Kerr in Co-mission

Moving on

2008-04-18T10:27:00.001-07:00

We've grown up a little and moved to wordpress:

www.kerrabroad.wordpress.com

Seriously, way cooler than blogger.

Black Friday

2008-03-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about Good Friday this morning as I was walking back from the local sari-sari (corner store), through a nagging drizzle that muddied the dirt on the streets and encouraged the smell from the sewers. Death anniversaries are the major celebrations for the Filipinos. Sure there are birthday parties for children and acknowledgment and drinks for adults, but it's nothing compared to Day of the Dead (Nov. 1) and nothing compared to what Filipinos do on the anniversary of their loved one's death. A Black Friday for everyone.

Black Friday. The first time I heard that term used to describe the day Christians honor Jesus' death on the cross, I was struck with sadness. As a child of the capitalistic West, Black Friday for me will first be the Friday after Thanksgiving when Americans run out to the malls at 5am to consume mass quantities of goods in preparation for a holiday that bears Christ's name, but none of his spirit. Certainly I'm over simplifying. Not all Americans get caught in the corporate trap of Christmas, but as Christians who love the American economy, who love capitalism, we must understand that Black Friday (our Black Friday of sales and coupons) is necessary fuel for the greedy American economic machine. We buy into it. And we pay for it.

Filipinos buy into their Black Friday, too. They rise early, still fasting from the night before. They parade from church to church all day, as they have to say a summary of the Rosary at 12 different churches before the day ends. The main mass lasts from 12-3, with silent processions and wailing. In some provinces, men and women alike reenact the crucifixion by having their hands and feet nailed to a cross. Vendors often sell water and snacks to the onlookers, but this can hardly be considered destruction of the holiday's intent.

My flip flops kicked spritzes of water onto the back of my bare calves. My freshly washed hair hung damp against the back of my neck. I turned my thoughts to our own versions of Christ. The Jesus we're most comfortable with.

In the US, I think we prefer a newborn Jesus. A Jesus that won't call us to societal revolution, that won't ask us to change. He's just a little guy in need of our protection. And we're the watchdog of the world, we can protect this little Jesus just fine until January when we stuff him back in a box bound for the attic. We honor him on Black Friday. We open the doors to our shopping centers wide and buy and sell as much as we can- all to be given and received on his birthday.

The Filipinos prefer a crucified Christ. A Jesus who suffers and dies and doesn't seem to have a say in what happens. He's a mistreated martyr and understands their pain. As victims of abject poverty and an abusive government, they empathize with this Jesus until Easter dawns. They honor him on Black Friday. They close all the stores and travel from church to church, begging his mother to pray for them.

It's not my place to judge whole societies of people without understanding the individuals, but as a Christian it is my place to pause for thought. On a rainy Holy Thursday morning, I thought to myself, if the newborn Jesus is in the US and the crucified Messiah is in the Philippines, where is the Resurrected Christ? I suppose for simplicity's sake one could say, "Somewhere in between", but I'm fairly sure that's just an empty spot in the Pacific Ocean. And while I don't doubt God is out there in the sea, there just must be a easier place to find Him.

Well, maybe not easier, at least not for human beings caught up in either what we can gain or what we have lost. The difficulty for all of us in grasping the Resurrection lies in its open-ended nature; in its lack of tangibility, in its inability to be put on display. We know what babies look like, how they cry and need us. We can understand a Jesus in a cresch. We know what dying men look like, how they suffer and bleed. We can understand Jesus on a cross. But who among us has seen a resurrection? How can the inevitable be defeated? In this horrible broken world, how can we dare to hope?

Neither Filipino nor American Black Friday is really all about Jesus. Americans are just buying up as many material possessions as they can to fill the void, and Filipinos are looking down into the void over and over again, hoping their own death won't go unnoticed. Meanwhile, Resurrected Jesus is standing on the other side of the suffering with his arm outstretched, just waiting to pull anyone across. Anyone who will dare to look up from the darkness.

But that's a risky venture, looking outside of ourselves, looking up into the light and believing that something else could be out there. Because when we cross that void, every time we cross that void, we'll be changed. We have to be. We can't look the Resurrection in the face and go back to being a good consumer. We can't grab hold of possibility of life eternal and go back to perpetual grief. Believing in the Resurrected Christ, preferring him above everything else will mean letting go of the world around us. This Christ isn't defenseless- He's calling us to give up our lives of material gain and break down the systems that hold others in oppression. And this Christ isn't broken- He's calling us to give up our endless tears and dare to believe that life can be better. This Christ is no weakling child and he's no dying man. He's powerful and terrifying and even though the scriptures try to enlighten us to who He could be, we can't know for sure.

The Resurrection is more than just the reappearance of Jesus. It's a thousand letter word that means 'if love is enough.' And that's what we have to believe if we say we know the Resurrected Christ- love will overcome material wealth and emotional burdens. Easter is a lot harder than Black Friday, a real Easter, that is. Because we can play the trumpet and eat the ham, but if we never look up from the void, then we're only throwing more tradition into the darkness, trying to see if we can fill the holes inside of us.

But, if love is enough, which I believe, I dare to believe, it is, than we can see Christmas and Black Friday for what they truly are- steps along the journey, acknowledgment that the love that destroys every sadness, came at a price. That love isn't easy, because when we get a hold of it, when we look up from ourselves and grab hold of Easter, the love will change us. It will want to make itself known. And it's scary to think what we'll lose when we really start loving each other; we won't be able to let others starve while we live in abundance, we won't be able to grieve endlessly, because we'll have to believe in more.

I'm still afraid. As I write this in a tiny office in Davao, I know there's a suffering world right outside my window that needs the love of Christ. And there's a broken person inside of me that is terrified of letting go of the sadness. We all need to make the choice every day. Is today a day I'll live as Black Friday, or is today a day, is this moment a moment, I let go of myself and take the Resurrection that's being offered?

Just look up from the darkness. Christ is standing right there. Drop everything else and reach across.

Dwelling with those who hate peace

2008-03-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I am a man of peace, but when I speak they are for war- Psalm 120:6-7

It's hard to explain how being out of the country for six months has made me feel like I better understand America. Maybe it's because I feel more American here where I am part of a small minority. Maybe it's because I read everything I can about the US when I find it online or in the newspaper. Regardless, here's what I've learned so far:

One. America has macaroni and cheese. The Philippines does not. I've lost weight but I can't say it's been worth it.
Two. America has money. (Not all Americans, but America- yes). Lots of it.
Three. Money rules the world.
Four. America loves war. Loves everything that comes with it- bombs, guns, flagrant superficial patriotism.
Five. War makes money.

