Vocabulary:
- Sari sari store: small convenience stores, the Pinoy corner store
- Tsinellas: slippers
- Turo-turo: literally “choose, choose.” Restaurants/vendors that have a number of dishes to pick from.
- Bimpo: washcloth
- Cigarillo: cigarette
- Sampaguita: extremely sweet smelling national flower of the Philippines
- Barangay: Community/social unit
- Quezon City: municipality of Metro Manila, home to Ateneo de Manila, Miriam College, and the University of the Philippines Diliman, three of the most well respected institutions of education in the PI
- Cubao: district within Quezon City
- Marikina: municipality of Metro Manila, known as the shoe capital of the Philippines
- Datu: tribal chief in the Philippines
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"This is the Third World ghetto that I love to my death and got depressed every time I hopped a plane and I left...Where cock fights, horrible traffic, and smiles co-exist, and the smell of sampaguita and the city keep me whipped." -Bambu
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There are 2 or 3 moments in my childhood that I can clearly point to when identifying why I am a Third World, anti-colonial, educator and community activist. The first happened in the Philippines when I was 8 years old.
This trip would be the first of many back to my parents’ home country. Because of my father’s work, we were one of the few families in my Pinoy American community that could go back to the PI every two years, which is relatively often, especially for folks on the East Coast. We were very lucky like that.
I was extremely excited. I remember bragging to my 3rd grade teachers and friends that I would be going all the way to the Philippines -a 21 hour flight! I thought I was Lil Ms. Big Britches.
There were many firsts on this trip…
My first long haul flight. My parents still tease me about how much I enjoyed the airline food.Upon arriving, it was the first time I would get hit by that wave of humid heat you feel when you deplane at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I savor that feeling every time I land here, despite the sweat and smell that follow. It was the first time I smelled the sweet scent of burning garbage mixed with dusty heat that you can only get in the Third World and once in a blue moon on a spring or summer day in the States. I saw the homes where my parents grew up for the first time. I met some of my cousins, aunts, and uncles for the first time. I had my first taste of Filipino mango –a lifelong addiction, and my first Jollibee meal.
It was also at this time where I had my first encounter with the face of poverty in the Third World. Before this, I remember being about 5, going down to New York City and wondering
at the people living on the street. I always wanted to give them something. My little 5 year old heart knew something was wrong with that picture, but I didn’t ask, I just remembered the image of homeless men on the street and kept it in my memory for future computation.
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While my family is pretty middle class in the States, that almost always translates to a higher class when you come back to the PI. I was amazed by the comforts that we were afforded whenever we came to the PI. As long as I can remember, my family has always lived behind gates in the Philippines. Neither family lived in a gated community those first few times I visited, but we did have large fences and gates guarding the properties. It was so new to me –living behind gates with dogs to keep thieves away. Helpers would always have to close and open that gate for us whenever we were leaving or honked for them to be reopened. We also had a driver and that was completely new to me as well. I thought we must really be balling if we had someone to drive us around. Meanwhile, the next plot of land over was full of squatters who were living in worn down shacks of corrugated tin, wood, and plastic. Playing in my backyard with one of the helpers’ kids, Janelle, the kids from the squatter homes would call names at us, “Bata batoota!” (I still don’t know what that means really). I hated the feeling of being seen, watched and teased by other kids.
Even back then the traffic was insane. We would sit in the same place for 15-20 minutes sometimes, waiting for cars to move.
We were always lucky enough to be in a car with air conditioning. We could sleep or relax while the driver worried about navigating the disorderly Filipino streets. I liked looking out the window at everything going on -the busyness of the day workers, the jeepney designs, the rickety tricycles that never seem to fall apart, the vendors selling everything from peanuts to newspapers to bimpos to gum to cigarillos in the middle of oncoming traffic, the sari sari stores, the inordinate amounts of people that looked like me walking around in tsinellas carrying different goods or in their work uniforms, the turo turo restaurants, pawn and repair shops. It was all so different from the neat houses and lawns of suburban New York.
In the car, we always kept the doors locked and the tinted windows up. Street vendors would look into the windows making you feel like they could see you. It was the first time I saw babies selling sampaguita strings. They were beautiful, but the children would have forearms full of the garlands to sell by the end of the day. I wondered how that was possible and realized they didn’t go to school. I worried that they wouldn’t make enough money for themselves for the day and wondered what would happen if they went back with leftover garlands.
It was the first time I saw street children literally playing in the street or parking lots. Sometimes they were barefoot, were really dusty, and had old clothes on. I couldn’t believe there weren’t really any adults watching them, and if there were adults, they were letting them play in the middle of the street! They made their own fun out of nothing, playing with rocks, watching workers work on the street, helping cars back out of shopping parking lots, and other craziness. Prior to this, I had only seen Sally Struthers commercials full of children that looked like me or my other brown friends. This was very real. Nebulous questions about basic human rights and the welfare of children started forming in my 8 year old brain.
