I heard from my co-worker we were going on a house visit up in Caloocan which is a composite city of Metro Manila. I was very excited at the prospect of going to Caloocan because out of the 16 cities that make up Metro Manila Caloocan was one that I still hadn't been to. My co-worker and I boarded the bus up to North EDSA and Monumento. The bus had the breezy attitude and simple fixtures that I like so much about some Filipino buses; no air conditioning and cramped wooden park benches nailed into the inside of the bus. Of course the bus driver also, completely unnecessarily, drove as if he was in the movie Speed. I have grown used to the absurdly aggressive way buses are driven here. As he was rocketing from high speed highways to the narrow congested inner city the complete lack of suspension made every bump painfully obvious along with his fondness for slamming the breaks every 30 seconds. With my long legs it is inevitable to leave with a few bruises on my knees.
So we arrived at the corner of 5th Avenue and EDSA. The sun was out in strength and the humidity added weight to the heavy car exhaust flowing out of the traffic of EDSA. As we waited for the lady to meet us I noticed a few police officers chilling behind me. They were apparently overseeing a “No Parking” sign outside of McDonald's dessert kiosk, except that they had parked there but maybe they just were making sure that no one else broke the law.
So I was walking behind my co-worker and the client as they were chatting in Tagalog. On the way to her house there was a massive Chinese Buddhist temple along the street. It was impressive and striking but the exterior was looking worn out and the paint was faded by the pollution. She lived in a crowded inner-city baranguay. There are essentially two things that all inner-city baranguays have in common: they are extremely crowded and there are kids everywhere. I always enjoy weaving through the narrow and confusing alleys that snake through the neighborhood. We arrived at her building and had to climb up a few steep and creaking staircases to her one room apartment which houses her, her son, her daughter in-law, and her granddaughter. As my co-worker interviewed the mother about her case I was chatting with her two year old granddaughter. I always enjoy practicing my Tagalog with little kids even though we probably only understand about 20% of what each other are saying. After my co-worker had collected the necessary information from the client she asked me to interview her son about their living conditions. It wasn't easy since he spoke almost no English and my co-worker was too focused on eating some cream-puff to translate for me. My Tagalog is enough that I can navigate these situations and I always love the challenge. The guy lived the kind of life that I believe a great deal of Filipinos have been forced into. He dropped out of school when he was 13 to work to support his family and he is 23 years old now. He has a beautiful wife and child and he works hard to provide for them. Of course because he's a client of our NGO his father is a Japanese man that had abandoned him and according to him he has not had communication, much less any sort of financial support, from his father for at least a decade. The interesting thing about his case is that he doesn't qualify for child-support obviously and he is too old to apply for Japanese citizenship. Even if he was interested in money from his father he and I both know that is not likely. He told me that he is only interested in meeting his father and hopefully getting to know him. He also hopes he can work in Japan in the future and having a Japanese father as guarantor makes the processing of the visa much easier.
So after I had collected the necessary information we had to say our goodbyes and apologize for our intrusion because even if they denied it, I'm pretty sure that he and his wife and taken off work just to receive us. For people living on the poverty line with an income that just barely covers their food they must place a lot of value on what our organization can provide for them and I take my position more seriously with each new client I meet. I understand the stakes involved.
I met an 8 year old girl who came to our Christmas party but instead of enjoying the free candy we gave out, promptly sold it back in her neighborhood to pay for dinner for her and her mother. I've met hysterical mothers who have been cut off from their child-support because of their stingy ex-husband in Japan. One lady in particular busted into our office in tears and was quite literally hysterical to the point that by the time she left my boss was complaining about how crazy she was and how much trouble she's caused here. I tried to explain that it's pretty understandable for a mother to be a fit of hysteria when her children could go hungry because she is denied well-deserved support.
The reason why I brought up all of this is because I recently went on a hiking trip to Mt. Pinatubo. We left at 3 AM and arrived by 7 AM in hopes we could hike the mountain but unfortunately the rain was so strong that the air force closed the mountain for hikers. I was so hung-over anyway that it probably worked out for the best. We traveled instead to some other local places that were nice in the own right but I realized something that day. I am not interested in beautiful places whether natural or man-made. Every time I go to a touristy place I feel a bit of turn in my stomach and I witness what I believe to be the most vulgar aspect of humanity. The most enjoyable experiences I have had here involve visiting people out in the provinces or in poorer parts of the Manila. The process of understanding and trying to empathize with the problems of the Filipino people is more fulfilling than drinking rum on a spectacular beach. Every slum of Manila is far more beautiful than any rice terraces. I've seen the pictures, I think that's enough. It's not that I have a lot of idealism or faith in the human spirit but maybe I am attracted by slums because of my aesthetic taste. Back in Pittsburgh I enjoy drinking in storm drains underneath highways and hanging out in dilapidated barge stations over the the polluted Allegheny river. My rustic taste combined with my cultural fascination of the Philippines and my interest in the human condition leads me to want to spend time with the unfortunate people who I believe are victims of a vicious global economic system and an incompetent government.
This reminds me of something I read in some obscure writing of Kierkegaard that resonated with me back then and has reemerged in my memory. His prose was fairly incoherent and inconsistent but he was describing that civilization really just arose from boredom. God created human beings out of boredom and people built the tower of Babylon because they really didn't have anything better to do. The colossal monuments far back in human history, from the pyramids to the palace of Versailles were built because those in power at the time had the resources from either slavery or imperialism, and apparently the time on their hands to commission these magnificent structures to be built. Don't get me wrong they are impressive but what do they really mean? In my eyes its just a massive waste of resources and represent the exploitative nature of human society. And at the end of the day it really is actually pretty boring and uninteresting in any real sense. For me a conversation with a squatter over the rising price of hot sauce is worth much more than seeing some massive wall in China. You can discover the infinite in a blink of an eye but just get cramps from walking up the stairs of the Empire State Building.
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