I know many people would want to debate number four. After all, who loves war? Surely not the people who lose sons and daughters. Sometimes I wonder if this group of people becomes jaded into thinking that war is noble, that war MUST be noble as to justify the loss of their loved one. But referring to the opening scripture, I can hardly say these are the people who hate peace.

Do the soldiers hate peace? It's an interesting question. They seem to favor the politicians who have sent them to war. For the most part, war as we wage it today is different than how their grandfathers fought. The killing is mostly anonymous. Machine gun fire into the bushes, rocket launches from a distance, and most often bombings from the sky. (More on that later.) Certainly they receive horrid *horrid* health care and benefits when they return home and soldier's widows often live in poverty, but that's rarely enough to make them turn on the army. Soldiers are trained for violence, they're hyped up about weaponry and killing. Many marines refer to fighting in combat as "getting some", a phrase also used to describe having sex. (Sadly, I think that's meant to be a positive correlation.) Still, I don't think they hate peace. They've been trained to love war but most of them will grow up to face the consequences of their government's violence. Surely, they can't hate peace.

But someone must. Someone in America must hate peace. Otherwise, why so little of it? Since WWII America's wars have not been retaliation for another country invading our soil. I suppose some (most) would say that we've attacked other countries only when they've bombed our embassies, tried to assassinate our leaders, or for God's sake September 11th! I guess it depends on your point of view. The American military bombs embassies, they participate in assassinations of foreign leaders, they drop depleted uranium missiles on targets knowing full well it's going to kill civilians whose only crime is that they live in a country America hates. Do these countries have the right to attack us in turn? Assuming what's good for the goose is good for the gander, when will this end?

Arms suppliers hate peace. Weapons manufacturers hate peace. American military suppliers hate peace so much that they sell weaponry to countries that hate us. Then, when these countries are fully armed, the US Government has to buy its own military bigger guns and bombs and more uranium missiles to use against the aforementioned nation. If world leaders were all sitting around a table talking about how we could institute foreign economic policies that are fair and just, these suppliers wouldn't make any money. And if by some miracle global leaders were able to work out a just economic peace, then those suppliers would go out of business. Peace doesn't make corporate profit.

I may be accused of spin if I spell out facts, so I'll leave it to you to look up what stocks are owned by which national politicians. Don't just go googling the Bush camp though, check up on the Clintons too. In fact, if you have some time, look at all of them. Every single one of them have money invested in a stock market that surges anytime the military spends money bombing the hell out of someone else. I'm pretty sure capitalistic economics hates peace.

I try to be a person of peace. I haven't dwelt anywhere that long, but already I, like many others, am tired of war. I'm tired of being told that I hate America because I think an Iraqi life is just as valuable as an American one. I'm tired of living in a country that so many people want to Christianize as long as it only applies to prayer in schools and putting an end to abortion. American Christianity so often stops at the national flag. And while it's stopped there it looks the other way when its government rains hell from the sky on God's darker-skinned children. I am not immune from blame. When I speak out against the war, I allude to the amount of tax dollars spent (more than $14,000 a minute in Iraq alone) and the mistreatment of American veterans (who make up 60% of the male homeless population). I rarely talk about the Arabs breathing in poisonous chemicals or the disproportionate number of children born in Serbia with unnatural birth defects. It's wrong for me to be so self-righteous as to assume that my fellow Americans hate peace. We just can't. We just can't claim to know God and hate peace.

Loving peace is more than just hating war. To love peace, true peace, is to love justice- to love justice so much that you want it for everyone. It means we have to want reparations and apologies not just for Americans but for the people America has wronged (some of whom are still Americans). It means we have to want a living wage not just for ourselves but for farmers and workers in our communities as much as for those around the world. Loving peace means we have to sacrifice our comfort with the status quo, means acknowledging that the same systems that grant us so much surplus put a choke hold on people we've never met. Loving peace is hard.

But what is the alternative? To hate peace is to turn our face from the oppressed, is to live apart from God. Surely, we live in a society of excess that hates justice, that hates peace, so as Christians we are called to be counter-cultural, to resist societal oppression as Christ would. To stand with those most marginalized.

So long as I dwell among those who love war, I will not cease my calling for peace.

Lenten Reflection

2008-02-25T00:32:00.001-08:00

Ezekiel 37

The Valley of Dry Bones

1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath [a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.' "

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.' " 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

11 Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.' "

There was a noise, and behold a rattling sound over the Valley of the Dry Bones. The Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy and as he did, the former armies of Israel began to move. Bone to bone they met each other, part by part they rebuilt each other.

I remember distinctly when I first heard this text read aloud. I was sitting in a pitch-black church during Easter Vigil. Alone in the back row of the church, I was wrapped in isolation that extended out the doors of the sanctuary. I’d been stuck in a place of darkness for quite some time- long enough to have forgotten which way was out.

“Oh, Lord,” I whispered, a moan as much as a prayer. Only you know if these bones can live, if these bones can lift themselves up.

God knows because he is not afraid to go into the Valley of the Dead. He is not afraid to walk among his fallen creation, corpses stacked to his left and to his right. When the Lord resurrects, he doesn’t snap his fingers from on high like a sorcerer, he descends down into the valley and breathes out his own life. The God of Israel is not afraid to get dirty and is not afraid to feel pain.

Through Christ, God also descended into the valley of grief. When his close friend Lazarus dies, Jesus weeps like any of us would weep, feels the emptiness in his heart that we all feel when we visit the tomb of a friend. And then, because he is also God, he says, “Roll away the stone.” This is a Messiah who is unafraid of the stench of a recently occupied tomb. He doesn’t just come to the grave to mourn (and later to die), he comes to pull us from it. Filthy in sin and dirt as we are, Christ will breathe us new life.

If we as gentiles are the indeed the people of the New Israel, the heaven to come to earth, those are our bones in the Valley. Jesus descends and breaths out his spirit, covering us in the flesh of the Lamb and we as a church boldly testify to the Resurrection to come. It is our job to persevere through the darkness, to do something with these moving bones. Imperfect as the bones may be, with the breath of God we can connect the pieces, joint to joint. By clinging to each other we can build the Body of Christ.