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It was during one of those long, trafficky rides when a child younger than me, maybe 5 or 6 at the time pressed his face up to my window. I didn’t know if he could see me but it sure felt like he could. His forehead was smushed against the glass, both hands shaded eyes that searched through the window, his mouth moved, begging for money. He was wearing tattered pants, a shirt too big for him, and I don’t remember if he even had a pair of tsinellas. I looked straight into those eyes and then turned to my parents inquisitively, the questions in my own eyes, silently asking them if I could give him 1 or 2 pesos. I figured it was only a couple of coins after all. 1 peso wasn’t even equivalent to a quarter! It was like I was begging them to let me open that window and temporarily break the barrier with a child who was just like me, should have been just like me.
They shook their heads ‘no,’ almost apologetically. “You can’t, Biba. It’s not safe. They might be working for an adult who will take their money.”
My mind rebelled, “It’s just 1 peso!!” Why would someone take money from kids who clearly needed it?
They explained, “Sometimes the adults make the kids do the work of collecting money for them.”
I was confused and saddened. He shouldn’t have been there looking at me, asking a girl only 3 years older than him for money, food, for help. I looked back out of the window, at the boy and the other children behind him with unseen sorrow and guilt in my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I thought. Before I knew it, we were gone and so was the boy.
That image has never left my mind and I don’t think it ever will.
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After that, every time I saw a child begging or a group of children begging, I would look behind them, searching for a conniving adult leader.Eventually, I learned to knock on the glass when someone came to beg at the window. I always thought it was cold. I still think it is, but it is admittedly easier now –the muscle has been exercised. It is definitely a way for people to quickly get rid of the sight of someone who is begging as well as the visceral feeling of guilt that comes with it. If you look into the rear view mirror, you can see people’s eyes glaze over or harden when someone comes to the window. I’m sure my own eyes have done that many times.
It was those tough firsts as well as the beautiful firsts I experienced as a young Filipino American in the PI that stayed with me throughout the years. As I grew up, I always held on to those images and as I learned more about justice through my father’s work at UNICEF and my education throughout Catholic school, I always connected those learnings to the Philippines.
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Fast forward to college. At BC, service trips were the thing to do (it is a Jesuit school after all).There were trips to almost every continent except for Asia and Europe. During my sophomore year in college I tried to start a service trip to the Philippines. All the years of travelling to the Philippines and seeing what was happening made me want to learn more about it. I didn’t want it to be just a service trip, where we would jump in and jump out, basically unscathed by what we saw there. I wanted participants to learn about the issues facing Filipinos and about possible solutions for those problems. I figured if BC could do this in Africa and Latin America, it should be possible for Asia. After lots of meetings and lots of hard work, the Philippines pulled out of Iraq. The United States put the PI on its travel warning list and the trip was canceled due to safety issues.
Of course, I was disappointed, but the study abroad advisor that I was working with was able to hook me up with USF, another Jesuit school that actually had a Philippine Studies Program. Under the Philippine Study Abroad Program, students could get credit for travelling to the Philippines and completing the course in partnership with the Ateneo de Manila (another Jesuit school). In 2003, I applied for the Freeman Asia Grant and was able to spend the summer in the PI. It was the longest that I was in the PI and it was the first time I was here without my parents and without local relatives.
When I arrived, I saw that not much had changed. I got hit with the same heat at the airport and sat in the same traffic on the way to my grandmother’s house. The kids were still selling sampaguitas, playing in the streets, and pressing up against car windows. I noticed that some of the streets were cleaner and that more roads and foreign restaurants had been built, though.But I would later feel that even those changes were just as painful and bittersweet as those first discoveries I had seen as a child.
Our program exposed us to a broad range of strengths and issues in the Philippines. We took brief introductory classes to problems concerning the environment, the economy, housing, and of course poverty. After each class, we would then go to a site to see these issues first hand. Not to sound trite, but these immersion trips were life changing. They put me in front of the problems that I had only viewed from behind windows, gates and television screens.
Orientation at Villa Escudero
Through Habitat for Humanity, we helped a woman build a house for her family. It was a simple structure, cement bricks, lots of hauling and climbing with the family, but it was amazing to work with someone who straight up did not have a stable and safe house. She was so thankful for the little help that we provided and I left happy having met a human face and spirit within the actual and imagined struggle.
After that short day project, we travelled with a group of Jesuit novices to one of their work sites –Payatas in Sapang Palay. Payatas holds the dumping ground for garbage in Quezon City.Prior to this, I had only heard of people living in, around, and/or on garbage dumps. The Jesuits worked with the local church and with the families in the community. Each of us students was matched with a Jesuit and made visits to his respective families. The poverty was real –folks living in shacks with barely a solid roof over their heads. Everything was dingy and dark, made worse by the rainy season and heat. There were lots of people living in many of the homes –grandparents caring for babies while parents worked, young people running around without tsinellas on the contaminated ground. The crazy part of this trip was that we weren’t even in the depths of the garbage dump. The area we were in had begun to go through development for more liveable conditions.
