look over to see that the front left glass door of the hotel has shattered in the wind and the streets have flooded with water. We decided at that point to stay and curled up on the couches with some magazines and books to wait out the storm. About that time our waitress comes over and hands us the bill. We figure she just thinks we're done ordering. So we take the bill...and wait...and she just stands there staring at us. We decided, ok, she just wants us to pay, so we picked up our bags to get out money and hand it to her. She picks this moment to speak and say that basically we have to leave, they're closing. We were a little shocked by this, and a little scared, looking out the window at the five or six blocks of weather we were going to have to deal with. So we paid and bundled up for the run back. We realized a taxi was out of the question and figured, we were just going to have to bear the wind and rain. We ran through shin-high waters and fierce winds back to the house where we find our house in darkness, save for a few candles. It was then that we found out, no, this is not common, it was a typhoon, the worst that has hit metro Manila in 11 years. Boy did we feel dumb thinking this was typical. But we weren't through yet. Becca then sent Martha and I behind the house, a small maybe two foot wide alley to inspect a hole that was in the side of the house and letting water seep in, flooding the room I happen to sleep in. We, in the dying typhoon, were getting help from the atheles from neighboring houses to help us shovel and dump dirt and water to clear out the space. (Please don't think Becca is trying to endanger us, she asked us if we would and the storm had died way down by that point).

To make a long story a little shorter, we were without power or water until about 8:30 this morning (which was VERY unique and lucky in Manila, some of which is still without power and water). We also had to clean up the mess today, which included crawling back behind the house to try and find a way to plug the hole (which we still haven't been able to do since we've decided we need concrete which isn't easy to find).

So to conclude I survived a level 3 typhoon, including running and working in it. Crazy, eh?

(I wrote this blog together, but I'll split it up for reading purposes...I'm inserting an intermission here, sans the music, so you can have a stopping point to come back to...)



****************************INTERMISSION (la de da)*******************************



So I feel like it's been quite some time since I've written in my blog, however I've noticed that I've been on a pretty regular nine day or so rotation. I really thought I was writing more frequently. I guess time is just not a factor much anymore. I can't even tell if times flying or creeping lately. I swear it's been both longer and shorter than a month (one exactly since we landed).

So even though I've recently returned from yet another immersion, I really want to talk a little about the other trips and excursions or little, er, things we've been up to. Also, I realize that I'm talking a lot about specific events that have happened and not really a lot about Filipino life of the everyday sort. So here's my idea...

Give me some questions to answer. I'll be around Manila for about two weeks before we take off for our last immersion and then trip to the beach for reflection and processing before going to our sites (long sentance). SOOOO...write me a comment in this blog entry and ask me a little question and my next blog can be a Q&A. I'll keep adding to the Q&A blog, so even if it seems I've already written it, you can still leave me questions to answer. They can be simple and short or you can throw me some harder ones or opinion questions. Whatever you want to ask.

Well let's see. There are three main excursions I want to hit on. First of all is the little history tour we took ourselves on. Basically Becca gave us some directions and said have at it. We visited mostly sites that were related to the Revolution that happened in the late 1800s. I guess our tour kind of started with the time of the Gomburza in 1872. Basically there were three mestizo priests who were put to death for resistance to the Spanish crown, specifically to "secular priest" (a combo businessman and priest). Their names were Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora, hence Gom-Bur-Za. So we visited the site where they were put to death (I'm trying this whole picture upload thing in the blog, so you can kinda look around and find the marker we saw). So basically that act got the people's attention. It also sparked Andreas Bonifacio to become a part of establishing the Filipino KKK (not to be confused with the klan) which was an honoralbe association of the children of the Revolution, set up secretly to make connections to join together against the Spanish. So a second group forms from the mestizos called the "Illustrados" who were given a chance to go back to Spain. Instead, one of their members, Jose Rizal, a big hero in history for the Filipinos, calls for representation in Parliament instead. So basically jump forward through a lot of things (that you should look into if you're interested, it's basic Philippines history, so it's not hard to find) and you get to where the Filipinos rise up against the Spanish. In Manila they force the Spanish into the walled city of Intramuros where they kind of starve them out. Well the trouble then is that they make a deal with the Americans to help guard the city and even though the Filipinos declare their independence, the US is busy buying the Philippines from Spain in the Treaty of Paris for $20 million after the Spanish-American War.

Ok, this history lesson is poor and disconnected, hard to follow, and doesn't really do a good job of explaining what happened. Then again I can't write a whole blog on this whole section of history and am once again encouraging you to either look it up for yourself, e-mail me for more info, or ask a professional.

What I'm trying to do is give you an idea of the sites we saw. We visited a lot of Rizal monuments and memorials including a really cool wall of a bronze relief of his life and a huge wall with his writing in about four languages. We also visited Intramuros where they held the Spanish which was actually really cool and a lot of fun. I've *tried* to include some pictures to look at and I'll try to start giving you a few visuals to go with the stories.

