My Dad here

So my dad just left here a few days ago and returned to Pittsburgh and it was great to see him and I was happy to show him some of the different places in Manila. As you can imagine, this area is massive and there is a diverse bunch of neighborhoods and cities that make up all of Metro Manila. Manila itself is actually not that big but when its combined with all the other neighboring cities it becomes huge. I took him first to the baranguay (its Tagalog for neighborhood) in Manila city where I will be teaching Japanese.

I didn't know beforehand what was going to happen and I thought that we were going to sit in on my friend's Korean class and then I would teach a bit of Japanese but I was surprised that it was actually a kind of town hall meeting. There was a a local election across the Philippines about a week before he arrived and this was the first chance for the newly elected candidates to explain their plans for the next six years and the audience also had an opportunity to ask questions. The interesting thing is that in Philippine local politics there are both adult and youth baranguay captains which are like local officials. Shortly after the election there was a town hall meeting for the adult baranguay captains and the local people but the meeting we ended up going to was actually the youth meeting so the average age of the children there was about 5 or 6. It was kind of funny because some of the guys up there were going off about fighting the vices of the community and stopping the delinquent behavior of kids at night while his audience were bored out of their mind. The children were nice and surprisingly sat through the whole thing (probably they were forced to by their parents).The whole event wasn't what I expected but it made me reflect on a fundamental difference between Americans and Filipinos in how they understand democracy.

In America I think it is safe to assume that the majority of Americans have a top-down appreciation of politics. The President and Congress are continually in the news and the governors to a lesser extent. But when it comes to the state level or even local politics I have still not had a political discussion with someone that revolved around the Pennsylvania state senate but I did occasionally hear people criticize the mayor of Pittsburgh. It's quite common for people to feel disconnected from the politicians in Washington because of the obscure, ear-marked legislation and the continual focus on the distant parts of the world. But American's frustration with national politics doesn't seem translate into an interest in what's happening locally. I mean people must vote for local politicians and state government but I have a feeling that most of their constituency are retired people who don't have cable and watch local news all day. Not only were these kids vaguely interested (at least they showed up) in what these young politicians had to say but it was lively and interesting.

I was telling my co-worker that I was surprised that Filipinos take these local elections seriously. The campaigns also were kind of ridiculous, it was two weeks of parades and parties. I was telling my co-worker that I was surprised that people here seemed to care so much about this and she explained what should have been obvious, that local politicians are responsible for the implementation of the national programs. It doesn't matter how good a program sounds but if the people implementing it in the community are inept it will probably fail. People here still vote and care about the national elections but like Americans, feel disconnected from the political elite. The government here has a bad history of being corrupt and self-serving and I get the feeling that only the very idealistic political science students at university take what the President or Senators say seriously. I heard it is quite common here for actors and actresses to get elected solely because people recognize their name. It seems like a joke to me but I think it points to the fact that Filipinos see the ineffectualness of their national government so invest their energy in politicians they actually know them and are willing to work with them personally. One of my friends there did admit that the youth baranguay captains known as “SK” actually wastes a lot of money because they squander money budgeted to them by the government on basketball tournaments. I thought it was funny when one lady told me that she disagreed with even having SK because the children become accustomed to corruption. I it was interesting that she saw politics as naturally corrupting. I do agree with her on that one.

After this I took my dad to the vaguely historical part of Manila. Where they have the old Spanish city and a bunch of national monuments commemorating various national heroes of the Philippines. I went there by myself on the second day I was here and was somehow deemed an expert so every time a new intern came here I have ended up showing them that part of the city. So with my dad was my fifth times going there. I know the place well now but I do discover new things each time I go. I've wrote about before how it is interesting for me to go the Spanish city which was the center of European colonial power in Asia at a time and to see its present decrepit state. It seems they are trying to revitalize the area with new construction but its possible they are still rebuilding from World War Two.

Another place I took my dad was the Muslim area of Manila known as Quiapo. Before we arrived there I took him to this famous bridge known as Mendiola Bridge. It's infamous for tragic political rallies that took place there. It became notorious when Ferdinand Marcos (the dictator of the Philippines during the 70s and 80s) violently suppressed a peaceful demonstration. It became a symbol for Corazon Aquino who led the People's Power Revolution to throw out Marcos and reinstate democracy in the Philippines. The ironic thing is that a lot of farmers who supported her because of her promises to reform the agriculture system ended up protesting their because she never followed up with what she said. She also had the protests violently put down and 19 people died. Corazon was the savior of democracy in the Philippines but still a large chunk of people saw no difference between her and her predecessor. Its ironic that they bridge went from being the symbol of an oppressive dictatorial government to one of general disillusionment with the government itself.

Now Quiapo is well known for the cheap crap you can buy there. You can find knock-offs of almost anything for extremely cheap but since neither me or my dad are interested in shopping we instead headed for a famous mosque. It's actually can't be all that famous since when I went there the first time, even the people in Quiapo that I asked directions from haven't heard of it but that might be related to the fact Filipinos are just bad at giving directions. Someone told me that if you ask a Filipino directions and they don't know the place they will probably make up something random because they feel bad about not being able to help. I understand that to a certain extent but sending someone off in a random direction and acting like you know what you're talking about does not help anyone. I have become quite skeptical of directions that Filipinos give me.