Despite the grimey conditions, we of course, had an amazing time due to the warmth of the Jesuits as well as the residents of Payatas. We met lots of folks in the community and they talked with us about daily life stuff. My homegirl and I got into a sweaty game of 4 on 4 basketball with some of the local guys and Jesuits and earned, “Galing ang Fil-Ams! Babae pa! (The Fil-Ams are good. And they’re girls at that!)” comments from the cats we played with. We were some of those many outsiders that come in and put the community members’ lives underour microscope and yet they still welcomed us and seemed happy to have us.
During our next two immersions, we were exposed to a few local communities, their work, and their street children. During our visits to Marikina we were exposed to the process of local shoe production. We visited small shoemakers and factories where we watched women do the painstaking work of assembling shoes for sale. We visited a barangay which was centered around these businesses and saw the living conditions of the day workers. It was like a New York City tenement from the late 1800’s set in a tropical island in the 2000’s. Homes, again, were makeshift, there was much pollution, and children played in the pipes and dirty rain water from days before.
When we went to Cubao and and the Katipunan areas of Quezon City, we spent time with a university org. called MUSMOS which worked with (and still does) some of the local street
children. They would organize activities, health clinics, and gatherings for some of the young people. Some of the kids we saw quite often in the area surrounding the university. During our time with the kids, we learned that some of them worked, skipped school regularly, and even sniffed glue to temporarily rid themselves of stomach pains. Just another day in the life. These were babies and it just seemed so unfair. I would continue to visit with the kids throughout my stay that trip.
Our last trip was a visit to an Aeta community in Zambales. Aetas are one of the many indigenous peoples of the Philippines and are part of the Austronesian family of peoples along with groups from Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia. We each had host families and
stayed with them during our visit. The families we stayed with were poor but hosted us with all the generosity they could afford and more. They lived in nipa huts and used outhouses. We bathed in the nearby river. There was no electricity, so we were usually in bed by 7:30pm. Nay Marina and her husband were so sweet and took very good care of me. We didn’t say much to one another and tried to communicate as best we could in broken Tagalog and English, respectively. She cooked special meals for us, things that they wouldn’t even cook for themselves on a regular day. I got the sleeping mat with the mosquito netting over it. Tatay was a sculptor and made a heart out of the lahar dust for me and engraved their names and the dates of my stay.
Our families talked to us about how life had changed and become even more difficult after Mt. Pinatubo erupted and covered precious agricultural land in lahar. A short lived industry of lahar sculptures had popped up, but quickly died leaving people with no work, yet again. We also met the oldest Aeta in the community and his family and were able to help Datu with some of the farm work on his land. When we weren’t with our families, we were usually playing with the children on the dusty lots. On our last night, the whole barangay hosted a community night for us, playing music and doing some of their traditional dances for us. They also cooked sweet corn as a special snack. Our goodbyes were sad and though I hoped that I would see my host family again, I never have.
Eleven years after my first encounter with that street child, I was once again, struck by the injustice and the disparities in wealth amongst the people of the Philippines. While I was beyond comfortable when I was with my family, there were folks living in poor conditions all over the country. My immersion as a 19 year old in the Philippines was invaluable. I went to places that even my parents and relatives had never been to. I gained more insight into the challenges of the lower classes, but I didn’t necessarily find tons of answers during this trip –just more of the realities and complexities of those problems.
The trip convinced me that more Filipino Americans needed to come home and gain a better understanding of the place where our parents had come from. The beneficiaries of our immigrant parents needed to see what our brothers and sisters in the Philippines were experiencing. It could have been any one of us living in the mountain provinces, living on the streets, or playing in pipes and dirty water if the dice had been thrown a different way.
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Seven years later, I find myself asking the same questions and seeing the same sights. What began as an innocent childhood observation has turned into a lifelong search for understanding. Just when I think I am used to the physical manifestations of struggle here, I am hit with the same painful pangs that I felt almost 20 years ago with just one smell, one sound, one slum, one child. I wonder what it will take to afford more people basic rights to safety, food, housing, and education. No, it’s not cheap, it’s not just one Peso anymore, but it’s a life. Is there anything more valuable than that?
There is no silver bullet. That, I know for sure.
I hope though, that during this trip and the trips that I know will follow, I will begin to discover the people and organizations that are struggling daily to change the lives of communities that suffer the burdens of poverty and injustice. I’ve met my share of soldiers in the States and I know that the Philippines has their own leaders and community organizers working doggedly with much love in their hearts.
Until then, the questions remain and the search continues.
You’ll know when I know…