The next thing that was really awesome was getting to participate in a protest ralley on the anniversary of the Declaration of Martial Law under the dictatorship of Marcos. So why would anyone want to "celebrate" something so heinous? Basically it is "observed" in order to remember what life was like under his dictatorship and strive to never have that type of rule repeated. Unfortunately in recent years this striving has turned into protests against the current presidency of Gloria Arroyo (referred to as GMA). Not only is her presidency oppressive, as you can probably already tell from past posts which don't begin to name what's happened under her government, but more people have died from political killings under her already than occured during Marcos's Martial Law declaration. She is also trying to do something called "Charter Change", referred to as "Cha-Cha". Basically she's campaigning for a change over to a Parliamentary system so she's not kicked ousted from office at the end of her term, which she is only allowed to serve one of. In case you can't figure out, this means she can be in power for much longer, as long as her party is in power. If you need more evidence to why that's scary, there is evidence that she, in essence, rigged the last election so she would be sure to win.

So we marched with groups amassing from the surrounding provinces and helped carry a sign protesting the political killings. We all gathered outside of the main Post Office building and waved banners and listened to many voices (alas in Tagalog) cry for rights, freedoms, and justice. Banners waved with protest slogans and there were placards everywhere with Marcos and Arroyo's pictures with the words that translated to "yesterday/then" and "today/now" on them, comparing the oppressive regiems. It was very moving to be a part of that experience. Part of the reason we were there was because it means a lot to have foreign, white faces (which are almost always assumed to be American) at this protest. Regardless, I didn't feel used, as some people queried, I actually felt really empowered. Not so much for myself, this isn't my battle. But I felt empowered for the people we were with, who surrounded us, and shouted as loud as they could in a language I'm not sure I'll ever understand (it's tough!).

The last thing that's been really important to me was a very simple experience I was so greatful to get to share in. Becca tries to schedule for us not just trips to visit people to learn about different parts of the Philippines and Filipino life, but also to help us process and reflect on what we're learning. And as my luck, or as grace, would have it, we got to visit a Filipino artist community as one such excursion. The intention was simply to get us to be able to express ourselves through art and be able to use such an expression to process and reflect on what we've experienced. We used simple art supplies and were encouraged to draw an image of what we'd experienced or learned or what we were feeling. Not to sound arrogant, but this wasn't so much a learning experience as it was a refresher and exercise in an already explored medium of processing. I was so comfortable (for once!) amongst this group of Filipinos as artists, surrounded by paintings and art supplies and just listening and talking about expression of a different half of the brain. The great thing is the lead artist in this community is acutally a very successful artist who has showed all over the way. He's currently leading the group in organizing a showing of work with the theme of human rights in the Philippines that they hope to take internationally. I was so happy to get to sit and talk to him for a good few hours about not just art in general in technique and theory, but about religion and social justice and life in general. I got a special tour of his house to see some of his own pieces of work (which he didn't have downstairs in the studio we were in). They were quite moving and spectacular. I didn't take any pictures. I don't like to take too many pictures of art, I apologize for not being able to visually share it with you. I didn't realize how much I've missed the art world and being around artists until I got to re-enter that world. HUGE sigh of relief.

So there you have another amazingly long blog entry, and I didn't even make it to this past immersion, which was actually a lot of fun and a lot less trying on the soul. I will write another blog soon specifically talking about that. I'm still trying to learn how to be brief in my blogging, but I just feel like I have so much I want to share and say. I do promise that they will get shorter as life becomes less varied and more a part of a routine when I get into my work in Cebu. Until then, you'll just have to bear with me.

Tomorrow we go to a theater workshop group. Another exciting trip that I'm sure will be a much needed return to something I love and miss.

Peace, I hope

Finally something to relax to....

First off, I realize I am giving you two blogs with two very different topics in the same day that really happened a few days apart. However, I wanted to keep them chronological and I felt that I would be doing a diservice to the first by abruptly switching gears to the second, so please read the following blog second. And please leave me a comment if you get the chance just to let me know who all is listening (a little self-indulgence, but please humor me).

Also, the spell check isn't working, so these two posts will be FULL of some bad spelling, the one thing I was NEVER good at in school. My apologies.

So I finally, after a long and intense few weeks, have had a chance to relaxe and enjoy the beauty of the Philippines again. It is tough to say that I could put the troubles of the world out of my mind for a few hours, because right now I feel that I definitely can't do that, but we all do need a chance to remember that there is beauty in the world, even in the difficult things. And soemtimes we need to be able to just see that easily instead of always having to look so darn hard for it.

So whether or not beautiful is what I was looking for, beautiful is what I got. Today we took an amazing trip to the Pagsanjan Falls. I couldn't tell you where exactly it is, or even which direction from Manila we travelled (I have a limited since of direction here, which is a little out of character for me). There are a few pictures on google images you can search for to see a brief glimpse of it, if you get the time and energy to do so. (**update** obviously I now have pictures on this blog, which I borrowed from Helen)

We arrived at our location and were "greeted" by a pack of men attacking the car and motioning us down a side road. Needless to say this made me extremely tense and a little frightened. I hadn't yet had time to calm down and process from our last immersion and was even feeling like I would have rather stayed in Manila and just slept and journaled. So I was amazingly stressed out by these men, banging on the windows and motioning to our driver to roll down the windows.