That night after Easter service, as I lay in my bed staring through the darkness at the ceiling, I heard a car engine turning in the alley outside. But to my ears it sounded like a rattling of dry bones. My heart was moved within me.

I turned my thoughts to the Lord.

Ma'am

2008-01-31T20:29:00.000-08:00

Ma'am is the polite term used by people in customer service. Sometimes it gets a little overused and sometimes Filipinos use it for white women or to fill space while they look for a word. I was on a very crowded public jeepney when I had this conversation with Sunny, a male college student who lived in my host family's community in Sanghay. Everyone around us can hear this conversation.

Me (in broken Visiya): How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Sunny (in beautifully spoken Enlish): We are a dozen, ma'am. Twelve brothers and sisters in all.
Me (genuinely shocked): Wow! That's huge, even for a Filipino family!
Sunny: Well, ma'am, you see, ma'am. My mother, ma'am, doesn't use... contraceptives, ma'am.
(The people around us nod in agreement, as if to say, "It's true, we know this woman. No contraceptives.")
Me: Oh. Umm...
Sunny: Yes, ma'am.

Two months in less than 2000 words, as I watch everything opening in front of me.

2008-01-29T19:56:00.000-08:00

Originally I had wanted to post a blow-by-blow account for you of the past two months but really, the details that matter here (and anywhere) are rarely the who, what, where, and when, so let those be an afterthought and not the heart what I say and who I am. The past two months have been filled with puppies and parties and teach-ins and immersions. In my ever evolving environment, I keep reminding myself that I didn't become a missionary to make cool new friends and have my own room and access to a shower. That's hard isn't it though? When what we've imagined comes face to face with our realities. Even worse I think is when the people we thought we were meet the people we've become. I like this woman I've become, the one who rides water buffalo and whom the villagers call Esai. I like when I hear visiya come out of her mouth and I like that she knows how to harvest kamotes and slaughter a chicken (it's true!) The old me is shocked when I see her happily eating meat and doing laundry by hand.

I spent most of December on the east coast of Mindanao, near a tiny city named Mati, the better half of my three weeks living with a family in this little barangay called Sanghay. (There are pictures of my host family and the farm shack where they live at www.flickr.com/slavishtubesocks) I rode a horse (falling on my rear when I tried to mount him), I rode a water buffalo (they don't move until forced to, so are easier to board), and I climbed a mountain to a remote(r) community where a priest performed the first mass that the people had in a month. He baptized babies, though it was just really a formality. Due to the high rate of infant mortality in many countries, the Vatican has extended the right of baptism to the child's mother, so children in remote provinces are blessed almost immediately after their appearance from the womb. The Vatican no longer states that unbaptized babies wait in purgatory, but the people are still afraid of this possibility.

I spent Christmas at the Benedictine convent near Sanghay. It was amazing and spiritual experience: vespers, prayers, lauds, and some of the best food I've eaten in a long time. The nuns grow their own food and tend to their own animals, along with being the medical, social, religious, and activist outreach to the communities around them. On Christmas Eve afternoon I took a nap at the convent and had a horrible nightmare that when I got home everyone else had just gone away. When I woke up I had to run into the chapel for lauds and during our prayers I began to weep openly. The Reverend Mother left prayers and brought me tissues. After I washed up and came out for Christmas dinner I began to weep again and Reverend Mother held me. I will never forget what she said. "Oh, Esai. Why are you crying? You are so beautiful and the sisters and I bought you all sorts of beautiful things for you, didn't we?" (Affirmations from the nuns) "Oh you know those puppies we have that you've liked playing with? You can have one! Two if you want! I know how hard this is."

All of the nuns there had been foreign missionaries for a time and they shared stories about their first Christmases away from home. The Reverend Mother had been a medical missionary in Ughanda and had spent her first Christmas in a bomb shelter cooking wild chickens for terrified women and singing them Christmas carols. Sister Stella contracted influenza as her first Christmas present away from home while working in an orphanage during an epidemic. I know it seems atrocious but these stories were told to make me laugh. And I did. I ate the fabulous dinner they'd grown and prepared and opened the beautiful presents they'd given me. I had to leave the puppy at the convent (there's no way I could take him home) but Sister Stella (the dog lover there) said she's taking extra good care of him and texts me updates as to how he's doing. In case your wondering he's grown to be 65 pounds and they're trying to teach him only to eat the leftover chicken they put in his bowl and not the live ones that are running around the yard.

When I came home around New Year's I was excited to start my "real work". Fascinating that after four months I had learned nothing. But, third immersion is the charm. This time there were no kind nuns to care for me (though I will be visiting them again soon!). I was sent to an urban poor community in north Davao City. Only a half hour ride from where I "live" but most of the homes in this community were without electricity and all of them were without running water. Some of the houses didn't have toilets. I stayed there for two weeks with two different families. I did "work"- I spoke to the people (in Visiya!!) about the Visiting Forces Agreement and Balikitan (the US military exercises here). They have sewing machines in the community that were donated as a microloan concept for the women to make dresses and bags to gain lucrative employment. The project has gone by the wayside, so as the activists got them to reorganize around the idea, I tinkered with the machines and put them in working order, along with talking to the women about idea possibilities for modern bags that would sell easily. I made some prototypes. I worked in the dress shop, in the town "hall", on my host families farm. But I think the crucial moment for me was when I was sitting in my host-family's "living room" after having walked a 3 km trip to the stream to bathe and do laundry. It had gotten dark and I was staring at a blank page in my journal. I wrote this:

Today was the perfect day to search for beauty. As will be tomorrow and every day I breathe. I see it everywhere in this one moment, in the mud on on my feet, the rice on the table, the rain coming down into the buckets outside. I understand this wholeness, these precious moments and this precious rain water, drop by drop caressing the earth, to be so much more than what I do or where I go. Being is not just solidarity and living is not just for social change. It's beauty, it's all just a search for the beauty in creation, and my desire for busyness and effectiveness can suffocate a more perfect world around me. Long blades of grass grow two feet high across the path in my atte's garden. They're reaching up and bending over and worshiping the sky and loving the rain. There's no other place they'd rather live, no other planet where they'd rather be. I myself have also grown fond of this one.