Anyway, the Golden Mosque is famous because it was built under Marcos to commemorate a visit by Muammar al-Gaddafi to the Philippines. If you don't know, Gaddafi is the dictator of Libya who was responsible for supporting terrorism and is generally a controversial character. Supposedly Marcos's wife Imelda and him were good friends. How this happened, since Gaddafi is a self-proclaimed Bedouin and strict Muslim who only sleeps in tents and Imelda is a glamorous and fashionable Christian, I have no idea. The funny thing is that he actually canceled his visit to the Philippines but they kept the mosque there anyway. The Philippines already has a fairly large Muslim population so I am not surprised that Marcos sought to reach out to them this way. The area is quite poor and supposedly dangerous but I have had no problems there. We were lucky and there was some event at the mosque so the local people there were friendly with us and even gave us a brief tour of the outside of it. It was better than the first time I went there when the guy in charge of security only let me and my friends sit on a bench and look at the gate outside the mosque.

After this, we went to the opposite side of Metro Manila, to a city called Makati. Makati is the business district of Manila and is really built up. We went to this American military cemetery there which was similar to the pictures I've seen of Arlington Cemetery. It was actually pretty serene and idyllic but the one thing that surprised me was the number of Filipinos that were in the American military at the time. The Philippines was technically a territory of the United States so the Filipinos that fought the Japanese were apart of the American armed forces. It is moving to see the names of all those people who died and occasionally I would see a name from a guy from Pennsylvania and I couldn't help but think that it is completely crazy that this young guy could have been from Pittsburgh and sent all the way to opposite side of the world to fight this war.

The cemetery is situated right next to Makati and so after that we walked around a bit. It was a national holiday so a lot of stores were closed and most people had no work so it was almost completely empty. It was kind of odd actually because Makati is a modern city and at times looks like New York or Vancouver but it felt like a ghost town. The massive skyscrapers and sophisticated underpasses were there but hardly any people. I couldn't help but contrast it with the baranguay my office is in or where I will teach Japanese. Those neighborhoods are quite poor and occasionally smell like shit because of all the dogs and chickens the sewage that's pumped into the streams. You get lungfuls of car exhaust from these old diesel engines and I swear they use leaded gas sometimes. It is dirty but at least there's life. There are kids running around and people enjoying themselves one way or the other. You get the feeling of being a real community and the people are friendly most of the time and I can eat dinner in any baranguay around Manila for about 75 cents. Makati is nice but I am not comfortable there. I shouldn't really judge it based on that one day since it was holiday but I've been there on normal days and my experience is getting ripped off on taxis and that there were bunch of American and Filipino businessmen walking around. It's not my place.

My dad mentioned to me that Manila seems like a city of microcosms that are actually quite separate from the rest of the city and don't really speak to each other. Some the local people around where I work might venture down to Makati every now and then to go to the massive malls there. Makati is a center of foreign businesses and most of the Japanese and Western companies that operate in the Philippines are based there. I find it hard to believe that those buys make out to poorer neighborhoods in Manila or Quezon City and anyway most of them are supplied with private drivers that drive them around the city. I think this is a common policy to prevent any of the foreigners from getting robbed or killed and thus hurting the company's reputation.

My neighborhood is kind of ambiguous since I live right in between two famous universities that the current prime minister and a lot of other notable politicians graduated from. One of the schools, the University of the Philippines, is a massive school with about 57,000 students and is also government funded and the other Ateneo University is a private school where the countries elite go. UP supposedly has the best education but also surprisingly is quite a dangerous place. I am told the fraternities are especially dangerous and even recently one guy from a fraternity was arrested for lobbing a live grenade into a classroom of law students. Luckily no one was killed but a poor girl lost both her legs. The universities might attract the country's elite but the area is actually quite poor and I think there are few thousand squatters who live on the outskirts of UP's huge campus. What is also surprising is that these poor guys who live here are rarely to blame for the criminal activity, well the petty thieves probably do come from the slums but the serious crimes such as the rape and murder are usually perpetrated by the "elite" students with politically connected families. One guy told me that when you go to bar don't be afraid of the poorer looking tough guys, they might take your wallet or stab you but its the rich guys that are the most dangerous. Some of them are so well connected with the police and politicians that will blow your head off without a second thought. But people like to tell a lot of stories. Living between universities means I meet a lot of foreign exchange students (mainly from Europe) which is cool but I am definitely glad I am done with school at the moment. The attitude of a lot of students around here makes me angry sometimes and its not the violent fraternities that make me mad even though poor guys have been beaten by baseball bats in middle of lectures and they found the body of girl a couple weeks ago who was raped and killed. Those guys are definitely crazy and do not fit with my extremely tame experience at UBC but I just have a problem with the elitism that idealistic people occasionally carry with them.

Anyway, I'm glad my dad could here since it gave me a chance to see the place and better understand the area. It was also kind of bittersweet for me because seeing my dad made kind of homesick for Pittsburgh, but you know whatever, I'll survive.