So we follow these men, down to a little, well, commune it seemed, park the car, and get out. We were quickly ushered down some steps, into some crazy pink lifejackets, and divided into three boats. The boats were very skinny canoe-like things, that rocked with the slightest change in weight balance. Great, I thought, we're going in the river.

We began to travel down a river, pulled in a chain by a canoe with a motor on it. On either side, there wasn't much of a view. I kept thinking I should have stayed home. Then the motor stopped, the drivers of the boats in the front released our ropes and broke our chain, and then continued on with our round paddles.

That's when the view changed. Suddenly we were going against the stream, sharing time between the calm and the rapids. On either side, sheer cliffs rose and our guides' voices echoed as they called forward to see if other boats were coming back from the falls down the same rapids. Let me just take this time to give these drivers/guides some credit. To anyone reading who is an avid rock hopper, especially in Montreat, you have nothing on these men. The best Montreat rock hopper couldn't stand a minute doing what theses guys do. They manuevered the boat in and out of rapids, between rocks only big enough for the boat. And to do this, they would jump in and out of the boat, pushing off of rocks, sometimes laying for a split second completely horizontal, their arms on the boat, their feet on the rocks. It seemed too as if they just inately knew the rocks, and the very half-square inch of rock upon which to place each toe. It was amazing.

So we manuevered down the river and then came upon an opening and a covered area on one bank. We stopped here to eat, in the middle of a river with cliffs on either side. And to top it off we were treated to barbequed chicken, something I was certain didn't exist in the Philippines.

When we continued on, it wasn't much longer until we reached our destination. The end of the line for the boats, they coudn't go any further. We got out and walked along a smooth-stone path until we turned a corner and saw the falls. They were beautiful. Japanese and French tourists (an odd combonation) were gathered around, waiting for their turn. There turn for what? The falls.

When it was our turn we boarded a raft and were pulled towards the falls by two raft guides, pulling along a rope. But we didn't go around the falls to the other side, we went UNDER the tumbling water. It beat down on us as we laughed and screamed. We stopped behind it, at an entrance to a cave, and were told we could get out. It was like being in the middle of a storm and enjoying it. We swam to the rope and held on as we walked back and forth to the falls. When the guides had finally had enough of the twenty-something-year-olds acting like eight-year-olds, they motioned us back onto the raft and told us to lay on our stomachs. They then took us back under the falls, where we were treated to the greatest back massage and the worst beating we had ever received. And of course when they offered, we obliged to do it again. About this time another raft reached us, full of Japanese tourists. An older man in the group caught the fever, and jumped out of his raft to splash us all as we lay, helpless, pinned down to the raft. He too, had turned into an eight-year-old.

We happily got back in our boats and travelled back, this time with the current, towards our ride home.

As I said before, it was really just nice to be able to have a day off. Not from the world, not forgetting about it, but being able to put it in the back of your mind, maybe selfishly, for a few hours and just enjoy something else. The weight of the waterfall replaced the weight of the problems I've been seeing, and I was glad I hadn't slept in. Of couse my mind went straight back to what came before and what was ahead, but I wish I could plug my memory into the computer and download it for you all to see. Who knows, maybe in another millinium they'll be able to. But until then, have your own adventures and tell someone about them.

Peace, I hope

there's blood in your coffee

I've been singing the Dave Matthews Band song "Don't Drink the Water" in my head for this past weekend. It's a little weird how a slogan and a song can take up a permanent residence in my head, especially in a place that's always so full already.

I'm sorry to everyone for bumping two intense, slightly depressing blogs up next to each other, but I haven't really had any time to write about much else between the two.

So I guess that was your warning. If you can't make it through another blog, at least scroll down to the bottom for a little plea from me on how you can help. Finally, something active (I know how some college students and Presbyterians can be on the needing something to do with issues).

This weekend has been really hard. For most of it, it wasn't even making it through the days. I was counting down, getting through the hours, the minutes. I specifically recall sitting on a jeepney, wondering where in creation I was, thinking how slow the time was going, and how much I dreamed and wished I had done anything different with this year of my life. Thoughts like that are scary, but they're real. Time has a weird way of never really ticking by at the same speed. Some things make it go faster, some things make it crawl. Thinking is a weird case. Sometimes when I'm busy thinking, staying only inside my own head, time flies. I can't believe what time it is when I come back to reality. Sometimes thinking makes it crawl when the thoughts are really heavy. This weekend and these thoughts where those kind and this weekend took me a very long time to get through.

Last week I went really step by step through what I did. I don't think I have the energy to do that again. It may end up a little chronoligical anyway, but it might also be a little disjoined.

Basically the weekend, Thursday through Sunday, was spent visiting semi-urban industrial workers on picket lines, and taking a brief re-touring of the urban poor, since, what else could happen to a family that doesn't have a job anymore.

