Places

Nevotas:

The Jeepney takes a long time. Its incredible how one part of Manila will morph into another. I imagine the intricacies of a big dog- little dog economy morphing with it. Spiraling outwards from the high rises, the living conditions and means of income go from comfortable, to practical, to slums.
The place we are visiting today is at the outskirts situationally as much as anything else. After the Jeepney we get on a pedal bike taxi (the forms of transport seem to morph too- from taxis, to jeepneys, to tricycles to pedal power as the streets become more narrow and as status grows closer to the bottom rung.) and take it to where the ocean is blinding behind a basketball court. I remember I was here on my last visit. I remember the basketball court (It is fantastic how Filipinos find room for basketball even in squatter communities, dense urban centers and in jungley townships.) and i remember the kids and young people shouting at me.
"Hey Jo!"
"Hey, what's your Name Jo?"
"Hey, you Americano?"
"Hey!"
One thing I've naturally found awkward about going to the fringe communities of Manila is my distinct out-of-placeness. To see a white guy on the main streets isn't as strange as all that. But here? Not only that, but in these squatter communities I imagine, I'm doing more than walking down a public lane to the eyes of the residents. I'm entering their home. Happily, they never seem to mind.

We are visiting one of the families represented in the counseling program that the ministry is running. A short series of narrow walkways between people's living quarters takes us to where our family lives. This community is memorable because of its location. It is suspended on poles above the ocean. The walk way we stroll along are boards that keep us from falling in. It's romantic in concept but distressingly dangerous in reality. Not only can tsunamis threaten the entire structures built upon the sea, but the sea in this area is by no means clean and by no means empty of threat of disease- especially in shelters that are adequate in most ways for rain, but by no means waterproof if it came to a tsunami.
we spend some time with the family. Noli, who i came with and who knows the family, takes over the dialogue, which is in Tagalog. I don't understand much except that the conversation seems warm.

Balut:

I get off the Jeepney with Noli and we are in another part of town on another day. We are timely because as soon as we jump off the Jeepney, Noli spots the lady we were coming to visit. (Out of the dense numbers that inhabit a street, this happenstance seems very fortunate to me) She is clearly an old friend of the ministry. She is clearly old. Her face is wrinkled like someone you see in an old peoples home. But she's not playing bingo, and her wrinkles aren't droopy. They are tight and tanned: her head looks like an apple that left to shrivel in the sun. Although her bones show through her skinny arms, she is making her own way down the street. Although it looks like a cold might kill her, it doesn't look like it would take her spirit easily. On closer inspection I notice that her ears are hilariously too large for her shrunken body. She looks at me and asks me if i know Tagalog.
I say no, and she breaks into limited, but surprisingly articulate English.
"This," she says, grabbing Noli's arm, "is my best friend."

She takes us to where she lives.
From the main streets you could never know that another Manila existed; a city inside the city. But as we are led into a narrow alley, I am introduced to a part of it. Corridors and makeshift walls and people lining the sides of them selling goods or washing clothes or just being there define a community set off to its own. There is no knowing from my standpoint how a squatter community like this appears to be, is formed. Clearly this was a building of some kind once that was run down, unclaimed, and taken over. In years and years its been developed into a matrix of tiny apartments that get water from barrels on the roofs and perhaps taps electricity from a neighboring power source. I can only guess how an economy here works. Just because you live in a squatter community does not mean that you don't pay somebody for the space. This one seems more developed and established. Do they pay taxes?
I just finished reading "gang leader for a day" which is a great book about life in the projects of Chicago in the 90's. I wonder if this is an image of what that trickle-down economy was described as being.

Noli and the lady, who i find out- despite looking a hundred- is only 80, talk for a while before we leave again. She invites me to come back.


Quezon Circle:

I've come to look forward to this. Shoimar and I decided to start going jogging now and again. We've been going out to this place that we call "the Circle". Its something of a running or walking track that circles a huge monument that is lit up at night. Lots of people come here in the evenings to escape the traffic, to enjoy the scenery, walk, eat, dance, whatever. Its a time that lets me let down, which is perhaps why i enjoy it so much.

Will I ever understand Manila? Probably not. But I can take a few snapshots of the bigger picture, and thank you again for visiting a few of them with me.

Pictured at the top: Quezon circle monument, lit up at night.