I leave on February 1 for Cagayan de Oro where I and my coworkers will be helping at conferences and seminars about Balikitan and the US military presence in the Philippines. We'll be there for three weeks and during that time I'll be taking a short trip to Thailand to meet up with a fellow UM missionary. I wonder about the tea and the peanut sauce, the temples and the landscape. I wonder when this world opened up for me. I didn't see it happening but I'm so glad it did. May the Lord punish me, be it ever so severely, if I fail to thank the earth properly.

Ocean of Pineapples

2008-01-29T19:51:00.000-08:00

I never wrote at length about the time I spent on the Dole Pineapple plantation in Polomolok, at least not on this blog. This is an article I wrote for InPeace about my time there:

When Polomolok children first see the ocean, they see it from the shores of the Sarangili Bay. The public beaches there aren’t particularly clean, but they’re swimible and so the Filipino children dive in clad in shorts and t-shirts. It’s a metaphorical lesson- when Polomolok children grow up they will need to be ready to swim in the sea. Though not a sea of water, but an ocean of pineapples.

This tiny community on the southern shore of the island of Mindanao has a one-fruit economy. More than 50 percent of the work force punches their time card at the Dolefil cannery and plantation. The other 50 percent works mostly in the service industry (caring for the workers) or on small farms (most selling pineapples to Dole.) An undetermined number wait outside of the Dole industrial complex each day to see if they can fill an open spot.

Polomolok the Dole Pineapple is not just an ocean, but it’s the air and the land as well. The sweet smell of pineapples mixes with kalichuchi flowers, exhaust fumes, and sewer openings. Land that used to grow rice and vegetables for consumption now produces pineapples for export.

Polomolok is not alone. The whole economy of the Philippines now revolves around exportation. Whether it’s foreign call centers, cash crops, or workers moving abroad globalization has changed the way Filipinos do business. Certainly it’s changed things for Americans too. When Americans call a credit card help line then end up talking to someone in Asia, when Minnesotans want coconuts in the middle of February they need only go to the grocery store. Many young Filipinos move abroad in search of higher, often just living, wage. It’s the brain drain- the best and the brightest in the Philippines move to China, Europe, or North America to do work for which they are over-qualified. Doctors work as nurses, nurses as caregivers; lawyers and teachers become cabbies and janitors. And they still make more money doing this than they will at their previous profession in their home country.

Certainly the brain drain is known in Polomolok, but it’s the land drain that has the people here most concerned. There’s a tiny Bla’an Lumad community on the edge of one of Dole’s massive pineapple fields. The men travel to the next town over to work on farms there. When asked where their ancestral lands were, the Datu pointed out at the field. But we don’t even work there now, he said.

“The pineapples are bad for the land,” said KMU Union President Jose Tuelad. Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) is a nation-wide union; the Polomolok KMU was chartered in 1985. “Big companies rent the land for a small price and when they return it to the people in 20 year it will be destroyed.”

Small-scale farmers get around problem of pineapples being nutrient-draining by performing extensive crop rotation in cycles over years and years. But according the Tuelad corporations like Dole don’t see the land as a irreplaceable resource, but rather as a short-term commodity. If the soil is depleted, they’ll just find somewhere else to grow their pineapples.

“Pineapples that aren’t even for us,” Tuelad goes on, shaking his head. Like all the other multi-national food producers in Mindanao, their crops are for export only. After being collected, the vast majority of these pineapples are immediately processed at the cannery down the street from the fields. Those fields, that used to yield vegetables and rice for the people’s consumption, surround the people with a bountiful harvest but the price of their personal foodstuffs continues to climb. Pineapples, pineapples everywhere, but there’s nothing for the people to eat.

For its own part, Dole insists that it’s a responsible corporation that takes care of the people in the plantation communities. The question of course is how can a corporation truly be responsible to working people? If the corporation by-laws state (which they do) that Dole’s first and foremost responsibility is to make as much profit as possible for its shareholders, how can the needs of the community truly matter?

Naysayers would point to the vast amount of charitable contributions given by Dole to Polomolok. The backs of the chairs in the Catholic Church near the cannery are stamped with the words “Donated by: Dole Philippines, Inc”. In fact, Tueland says that the whole church was funded by the company- from the sanctuary, to the priest’s quarters, to the statue of Christ on the top of the building, dressed as a conquestador. Hardly a donation as much as a purchase. Can a priest speak out against the company who paid for his house and church? Can the people sit on chairs marked with Dole’s name without being reminded of its power?

The charity extends to health services for families and to schools for children. Temporary clinics are set up in Polomolok and other Dole plantation communities every few months to treat certain health problems and do general check ups. Elementary schools wear huge signs that say “This school is funded by a generous donation from Dole Philippines” or more simply “Dole Philippines Cares!” Workers and managers alike pass these sign on their way to work. Who are these signs for?

In their hurriedness to provide all this charity, at some point it must have occurred to the higher-ups at Dole that the company is the reason all of this charity is needed. There’s no reason why men and women working six days a week, 10 hours a day for a large corporation should need someone else to fund schools for their children and churches for their families. But the average pay for steady workers averages about 200 pesos per a 10-hour day. Roughly this is one-tenth the amount a minimum wage earning American worker would receive for the same amount of labor.

And those are the steady workers, the only group of workers at Dole who make at least minimum wage and only 25% of the work force. The way Dole “saves” the largest amount of capital (or exploits labor the most) is by abusing the contractual labor system. Under labor laws, companies are allowed to higher contractual workers (often through service providers) for temporary work, like construction or consulting. Dole uses loopholes, and just out-right law breaking, to employ contractual laborers as the vast majority of its work force. Contractual labor is more exploitative (and in turn cheaper) for a number of reasons, the first of which is that contractual laborers are not required minimum wage. Many young people work in the cannery for less than 125 pesos a day. Even though canning and harvesting are far from temporary work at a pineapple cannery, these contractual laborers are only guaranteed their jobs for a few months at a time. This lack of stability keeps them quiet to company abuses. They’re not allowed to join the union and so any success the union achieves (ie benefits, higher pay) does not apply to the great majority of the workers at Dole.

In light of these contractual labor abuses it’s no surprise that one of the primary goals of KMU is to get as many contractual laborers switched to permanent labor status. In 2004 the union was successful in such a case. After long and complicated negotiations with Dole Philippines 1,500 contractual laborers were granted full-time labor status and admitted to the union. This raised the union’s membership up to 5,200 workers, or 25% of the Dole labor force in Polomolok.