I don't have my journal here to give you any facts at this time, so I will try to do that later. Just understand that here in the Philippines the idea of workers and a union are quite different from the US. Take a second and think about a strike in the US. The press it gets, how long it lasts, the work of a union. Now think about this. You've been on strike for a year. You've had a picket line that whole time, but you can't be directly in front of the factory because there are armed guards. Instead, you've been sitting outside of a side property, a "garage entrance" that doesnt' really seem to be used anyway, and you're basically just hanging out. You're a part of a union, but that doesn't get you much respect. Instead it gets you bullied by the company, and is even grounds for dismissal. So they want to lay you off, but if they do, they have to pay you your dismissal fees. People have already taken your job in the factory, and you have no money coming into your house besides what you can get from scavaging in the dump, which you live next to. And no one is helping you, and you're not makig very much progress. This is a wild concept to think of as an American. And it took a long time for me to understand what was going on. We met these people, members of REN, a garbage collection company, on two different picket lines. We were *supposed* to be asking them questions about their situation, but the only question I wanted to ask was, "why are you doing this?" To an American, that was not the way to go about getting your demands met. It's not very active, and we like results. It took a very long time to realize that they were campaigning for more than their rightful wages, they were striking because they would rather not work, than work for a company treating them as sub-human. They would rather be hungry than work under those conditions. To them, the little battles they were loosing weren't simply defeat, they still were fighting to win the war. And as someone this week put it, in a very "Christian-applicable way", it's not the hope that is necessary, which we, the Americans were looking for. The faith was what was important. A faith issue, not a hope issue. Not a promise of results issues. Faith.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again. The Philippines is an infected country. It's infested with big businesses that have come in when the tarrifs on imports, known as "liberalizing" the economy, were taken down. It's wrongly boiled down into supply in demand as a result. The supply of workers has gone up from the provinces who can't afford to be farmers anymore, and the demand for jobs is directly affected. Companies can afford to have a "take it or leave it" attitude with its workers, giving them below minimum wage and no benefits, because there is always someone else willing to work, for less. Most people work contractually. Five months on, one month off, then moving on, because more than five months means a company has to give them their due, their wage and their benefits. But why do that when there are so many other workers out there. The companies discrimate against and hassle the workers who seek to form unions. They even set up something called "yellow unions" who pretend to be for the workers and tell them that the company's interests and the workers interests are really the same. The company then "works" with the yellow unions, to give the appearance of being fair, but are actually doing nothing but splintering the workers and making it harder for the real unions to have their demands met.

We spent another Saturday listening to another lecture on this concept. The problem is that it was being taught by an undereducated union worker, who knew only the buzz words, and very little about the concepts. We already understood everything he was trying to teach us, except that he was adding little comments about how it was Bush and the Americans "doing it to the Filipinos". When we were interviewed for the YAV program by the site coordinators, we were constantly asked how we would react when someone talked about the ills of our government and its administration. Most of the time I said I would agree with them. I think that's an answer most people would give, especially a lot of my college-activist friends. But you really dont' know how you will respond until you're in it. It was really hard to hear such a tone from someone. I agree, a lot of their ills are due to what countries like America, and most of the G8 for that matter have done to the country. Most Americans don't even know that we owned the Philippines for a lot of the 20th century and they are technically in a semi-colonial state. But the "teacher" wouldn't listen when we tried to say we had poverty and injustice in our country as well. No. We were seen as all privaledged, greedy, and rich. We didn't understand. It was hard to hear, and you start to get really defensive. Since I learn mostly in hindsite, I look back on it and learn a lesson. This man is really beaten down, as well as all the people he works with. He is justified in a lot of his ideas. He's not as educated as we are, but he hasn't gotten that opportunity. And normally you hear about other countries or the poor and people want to say, "but they're so happy". No, he was bitter. He was very bitter about it all. But isn't he sort of allowed to be? A lot more so than we were allowed to be bitter at him for basically calling us all capitalist dogs (not that he used those words).

The other strike we got to really learn about was the Nestle picket line in Calamba. I urge you to look into the Nestle coorporation and its practices. Its not just Nestle Philippines that's corrupt, it's the entirety of the Nestle coorporation, all over the world, in human rights pratices, environmental practices, and shady business in general. They own about 80,000 (a crazy number to think) of sub-companies, including Loreal. Surprise.

But what have they been doing in the Philippines. Again, I can't give you a full history, since I stupidly forgot all of my notes, so I'm giving you what I can remember. Since the mid-80s, which means for most of my life, the Nestle coorporation hasn't been big on the benefits it gives its workers. They did, however, promise, or at least offer retirement benefits. But they we're giving them on an a whim, reserving the right to withhold them for no real reason. So the issue came up before tons of levels of the judiciary, until it reached the Supreme Court, eventually. Before that could even happen, the workers striked for three months in the year 1987. Of course this didn't sit well with the company, and two years after the strike, even though the issue was still going on, snailing through the courts, the president of the union was shot and killed in front of the factory in 1989. They call it a political killing, but when you get down to it, the government and Nestle were basically in bed together, the government from the executive side sticking with Nestle. So even when the Supreme Court ruled in 1991 that retirement benefits were a legitamit bargaining issues (which goes through the CBA or Collective Bargaining Agreement that handles union-company realtions to negotiate rights), the company wasn't obliged to respond or even uphold the decision. And they still haven't.

