As I write this, an enormous typhoon is sweeping through the northern Philippines and the South China Sea, unloading torrential rains, hurricane winds, heavy seas, mudflows, flooding, uprooting trees, destroying homes, washing away livelihoods (and in some cases, lives) and making an all-around mess for those unfortunate enough to be in its path. This is the rainy season in Southeast Asia. This is par for the course between roughly June and October of every year. And for people with seemingly so little control over a world that visits these biblical tempests upon them with vicious regularity, Filipinos themselves are almost supernaturally resilient, positive people. This storm may flood the low-lying village where my fellow volunteer Drew lives (as happens almost weekly), it may peel the roofs off of the plywood squatter shanties surrounding my own house -- it may ultimately change thousands, or millions, of Filipino lives forever. And yet Filipinos themselves will simply seek protection under a nearby eave, shrug, share a joke and a cigarette with their neighbors, and wait for the rain to pass. Tomorrow, the mirthful gleam in their eyes masking a steely resolve, they will go about the task of rebuilding and moving forward. Even now, with the deluge beating against my windows, I can see children doing cartwheels in the street. Tricycle-taxi drivers are firing up their engines and heading off for a fare. Somewhere in this tightly-packed "barangay" (barrio, or borough), someone is crooning a Julio Iglesias tune on karaoke. Based on the tell-tale aromas, someone else is cooking fish and rice for lunch. Indeed, most of my neighbors here in Bagong Silang (extreme northeastern Metro Manila) are abjectly poor. No health or home insurance. No running water. And for most, no public or private agencies (FEMA or otherwise) will be swooping in with aid, should the flood-waters rise, should the levy burst, should the winds rest from them their homes and few possessions. For them, this is life. You move forward.To simply say, however, that Filipinos "move forward" is to wildly understate the reality: these are some of the happiest, most gregarious, most naturally optimistic people I have ever met (and I've met a lot of people)! They are poor, they have withstood centuries of foreign occupation, they live in a climate that is either Eden-esque or a divine science-experiment (Searing heat? Typhoons? Active volcanoes? Rising sea-levels? Sure, try it out!) Yet Pinoys are always quick with a song, or a joke, or a smile, or a San Miguel (local beer) and wonderful food. They are fiercely proud of their country and heritage, they are out-going and ebullient with foreigners and guests, they believe in the prosperity and growth that the future will bring...and heck, even if it doesn't, the current situation isn't all that bad, no? We Americans typically like to believe we are extroverted and positive. Trust me, we have nothing on these people!
Perhaps I should qualify what I'm telling you here: I live in a squatter settlement on the far outer-periphery of what is known as "Metro Manila" (a collection of large cities). The high-density urban environment that I experience every day is, I might guess, no more (and no less) a representative view of "The Philippines" than New York City is of the US. I have volunteer friends who literally live in grass "nipa" huts off the beach in the outer island provinces. I live in a neighborhood -- yes, neighborhood -- of 1-million people, the vast majority of whom are squatters living in shanties, and who were relocated from central Manila by the government in past decades to clear land for peanut farms. I know volunteers who go weeks without getting in a motorized vehicle or seeing a building taller than a single-story.On the other hand, I and my fellow Peace Corps Response volunteers in Manila -- Charlie, Drew and Sharon (with two more arriving this week) -- spend every day immersed in the heady, intoxicating soup of sights, sounds, tastes, smells and experiences, big and little, that make up life in this city. We are anomalies here, not just because we are foreigners, but because typically Peace Corps does not place volunteers within Metro Manila -- opting rather to place them in rural areas and provincial towns and small cities around the Philippine islands. The fact that we are all PC "Response" volunteers, and here on shorter-term, more technically-focused projects, puts us in a somewhat different category of PC rules and procedures. Three of us work with a Filipino community development NGO called Gawad-Kalinga (roughly "Care-giving" in Tagalog), in many ways comparable to Habitat for Humanity. Our backgrounds are in architecture, engineering and construction management, and until late January, we are going to be helping them codify a Business Plan and Standard Operating Procedures, as well as developing standardized manuals that guide the entire Site Development and Construction process for any given project. We'll be busy, but it should be a fun and illuminating process for everyone.
I'll go into more depth in future posts about individual elements of my new life here, and as in Romania, I'm always open to fielding questions and topic requests from my loyal readers! But let me just give you a few short strokes of the experiential paintbrush to get this canvas started:
- Sitting in horrendous (and non-stop) Manila traffic, packed into a Jeepney with 20 other passengers, in the sweltering heat of the mid-day sun. No mad-dogs or Englishmen about -- just a highway jammed with hapless commuters. You're breathing in nothing but exhaust fumes and human body-odor. You're shoe-horned between an old lady and her groceries and a guy with a TV, and can't move. And if you're over 5'6" you're also crouched over, since Jeepney passenger-cabins have criminally low rooflines. The seats have no padding, the Jeepney has no shocks, and the Jeepney-driver has no subtlety when it comes to accelerating or braking. Or turning. Oh, and then it starts raining torrentially, so the driver's assistant gets out and unfurls clear plastic window coverings -- so now you have no air-movement either, and are sitting in a moving human crockpot. Why is it I love Jeepneys so much?
- Walking through the farmers' market up the street from my house. As in Eastern Europe (and probably everywhere else in the developing world), you can find everything from fresh meat to construction tools to car batteries here. Unlike much of Eastern Europe, the sheer variety of local produce you can find at any market-stand in the Philippines is astonishing. This is a country where bananas, coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, guavas, papayas, giant grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes, mini-limes (calamansi fruits) and a host of other wonderful exotic fruits literally grow wild on the trees (or other plants), to say nothing of the vegetables and other produce. Even for those of us who live in the city, fresh produce is always readily available from the nearby farms and groves. I am not used to this. My brain isn't wired this way. I grew up in the American Northeast, where garden plants have to be coaxed and prodded and coddled from the rocky soil like shy children, in those short months of warmth. The guardedness and resentment the plants feel towards us is palpable. Here, it's a different relationship altogether. Fruit springs from the earth with abandon, with enthusiasm, gleefully entrusting itself to your outstretched hand. In this Garden of Eden, only the apple itself has to be imported from China.
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining...
No comments:
Post a Comment