“Still a long way to go,” Tuelad said lighting a cigarette, “(but) the workers can do everything if there is unity.” The long way stretches out before them. As corporations like Dole continue to grow and take over whole communities, the workers continue to see the cost of staples like rice and vegetables on the rise while the promise of permanent work is often uncertain.

Smoke escaped Tuelad’s nostrils as he writes union dues tallies on the chalkboard in his office, the cigarette exhaust a bit reminiscent of a dragon. Unlike in Europe, in Asia the dragons are the heroes; symbols of good luck and fortune. KMU may need both to stay afloat in the pineapple ocean.

Sanghay Mountains

2008-01-08T21:28:00.001-08:00

If I could say one thing about the Filipino terrain it’s that this whole nation teems with life. My experience is quite limited, but Mindanao is far from the exception of this observation. Whether it’s the lizards on the ceiling, chickens on the street corners, or homeless children tucked under the overhangs, something is always being born, and in turn, beginning to die. The countryside is even more so, being overrun with hungry livestock and fruit bearing trees that tower above miles and miles of vegetables and flowers. I was deposited in this threatened land of promise, particularly a barangay named Sanghay for two weeks during the Christmas season. It’s always hard to vocalize the intended benefits of these immersions. Certainly it’s about education and solidarity, but there’s a certain part of just being that comes into that, a certain reality that has to be based upon person-to-person interaction. This time together can hardly summed up in terms of issues or political ideas.

Sanghay is high in the mountains- the rain comes everyday and everything seemed damp against my skin. My washed clothes never seemed to dry and at night I would listen to the drops of water falling from the ceiling to a bucket near my bed. The rain was like the mountains exhaling, a quiet but constant rhythm. In the daylight I would see them towering above the town basketball court. I would see the clouds rising like a winter’s breath.

Only a few hundred years ago the people lived here with enough, with plenty. The land and the Lumads belonged to each other in the way that there was enough food to go around from the trees and the land and the animals and the bay that there was no reason to break down the mountains and tear up the forest. Certainly I’m not the part of the group that came in to take that away, but I’m part of a race and a country that benefits from the societal ‘evolution’ of Mindanao and no matter how much I ally myself with the activists here, I cannot change that.

And so to truly understand the people and the mountains as much as I could during my brief stay I felt I had to divorce myself from my self. Easier said than done. It’s a daunting task anyway, human beings are full of self-awareness, and in a tiny barangay tucked so far away from a real metropolis, the rarity of white presence attracted a fair amount of finger pointing, staring, and shouting. Often my self would become the most obvious part of my experience.

A few days into my stay there I was invited to make a trek up the mountain to New Kamotes, an even more remote village a bit of a motorcycle ride away. The local priest was going there to attend a festival and I was invited as his guest. My host family would, of course, be accompanying me.

“Cars can’t up there,” the priest said with a laugh. “And there’s no sweet potatoes.” I asked him the nature and purpose of the festival, but never got a real reply. The trip up was a bit painstaking. It had rained for hours the night before and so the motorcycle my host sister and I had had hired to take us up the mountain kept tipping over. After falling off a few times, we decided to walk the steepest parts and only use the bike when the terrain looked clearer. The mud covered my clothes, speckled my face and stuck in my hair.

It would be ridiculous to say that the trip to New Kamotes was any sort of right of passage, but there’s something to be said about commonality in new experiences. When the people stared at me when I arrived in the town for the festival (it turned out to be a baptismal celebration) I couldn’t tell if they were staring at me because I was white or because I was covered in filth. Chances are it was the former. Regardless, walls come down. They’re Western walls- walls of perpetual disparity and cultural theft, globalization and racism. And they’re my walls- walls of personal space and foreign ignorance, guilt and discomfort. And when the walls began to crack I could move out of my emotional barricade and move into a more accessible place, in the space between my self and the farmers around me.

And in that space I could hear when people spoke about the mountains about the over-flow of life and death around them. In a country plagued with the colonized love of the foreign and with a government encouraging labor exportation, the peasants I met in Sanghay are at the same time both a foil and a mirror to the national societal changes going on around them. Certainly the fascination with the West was obvious in their intense reception of a white visitor and in the vast quantity of American pop songs on the town’s token karaoke machines, but it was clear to me the people are in belonging with the land. I saw it especially with the farmers, willingly sharing knowledge about their crops and enjoying the fruits of past harvest prepared in coconut milk. The questions I fielded about America were theoretical and humorous, very different from the specific questions I received in Manila about visas and green cards. That’s the foil.

Sanghay also reflects the most recent threat to the environmental and economic survival of many mountain communities.

“Up there,” a local man said, pointing to the top of the nearby hill. “They’re starting mining, on the other side.” I asked him who owned the land and he replied that a company had bought it from a local farmer. The specific questions I asked about the transaction and price of the sale were shrugged away.

Doesn’t matter, he said. There’s going to be mining everywhere soon. I wondered what that would look like- those beautiful mountains full of machinery. I wonder if they would be able to breathe in the rain under all that garbage, if they would get cold when they were naked of trees.

My host father Titing and I talked about what this would mean for the community.

“All that is mine is the land,” he said. “The land, the goats, the chickens.” He went on to say that, that was all any of the families here had and if the companies came in the land could be ruined. It wasn’t just the actual mining sites, but the places below that would suffer under the erosion, the communities that would have to be plowed through to make access roads.

“Maybe (the companies) will give (the people) a little bit of money. It’s a lot for us so they take the money. Do they know the land will be destroyed?” he asked. His wife brought us out a place of bananas.

“Sagin,” she said, pushing the plate on the table towards me. “Esai, sagin.” (Bananas. Lindsey Bananas.)
“Buso ko,” I replied smiling at her and touching my stomach. She frowned at me. (I'm full.)
“Kaun, kaun sagin,” she said and took one off the plate and extended it to me. (Eat, eat bananas.)

“Oh, oh,” I said, taking the banana. “Salamat,” I turned back to Titing. “It seems like the people need education,” I said, peeling the banana. I felt fat.

“It’s happening right now. Organization. We need to organize,” he said, nodding. I noticed when he feigned being full his wife took his word for it.

I’m far from knowing much about the mining issues affecting Mindanao. And as both a foreigner and a Westerner I think I would be quite out-of-place in offering any in-depth analysis or a tangible solution. But I have my perspective, an outside perspective, I have quite enough of that to go around.