The strike was restarted in January of 2002, which means they've been striking throughout my entire college education and then some. They set up another picket line, only one that is a little more active then the REN counterparts. They have programs like the OTOP or Operation Ticket/Operation Paint where they go around, handing out pamphlets and painting the city with their slogans and story. They hold protests and have even made a little headway. The sad part is that total, they've lost 15 members to deaths. The most recent was the killing of a second union president last September. The eerie part was that our intern counterparts from last year had just left the picket line a mere two days before he was killed. They had met and talked with him, and even asked if he was scared for his life for what he was doing? His name was Diosdado "Ka Fort" Fortuna. I urge you to look up his story (you can always use the links to the right to find out more information about what I'm talking about). When we visited the picket line, we visited and even spent the night in his house with his wife and son. We saw the very spot he was shot. In front of the factory, in broad daylight. I guess terrorism requires fear, and nothing is more scarey than the idea that daylight can't protect you.

We also visited the wife of a UCCP worker who was killed three months ago. He wasn't directly related to any factories, but he was very outspoken in his community. Without warning he was shot and killed for being so vocal. The scarey thing is he worked with the PCPR, the organization I will be working with in Cebu come November. We heard about how many members of the UCCP have been victims of political killings. They have been labeled as terrorists by the government and alligned with terrorist organizations (with which they have nothing to do) to justify their killings, but have been given no acknowledgement by the government, hardly any by the media, and none by investigators into their murders. While talking with the family of this worker, we met his nephew, who was very involved in the military. He had participated in ROTC in high school and college, and was even going into an exchange program to West Point in the US, a very selective honor given by invitation only. When people on his campus started hearing about how he was speaking out against political killings. When he was given a legitimate reason to go home, his uncle's funeral, he was met upon his return with a dishonorable discharge for what they called going AWOL. (His story is on Butlatlat.com, although I don't have his name, I will include it in an upcoming post).

The crazy truth about all of this injustice, which I admit I've been a little scattered in conveying, was simpy the reality of it. What people think they can do to people who they believe to be below them. How people can merely be pawns and treated without basic human rights. The government under Gloria Arroyo has even just upped its spending in the area of counter terrorism, which in reality is going towards supporting and funding these political killings, usually of people no more guilty than of speaking out.

So what can you do? Well you can't really do that much to stop the killings or to make the companies treat the workers fairly. However, you can find out more information. Look up things like Nestle and REN. Look at the story of the Hacienda Lusita strikes and killings (all on Butlatlat). Look up Dole Philippines and the San Miguel Corporation. DON'T buy Nestle products or products of the companies it owns. Urge those you know to do the same.

Think about the Nestle picket line slogan "there's blood in your coffee" (because their big product here is Nescafe) when you think it won't hurt to buy one of their products. They've actively sought the death of a union president and have been responsible for the poverty of their workers. Keep it in your mind. I'll do the work for you on this one and give you a link to their brands page. http://www.nestle.com/Our_Brands/Our+Brands.htm It will surprise you.

I hope this has all made sense and I haven't given too confusing information. Please e-mail me with more questions and I'll try to remember to put up more information later in a much shorter blog I promise.

Keep in touch

Peace, I hope

where is god in it?

As I sit here, writing this post that I've known I need to write and that I've wanted to write, I realize just how difficult it's going to be. First of all because I'm sitting in an internet cafe with tons of people and a tv loudly playing Rush Hour. I miss my room where I can sit in solitude, with only a faint sound of music playing on my itunes, reflecting intently on what I'm doing and writing. So I will try to do this post justice. Please stick with me, it will be long and gruling, but I really want people to read it.

I've been thinking lately how claustrophobic Manila is. How dirty the streets get, how the smells change from bad to worse, and how those few begging children seem like so many. I've also been sitting around wondering when we were going to *do* something. Now looking back I feel very childish. I wish I could go back to a few days ago and stop this nightmare of reality that's been sticking always in the back of mind and sometimes the front. Part of me feels like I can't have had such a changing experience already; it's only two weeks into the orientation. I also think that just a mere weekend of this experience makes me feel so immature, so self righteous. But at the same time I can't deny how intensive this trip was: this trip to live in the urban poor community.

As a little background and set-up, a large portion of the population in the Philippines are poor or impoverished. Most of the jobs hire people as contractual workers. You are not required in the Philippines to give minimum wage and benefits to workers until they have worked in their job for six months. So what most businesses do is hire workers for five months, lay them off for a month, and then re-hire them. So most people are not given the minimum wage of 350 pesos per day, and where the daily cost of living for a family of six is 655 pesos a day (or about ten dollars), they receive about 100 pesos, or less than two dollars. The agricultural industry in the provinces is in the same state. Most of the people here work on farms, but because of the great idea of liberalization of the market and privitization of the land, what were once subsistence farmers can't even make enough crop to sell to pay off the land renters, support themselves, or even enough to eat. Rice farmers are eating Vietnamese rice and selling their own with nothing else to do.

