In the hot sun, eating fish balls. In the shadow of the airport, the street is lined with garbage and water contaminated with raw sewage flows through the drains. I always enjoy my time in places like this. Paranaque City is really a beautiful places to the trained eye. My coworker and I made our way through the haphazardly constructed slum complex to the house of a client of the NGO. She has recently graduated high school and hopes to enroll in our scholarship program to enter university. Just a two year vocational course for hotel restaurant management. The tuition is meager but still outside of her mother's means. The purpose of my visit was to assess her situation and write a report offering my opinion as to whether she deserves the scholarship. Her house is the size of an average bathroom in the States and she lives there with her mother and 3 other people. As we chat mice and cockroaches scamper by our feet and the air stinks from the open sewer. The girl is sweet and her mother demonstrated a sense of ethical fortitude that made me feel like a beginner in life. Their needs are dire and the scholarship is their only means to lift themselves out of poverty. With this in mind and after looking into the tearful eyes of her mother as she pleaded with me to write a good report I set out to write a report which could bring the scholarship they desire.
As I sat down to write the report my coworker informed me that according to my boss there is no hope that she will get that scholarship. My boss wants her to study IT but the girl really has no interest. My boss won't give her the recommendation to attract the sponsor she needs. I worked hard on the report to override this negative energy and I will know the results soon enough. I was upset with my boss but it's not really her fault. She doesn't decide who gets money and it's not coming from her pocket. Some of the sponsors are picky about what kind of education they will fund. It's understandable, it's their money but if all goes wrong then I am sure that I can find her a sponsor in America.
I always enjoy the time I spend in slums and it sounds strange but I don't find them to be depressing places. I don't enjoy seeing people digging through garbage to find food but I have a lot of respect for the people I meet in these poorer areas. I think it is something to do with the Philippines since people here have a sense of dignity and a way to laugh at life which I find really respectable. I remember I read in a book back when I was at school and the character was explaining that only people who have really suffered have wisdom. That idea resonated with me but simultaneously decimated my self-esteem since I have not ever really suffered to the level that the poor people of Manila have. If you could measure a person's value, not materially to society but to a transcendental “good” then I by principle believe that the impoverished people have an elevated status. It is well-known that wealth and the pursuit of it can have a corrupting effect on people but I believe that the majority of people are responsible enough not to let money become their master. Most people in developed countries are really just looking out for their families and themselves just like people here or other poor countries. There is no fundamental difference between those with our without money but that doesn't change the fact that I am uncomfortable among wealthy people. I think this really boils down to fact that I value the strength that people have when they under duress because that strength is lacking in myself. I have not been able to experience poverty and I believe this is a major obstacle of mine to understand how the world operates.
Sometimes I feel like the poets from Heian Japan that wrote poems depicting the life of farmers and people from the countryside. While they sat in their royal palaces, they wrote eloquent poems romanticizing the life which they in principle cannot relate to but admire in their imagination. Sone no Yoshitada is a good example. He is not super famous but I like him because he broke some standards within Japanese poetic conventions.
A barge of timber
floating down a logging stream
makes a sad pillow-
but in summer it's a cool place
to lie down for the night.
Sone no Yoshitada
I know that these Japanese poems sometimes seem very cryptic and too brief to say anything but there is depth in the details. There is no way that a member of the aristocracy like Sone no Yoshitada would be floating down a river on a barge of timber but the poem is a Huckleberry Fin type fantasy in which he puts himself in the shoes of a “common” person who has the freedom to do what they like without worrying about the court etiquette. In reality the lives of Japanese peasants was one lacking in freedom but full of hardship. But to really see poetic expression for the downtrodden of society you have to look later in history. Bashō, Saigyō, and Kobayashi Issa are the best in my opinion. Here are some of the poems I like and I will leave the interpretation up to you.
Distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of a dragonfly.
Kobayashi Issa
Steam from broth
rises above a wattle fence,
with sleet coming down.
Kobayashi Issa
Trailing on the wind,
the smoke of Mount Fuji
fades in the sky,
moving like my thoughts
toward some unknown end
Saigyō
Moon-viewings in the capital
when I thought
such sad thoughts-
now I know they were no more
than idle pastimes
Saigyō
Ill on a journey,
I run about in my dreams
over withered fields.
Bashō
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