A place like Mindanao with so much life and unknown promise seems to be a rare gem in the face of an over-industrialized and hyper-developed Western world. To deny any mining or development for the sake of a rustic nostalgia would be seen as irrational, especially in a country crippled with foreign debt and mass poverty. I fear the biggest problem facing Sanghay is not the mining itself but the very present reality that decisions that could destroy this community are being made on a different island (cynically one could say in a different country) by people who have undoubtedly never had to survive harvest to harvest, one day at a time. The minerals mined in the mountains of Davao Oriental will undoubtedly be shipped abroad and the only time Filipinos will ever see the wealth of Mindanao is when it reenters their country via shopping mall as electronics and hardware the vast majority won’t be able to afford.

I wonder what the people in Sanghay would make with those resources if it were up to them. Modern farming equipment so farmers could yield a profit at the end of year? Tougher motorcycles so the people in New Kamotes could still get into town even if there’s been rain? Or maybe low-cost computer technology so their children could have a better education?

Certainly the people know what’s happening: They know the government doesn’t have the people’s interest at heart, that the wealthy will only get wealthier from these mining operations. What they need to know is that other people know, too. People in different cities, people on different islands, people from different countries. Clergy and reports and activists know. Education on these issues will start with making sure people know they’re not alone in their struggle. Titing knows better than anyone- this is happening right now and if the people don’t organize so much could be lost. Everything, really.

Among all of the life on Mindanao, none of it belongs to foreign investors, big companies, and none of it belongs to the government. The people here belong to the land; the tillers and workers shepherd the life that springs from the ground and lives off the soil. So if anyone should speak for resources and potential here it can only be them. It’s hardly a political theory or a radical idea. It’s really just what makes sense.

On a lighter note

2007-12-01T05:39:00.000-08:00

Me- “I’m a Methodist missionary.”
Local- “Baptist?”
Me- “No, Methodist.”
Local- "Baptist."
Me- "No, United Methodist."
Local- “Catholic?”
Me- “Umm…. Jesus? Jesus.”
Local- “So, Catholic.”
Me, changing the subject- “Gusta nemo ka carne mo?" (Would you like my share of the meat?)

Thanksgiving and Solidarity

2007-12-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

A fair amount of time has passed since I last wrote. I wish I could say I’ve been so busy I just haven’t had time, but quite frankly, for all my years of formal education, I have merely been unable to formulate sentences that could be at all relevant in my experiences here. It’s been little things, trips to the market, countless meals of rice and fish, words learned and lessons lost. When I look at the calendar I can scarcely believe that it’s already December; the unbearable weather here seems to leave my understanding of time in a perpetual month of August. And yet, I bear it. Everyone else here just deals with it- there are very few of us who flourish in it. So often when I tell American friends of the constant eating of rice and dried fish, of the endless sweating in the humidity they’ll say, “Wow, that’s not for me.” It begs the question, are we actually ignorant enough to think that Filipinos love living without air conditioning, that they enjoy eating the same food every day? Just because people are accustomed to a lifestyle doesn’t mean they would have chosen it for themselves.

Right now I’m listening to old European Christmas carols as I sit writing next to our office’s Christmas tree. It’s meager and under-decorated, but I rejoice in seeing it anyway. There are reminders of home everywhere, at no time more obvious than during the Thanksgiving celebration our office held last week. There was no turkey (we would have to shoot it ourselves, and there was no way I was condoning such an action, in my heart I am still a vegetarian) but there was stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and pie. Pineapple pie is still pie. Fifteen people in all joined in the celebration- coworkers and their spouses and a few children. We all said what we were thankful for- all for family and loved ones and most tellingly, many for solidarity in the cause of peace and justice in this country. I was most thankful that even in my isolation on the other side of the world, I had learned that I was not alone. Not alone in being, but mostly not alone in my desire for love and peace. If good-hearted Americans think it is our job to “save” the world, we are sorely mistaken. The most we can hope for is to be in solidarity, to struggle along side the masses and to open our hearts to justice, no matter what that will mean for our comfortable way of life.

I have found myself more comfortable being back in Davao City. I spent the end of October through the middle of November in Polomolok, a Dole pineapple plantation a half hour from General Santos City on the southeastern side of Mindanao. It was an enlightening and bizarre experience. Enlightening that I learned so much about the workers’ struggle against massive multinationals like Dole and bizarre in that I was just thrust into their lives for the briefest period of time and for those few days I was there felt consumed by the apparent hopelessness of their fight against greed-driven capitalism. And yet, is there not always hope? Filipino national ballads project such an idea, as do liberal priests and activist nuns. Those who are true to the faith do not put all hope in end-of-the-world eschatology that declares the people should wait for God to do right. The faithful most in touch know that there is a call for the church to do something, to be an aid and a comfort to her people in their endless conflict with the powers that be.

I was not an aid or a comfort in Polomolok- in the most obvious sense I imagine I was a burden. Oh, the American can’t eat this or that, the American wonders where she can buy toilet paper, the American needs extra water to do her laundry. Certainly no one was short with me, in fact it was their over-accommodation, their severe hospitality that made me the most uncomfortable. The guilt and shame I felt in my inability to survive was not personal, but societal. For my own experience, I was quite proud of how I adapted. Compared to those around me, I was unnaturally weak.
Weakness is perhaps the greatest burden here. I carry it around in the form of a water bottle and closed-toe shoes, both connected by climbing hooks to my water proof backpack that is twice the size of anything else my colleagues are carrying. But I need, x y and z, I need this medication for this affliction and this one to prevent malaria. And bug spray and a misquito net and a dictionary and a phone charger… It just goes on. I’m weak when I carry so much extra. Then I’m vulnerable when I go without. Humility is not an option, it’s an assigned task.

On December 3 I’ll be going on my second immersion to a peasant community an hour and a half out from Davao City Proper. I’ve already met the nuns and priest I’ll be spending most of my time with at a forum at their parish, St. Isidro. The local farmers had come to the church leaders requesting a forum on new government legislation that threatens to turn the land, their very livelihoods, over to large multi-national mining companies. They’ve entrusted their fate to these clergy, who in turn have returned it to the people. At the forum the leaders recommended the peasants start their own labor organization in an effort to unite in a seemingly hopeless struggle for their way of life.

I look forward to spending the beginning of Advent, the season of active waiting, with these peasants. I hope to learn enough about their situation to be of some use- I hope to be wise enough to find my place and that, that place may be in solidarity.

I hope I don’t have to eat very much pork, but of this, I am skeptical.