I can't pretend I'm an economist, or that this simplified version of the economic situation in the Philippines even begins to explain what is really happening. But it does set up the story I am about to share.

What all this means is that, one, provincial Filipinos are moving to the city to find work, and two, they are being left with no money, sometimes no jobs, and poor.

The population of these urban poor, mostly families, live in consolidated, dilapidated communities all over the city. Two of those communities are known as Parola and Beseco. They are both on the shore of Manila Bay, separated by the Pasig River and surrounded by bay industry. The houses are ramshackled and shottily constructed, using random wood, siding, boards, and iron. I can't begin to describe the view and the true nature of these houses as we walked down endless alleys, along waste filled gutters and around people, dogs, cats, roosters, pigs, trash, human waste, and intense poverty.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To start off we were ushered into Becca's van, all eight of us, and told to "have fun." Our driver, Pastor Ronnie of the UCCP Church of Tondo drove us down the bay road to a little impoverished area in Tondo where a daycare doubled as the meeting house for a group known as Samakana. These people, living in Tondo, Beseco, and Parola, have volunteered, sometimes giving up their jobs to do so, to organize the people of the community to fight their situation and the government that comes into their communities to rip out their men to take to prison in undeclared martial law, burn their houses for the mere sake of scattering some residents, and plans to reduce the communities to replace them with businesses and high rises.

After a very brief orientation about who the program was and who the volunteers were, we were split up into two groups, four to Parola and four to Beseco and taken on a quick "ocular" tour. What I saw I began describing above. Here I will just add that the communities were divided into areas that stretched for miles. After each area were long roads, where bike drivers sat with their empty sidecars, praying for a fare, and children and men screamed "Americana!" and "Yo, Joe!" to us. "What your name?" they called. "You buy?" "You want." "What you doing here?"

Then we were halved again: two back to another area, and myself and my new neighbor Martha taken to the shore line. I looked out from the end of the "road" over a railing and into the Pasig River. I noticed along the side just in my view from under the houses that were built on stilts along the river that there were water plants, entangling trash of all kinds. Some children swam around, some naked, some only half clothed, climbing onto boards and scavenging in the trash for plastic that they could sell for what little money it would get them. Martha and I then went to go meet our host families and we sat in their small one or two room houses on the floors or in the only chairs they owned which they willingly gave us. We talked about the situation in the community. Why were they there? Where did they come from? How do they get the little money they had? How long had their children been in school? How long could they keep them there, with the weekly cost being more than their daily income allowed? And they asked us what we thought, what we believed. What is a Democrat and a Republican? What did we think about American Imperialism? Did we support Bush? Where there places like this in the United States? Where we married? Why not, we were so pretty? What did we learn in school? The conversations waned to and from the political and social to the little casualties of life. Children poked their heads from behind corners, laughing, giggling, smiling, staring. Crowds would gather around the doorway to stare at the rich, white faces sitting on the floor of the small hovels. And then the question would come again, "why are you here?" Only this time we would have to answer. "To learn," we would say. "To understand your situation." Only how could we? Two nights? Was it enough time to truly understand. What is really feels like, what it means to have another Friday come around and still be in the same house. To not go back to an internet cafe and only write about the horrible nightmare you woke up from. We went to a sari-sari (variety) store and met two brothers who had just been reunited. One way gay, he was "a gay" as they say. We laughed and discussed and they taught me a little Tagalog, even though they spoke mixed dialects closer to Cebuano.

That night I had lunch with my family: fish and rice. Somehow I was full when we finished. We sat and watched television on a small screen in black and white, the "antennae" being moved around by the middle child to find where we could actually get a picture, the sound coming out of another tv that's screen was broken and held on by a pin stuck in the power button. RC, my guide, translated to me. A report about Dengue, a disease carried by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes were everywhere in Parola and especially Beseco. Some people had died last year from it, but they weren't reported. They didn't have the money for the hospital and no one really cared about those people in Parola. I used to CR (comfort room), which was a ledge out of the back of the house covered by a thin sheet. It was raining. A small hole in the gaped planks was my toilet. I couldn't see below me, but I never even though about where it was going. I went back inside where we stayed up talking. About the mundane, the trite, namely me, and then about politics and philosophy. RC had been a philosophy major in school. He had read about revolutions and God and governments and the Bible and prayer and everything but what did I think?