Into the Tondo

2007-10-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

I was in the Tondo community September 19-20, part of a longer urban poverty immersion in Manila.

It has taken me a while to write this. I still wonder if it's my place to write what I do- if I tell a story from this island, it's not mine. The story, the land, the people in it. It seems like lots of Westerns have spent the last 450 years taking what they want from the Philippines, from the Global South in general. And so if listening carefully is important for me here, speaking carefully, choosing language carefully is just as important. I think perhaps the greatest flaw in many non-profits, in many well-meaning people who want to work "on" issues or "on" countries starts with the language they choose. If we talk about places and people like they're projects then we grow to feel we can take their images, stories and ideas without their permission. Because of course, we'll be using this information in their best interest. There are lots of problems with this reappropriation, but the most glaring is that we assume we know what is in the best interest of someone else just because they are poorer, less "educated," different.

It's also taken me a while to write this because I haven't wanted to think about it. It would be grossly unfair to say that what I see most of the time here is tragedy- quite the opposite. The way of life, the people I've met, the foods I eat are for the most part amazing and much of my time here is spent laughing with coworkers and learning all I can from the people around me. But it's human nature to remember the negative, to dwell on the horrifying. Maybe because at heart our nature is morbid, but I think it's because deep down we know that it's the darkest moments that define us the most. It's the time of suffering, the hours of struggle that make our victories meaningful. It's not until we've faced true tragedy that we can live real joy. Good Friday to Easter.

But some people's Good Fridays last longer than others. The Villa Delorosa to Tondo is hidden and strange. Powers-that-be have done an excellent job hiding this poverty, blotting this blemish on the face of Manila. But a stench cannot be blotted. So I smelled the Tondo before I saw it. It permeated the inside of the taxi that my guide had hired to bring us there- I could feel it getting into my hair. I glanced at the clock on my cellphone, a habit I'd gotten into throughout the immersion.

Tondo is a warehouse community that sits inside the main garbage dump of metro Manila. The city built these warehouses for this very purpose, to hide the public housing where no one of monetary value will ever travel. And public housing is a very generous term. Warehouse is literal. The structures are just large empty two story rectangular buildings among the heaps of trash. There's no running water (that I could see). Thousands of people live in these buildings. They've separated the space into "apartments" with tin and plywood, some have managed to run in electricity, but it only works from 6pm to sunrise.

And garbage is not just the aroma, but the income. The work in this community consists of sifting through the trash to find recyclable materials like plastic, glass, and aluminum. The materials are wrapped in bundles and sent to factories to reuse. Women and children are the main labor force, but men who haven't been able to find other work as a tricycle or taxi driver do the sifting as well. And that's a lot of them- under and unemployment rates are through the roof.

The walk into urban poor communities has consistently been a bizarre experience. When I first round the corner or go through the gate I feel a bit like a celebrity because everyone stares and points and waves and the children all want to know my name. White people don't usually tour these parts of the Philippines. But I feel more like a dog with its tail between its legs because I know the economic systems that allow people like me to be so wealthy have a downside. And this is it; widespread, gruesome, and cruel poverty.

The entrance into Tondo was different and not. It's like the high-rise of shanty communities, a mini-city of naked children and haggard adults sifting through mountains of garbage. I just wanted to run- I looked over my shoulder as they cab that had driven my guide and I here was pulling away. I wanted to call after it. I wanted to go anywhere, anywhere else. A small child ran over to me. "Hey, Joe!" he shouted, holding out his hand. "Joe, joe," he said over and over.

"Wala," I replied, my voice empty. I shook my head. No money here, no pesos here for you. I had made the mistake of giving out money before, against the advice of my guide. The children had swarmed me and she eventually had to yell at that them and push them away.

"You won't have enough for all of them," she said.

Hollowness gripped me when the boy finally gave up and went to beg elsewhere. Someone has enough for all of them- someone has these children's share tucked away in a bank or invested in a company. Someone is driving it around or wearing it on his wrist. These children have been robbed before they even leave the womb.

I stayed in the community night. I will decline to write about my evening experience because I do not feel I can do justice to the generosity of my hosts and I would only be self-centered and focused on the hardships I faced for less than 24 hours. And those are not my burdens to claim. I was just a guest looking in, counting down minutes until I could find a bathroom and breathe clean air. My efforts were so minimal, my time so short. Maybe if I lived there for years, or raised a child there, maybe if leaving was not a luxury I was afforded- then I would have something to say about Tondo.

A danger I face in sharing the positive side of Filipino life is that I will subconsciously romanticize their hardships. Certainly the family bonds here are powerful, life is much slower, there is time made to talk, and the people are hospitable. But it is in my best interest, not theirs to say life is "quaint" here and this is "just the way they do things." While cultural difference play a huge part, no one enjoys living in absolute poverty. Maybe people make the best of it, but for me to write off what I see as just an interesting outlook on life is to divorce any responsibility for the poverty. It's true, Filipinos laugh a lot, but it's not because life is great. Just because people love their families doesn't mean they love living in a shanty with them. Just because Filipinos are kind to foreigners doesn't mean they don't understand that the West has robbed them.

And so I'll share this. As we left the next morning my guide was stopped by a woman who was concerned about her neighbor’s baby. We went to see the child in question. I cannot describe truly what I saw, at first I thought his head was much too big for his body and then I looked closer and saw his ribs and joints clearly exposed his skin. His mother was cleaning his diaper. His waste looked like that of a bird’s. I tried not to stare at the boy and his mother while my guide talked to the other woman in hurried Tagalog. I was able to decipher what they were saying through their sporadic use of English- this was a case of a simple infection gone awry and compounded with severe dehydration. The mother’s eyes were dull and distant, a sign of childhood malnourishment- a sign of hunger-caused mental retardation. She explained she had just kept giving the baby water in a bottle to try to rehydrate him. She hadn’t known he’d needed to go to the hospital. Her other two children were standing by. Things had gotten tight and she’d been giving her food to them so they wouldn’t go hungry. She didn’t know this would make her breast milk worthless to the baby.

The guide, a former nurse, gave the other woman the name of an admittance counselor at a local Catholic hospital. “They’ll see the baby for free,” she said, and quieter, “God knows, they would have before too.” She paused and glanced at the mother. “And she needs get a prenatal exam.” I swallowed. Of course the mother was pregnant again. This is a Catholic country- birth control is condemned and is widely unavailable, especially to the poor.