I slept that night on the floor in one of the two small rooms in the house. They left the light on for me, even though I didn't need it, to keep things away. I slept next to two of the boys on a mat in my malong cloth, a pair of pants for a pillow. They kept their only fan on me the whole night, which I wasn't allowed to refuse, even when I moved it stealthily in the middle of the night. The funny thing is how sick I am even now from the fan being on me for two nights. I woke up the next morning to breakfast: sweet coffee bought from the sari-sari store for me and some break we filled with noodles. They asked me, "you shower?" Sure. I went back out onto the ledge from the night before. They sun was just right in the sky, everything glowed with color. Just over the roofs was a clear, beautiful view of the bay and the ocean water. A beautiful white dove sat and watched me, edging closer and closer when my eyes were closed. The site was out of place in its beauty it seemed, because how beautiful was the beach front, but what the people who were blessed enough to live with it had to live life was heartbreaking. Then I looked down over the ledge. The edge of water I had seen the day before wasn't just the edge of the water. The trash was covering the ground. Human waste from the houses iced the tops of boxed and plastic. A diaper hung from the rafter it had caught on. I realized what I had been sleeping over during the night, and where everything that was leaving the CR was going.

After my shower, RC took me to meet the others in my area to go to a house for a lecture on "activism". We sat in a very nice house for the neighborhood. It had the pseudo-tile laid and indoor lighting. I learned how lucky I had been in my house. Two of the others had no electricity. Their rooms were smaller and their floors the ground. In the group we were shocked to learn we would be talking about Communism and Chairman Mao. His five golden rays and view of Liberalism were on the docket. What did we think of Communism. Could they do something like this? This is why they were organizing. To teach the community, to join it together. But for communism. Why hadn't it worked before, they asked. Were we liberals in the United States. We were taken aback. How were we to answer. The Hacienda Lucido workers had revolted and ended up with seven dead, we watched the video. "How does this make you feel?" I shut off. I began vigorously journaling, hoping the boys squished next to me couldn't read my sloppy cursive or understand English well enough to care.

I vented my frustrations. How can these people believe in God. Would I be able to in these situations? How are the poor "blessed"? How can somehow say "God will provide" when God hasn't seemed to? I poured out how much I hated being there, and how ashamed I was of that. How I was counting down the hours until I could go back to the special projects house with Becca and a mattress and AC. I even wrote how much I hated myself for thinking how I just wanted them to tear it all down, just so I could know it wasn't there, haunting me. They were some of the worst thoughts I've ever had. And then I thought how I wanted somehow for everything to change. For the businesses to start paying the workers. For the American and Japanese industries to leave and let new businesses build up. For them all to pay at LEAST minimum wage. For the houses to be torn down and replaced with homes that had electricity and water and plumbing. And then sickeningly how I knew, honestly, I really didn't have the faith or the hope to believe it would ever happen.

When we left the house, seven hours later, we went back to Sara's host family's house. We saw only with the two small oil lamps in the house. Suddenly Angie, a resident and youth volunteer ran up. There were two ministers in the community, did we want to meet them? Of course. We walked through the streets, a little distant, until we came to a small door in the middle of a market. We went inside to find four men praying. Two were pastors of the building: a Methodist church. "Please come in, sit, pray with us." We had a small bible study, about Job. Job's faith wasn't dependent on what he was given, but simply because of God's love for him. "Those that receive often, forget where it comes from," he said. Could this be true. Could these concurring members who had trickled in believe this? That what little they had was from God, and they didn't believe because of what they were given, or not believe because of what little they were given? Could a lesson so cliche, but rarely understood, for most Christians as Job fill them with faith? We prayed. We prayed A LOT. Long prayers. We took an offering. We prayed again. Would Sara pray for them, they asked. Would she pray for the people to come together and stand against the government and demand their rights, with one voice? We returned to our homes, ate a quick dinner, and feel asleep, this time knowing what was just below the floor.

The time flew after that. I ate breakfast. Smiling, jovial Nina and Angie came and got me, took me back to the daycare in a bike, free of the much needed charge. We met the other four we had been away from for so long. Helen was covered in mosquito bites and hadn't slept all weekend and Sarah had taught the Tondo children some songs when they had been trapped there the night before from the rain. Everyone gathered. What were we thankful for from the weekend? Would we remember them? Would we come visit? Then they insisted on taking tons of pictures from our cameras, photos they would never see or possess, as a remembrance of them, as Angie said.

Then Jed came, one of the workers. We were driven to pastor Ronnie's church on the better side of Tondo. We stayed there for awhile, ate at the Jolibee, had cotton candy at the children's carnival, toured the sanctuary, and were driven home. We drove back past Parola and Beseco, our homes for a brief breath. Hadn't we just been there? Didn't it seem so long ago?

Even now I feel odd about it all. every time I close my eyes, I think about how hard it was, even though there were times during it when I was truly laughing or enjoying my conversations with others. How quickly and thankfully I have re-entered my semi-comfortable life in Malate, a few mere miles from the North Harbor. I'm thinking that right now these people are going on with their lives living in the "reality". That word was used more than any other all weekend. "This is our reality," they kept saying. And still it feels like a dream. Is it because I can't truly handle the truth that that life really exists. Am I so naive to think this small experience has really affected me so much? I don't know. It certainly has sparked a long and intensive blog entry to say the least. I don't know what I can tell you from this.

Why are you here? What do you want to learn from this? What are you going to do now? I can't expect anything to really transfer through this computer to you, any understanding. I don't know what I want to do with this, or what I want to encourage you to do. Like me, this will be just a memory in a short while, and back to "reality" we go. I guess like we said to the people of Parola and Beseco, we're just learning so we can tell people. So in my own little way, I'm telling you a short page from the life of the Philippines. I hope that you've made it through this far, maybe in a few installments. Please don't think less of me for my honesty. Just think about them at least once and maybe take the time to say a little prayer for them the next time you talk to God. That's more than they have now.

The time I've spent in this cafe has been long enough to cost 100 pesos...a days wage...

Peace, I hope

(note: the added pictures don't do justice to capturing the true poverty of these communities. I often felt ashamed to try and take pictures, so I took ones when I wasn't feeling so invading or when I was asked to take one. The one of the large group is especially misleading since this was a very nice in comparison to all the ones we saw. Please understand that the room we are in is half the house, the other half being the kitchen and CR, and that right outside the door are the narrow, dirt filled streets so common in the communities. The two girls are Angie and Nina, and my host mother appears in the picture of us with the banner, behind me and to the left. The open air type picture is a large road that ran between the different areas of Parola and the bike that appears in the first picture was so rare outside of these areas where a lot of men try to get money by driving tricycles, that I was shocked to see it. Please don't be mislead.)

isa, dalawa, tatlo....mahla naman...salamat

So I have absolutely no idea what I wrote in my last post, so if I repeat any of it, forgive me.

So the title translates "one, two, three....that's too expensive....thank you" (oh, and as a side note, avril lavigne's song "sk8ter boy" just came on the radio, I am not too far from American pop as you would think). That's about all I remember from yesterday's "crash" course in Tagalog that is helpful when riding the transportation available around Manila. Of course after we learned it, we got to "implement" it and ride around on all of Manila's finest vehicles. For a rough run down of the forms we rode the LRT, an above rail train; a kalesa, left over from the Spaniards it's a little carriage driven by PONY, not horse; a jeepney which if you saw anywhere else you would think its some kitschy, eclectic tour bus type thing, it's a steel bus, decorated to its liking where you climb in the back, sit on benches facing each other and pay by passing your money forward and saying "bayan ho [number of people] sa [destination]"; a bus, five seats long and CROWDED, we had to chase it down; and a little side car attached to a little bicycle which you have to haggle to work out the price of. The only other thing we rode (which I saved until now for a reason) was a pushcart. A pushcart looks like a picnic table that you sit on the table of and it rides on the train tracks. The sad reality of these are that they run the train tracks, which are government land and the only place that many of the poor can live on. They live in little sad houses made of wood and siding scraps. The children play next to the tracks, dangerously close because there isn't much room. They make little fires and sit around. Every once in awhile we would see rosters for cock fighting and the random piece of luxury like an old karaoki machine or pool table. I have never seen such poverty. Whats worse is that the government is proposing redoing the train system and widening the tracks, displacing tens of thousands of people for a good 12 hours worth of tracks. The trains have to go very slowly through the area because of the people and the pushcarts (you might have to stop on your ride to have the pushcart moved over to make way for the train) and so instead of the people, they pick speed. It's the hardest thing I've witnessed.

But on a lighter note, I'm glad that the program has actually started. We had a few days of just hanging around Manila because of difficulty scheduling with the German program that joins us (we have one German co-intern named Deborah who is 19). We haven't done much besides the transportation tour. We did get the opportunity to go to church today. I was surprised how very familiar it was. The church is acutally Presbyterian and very much run like one of our typical Presbyterian Sundays. The only slight differences, which are not strictly Filipino were the use of power point to the point that it coincided with what the pastor was saying (she would make a point, say a line, etc. and it would appear, animated on the screen) and the communal reading of the scripture. Luckily this Sunday was a communion Sunday. I'm glad we got to start that way.

The strangest part of it all is being stared at all the time. We get called things like "Americana" and there are a lot of "ma'ams" (which is very cultural). We've been called "Snow White" and the like and people are always screaming "ma'am, sister, come buy...". A lady in the market last night asked us why we weren't married yet because we were so "beautiful" and made a motion with her fingers indicating that our noses were not flat, something considered more attractive. It's odd to experience. You can't really look people in the eye without them swarming towards you; it's like an open invitation. We've also had a lot of young children come up begging to us. I never know what to say or do. It's heartbreaking, but still difficult to give everyone of them money. It's tough and something I'm struggling with.

Well my time is running short here in the internet cafe. We have to get back and fix dinner in time to go to a movie. Yes, my sad admittance is that we are going to see "The Devil Wears Prada" tonight. Just as a time to relax and breathe a little.

Later this week we're having more language lessons (which is weird becasue the island of Cebu doesn't speak Tagalog they speak Cebuana, I think that's spelled correctly) and a trip to climb a volcano. I'm insanely excited.

I love you and all miss you all. I enjoy getting even small little messages that let me know you're there reading or thinking about me. If you get ambitious, here's where you can write me for the next six weeks:

Rachel Morris
c/o Rebecca Lawson
PO Box EA47 Ermita Post Office
Ermita, Malate, Manila
PHILIPPINES

Peace, I hope