As we walked out of the warehouse, I leaned in a little to speak to my guide, but couldn’t figure out how to start the sentence. I didn’t have to- she shook her head as she put her arm around my waist. “This is what it looks like. It’s not the mother’s fault- no money, no education,” she said. And then she said, "It will be over soon.”

Maybe for one child. For his mother, this will go on and on. For the people it will never end until the world is turned on its head.

We took care to hop over the streams of filth on our way back to the main road, on our way out of the Tondo. I took care to look over my shoulder and not at my watch, but by the next evening I was sleeping comfortably in my own room, belly full of good food, running water just a few feet away. The hum of the air-conditioning drown out the noise of the people in the street.

Good News?- Reflections for NCCP Staff Worship on my month in Manila

2007-10-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

I spent a good deal of time packing for the Philippines. It was a months-long process- making lists, buying a few things here or there, and then during my last few days in the states it was mental agony trying to decide what I would need for more than a year in a country I knew very little about. And for all my worry, I came here only forgetting one thing. Not bad, except for the fact that, that one thing was my Bible. A missionary who forgot her Bible.

At first I thought, a missionary who forgets her Bible is like a soldier who forgets his gun, who comes running to his destination leaving behind the thing with which he's been the most trained. But as I've thought about it more and more, I've come to believe that this unarmed soldier may be the best kind of soldier. He's a soldier who must be careful and listen, who has lowered his defenses and must rely on the people around him. He's a soldier without an easy solution to fall back on.

I hope to be the best kind of missionary. I, too, hope to come with my defenses down, careful with words and more careful in listening. I want to be the missionary who lives in partnership, not leadership and not servitude, at least not the kind of servitude that perpetuates the imbalance of power between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

I can see a little bit of the imbalance in the scripture we've read today. This imbalance may not be what the writer of Isaiah II had in mind, but I think the greatest truths come when we turn traditional sources of wisdom upside down. The Good News today is this, "My people, foreigners will serve you. They will take care of your flocks and farm and tend your vineyards. And you will be known as priests of the Lord, the servants of our God. You will enjoy the wealth of nations and be proud that it is yours." (Isaiah 61: 5-7)

Good news, right? Looks like God's people are living quite well here. Unless of course we consider that God's people also include the foreigners. And after a month in Manila, this is what I've come to believe- the Filipinos have been made to be foreigners in their own land. Whether it's the Moros in Mindanao, farmers in Luzon, or workers who live in the shanty slums, their lives are determined and destroyed by powers that be, powers that come in from the West and take what they want. Priests from Spain took the land and the religion, and then capitalists from America took the economy and educational system as well. The Filipinos will work for them; they will be the foreigners who serve.

But I've also learned that just like that of ancient Israel, the collective Filipino memory is long. The nearly 400 years of Spanish rule is not forgotten and the US-Filipino War is not forgotten either. Three hundred thousand Filipinos lost their lives in that war, as did 100,000 during the Japanese Invasion of World War II. And the presence of US troops for the past 60 years is on the people's mind. After all, the Americans are still here.

In light of this knowledge, I am forced to ask myself this question- how can the presence of one more Westerner, one more white American, be a good thing? What can I do here? Can I undo the damage of militarization and commercialization? Is there anything I can say to change anything? How can I possibly bring the Good News when I don't have any answers, when I left my Bible and so much of what I knew at home?

And that's when I realized- the best kind of missionary doesn't bring good news. She looks for it. She stands in solidarity with the oppressed and listens when they speak. A good missionary doesn't come armed with solutions or with Truths- she comes with open ears and an open heart, gentle hands and a grateful tongue. The solutions come from the people and the Truths come from God, but when God speaks he does so through the oppressed and downtrodden. What can I do here? I can listen for the word of God that comes from the displaced and desperate.

Because after all, Filipinos don't want foreigners to serve them. They just want to possess the fields they till, the companies they serve, and the land of their ancestors. They want clean water to drink, air to breathe, and education that includes their story. They want what everyone wants- to be citizens, not servants, in their country.

I hope in the next fifteen months I can learn to live in partnership, that I grow to find the place of solidarity and learn to stand in strength and silence. I hope I am ready to hear the news that comes from the mouth of the people, the words that bring liberation for them as well as their oppressors. And then I will be a messenger of the Good News- I'll take it home with me.

Laika's Community

2007-09-21T11:01:00.000-07:00

Though I have not started my actual job (this will happen after I leave for Mindanao on October 2), my schedule has picked up here. In the past week I have done two urban immersions in which I went into local communities and stayed with host families and took part in daily activities while learning about the political issues affecting the people.

My first stay was hosted through Kairos, a Catholic organzation that works with squatter communities to organize the people to fight for their own justice. Many squatters in Manila are former farmers who have been forced to flee their lands due to economic hardship. As though it is not enough that they live in shanty villages, many without water and sanitation, now the government threatens to demolish these villages in the name of big business.

The community is right off the highway, after exiting the jeepney, we walked around a corner and saw the community. This was only my second observation, the first thing that struck me was the smell. I cannot fully describe what the stench of this sewage-filled river is like- even as I think about it now, I feel a bit queasy. And I'd thought maybe the smell would pass or I would get used to it, but as I lay on the floor of Laika's one-room shanty with the other 6 members of the family later that night, the smell kept me awake.

Laika's mother was unbelievably kind. She was constant in offering me snacks (coconut milk right from the fruit, fish cooked whole on a skillet outside) and spent a great deal of time just talking to me about what life was like here and the dreams she had for her daughters. In the evening of my second day there seminaries from Redemptorist Catholic Seminary in a nearby part of Manila. It was good to be able to share with them. They had all come from the provinces and this was their first exposure to urban poverty. It is so different than rural poverty, they said. At least out in the country there is clean air and space for the children. In urban poverty the air, water, and land are all filthy.

And the children are small. When I first meant Janine, Laika's youngest sister, I thought she was about 6 years old. She was so small and quite. Janine is actually 10, almost 11. I took to her immediately and she held my hand anytime we walked somewhere so I wouldn't get lost. She shared her toys with me though she had so few, her favorite was her bottle cap collection. There were no real rules to the game, just shuffling them around. Coming from a country where a child's happiness is a commodity that Disney, Mattel and other corporations sell, the sight of her so in awe of toys from garbage moved me.

Though I was inclined to stay on with them longer, Kairos had arranged for me to go to another squatter village that night. This village was by the airport, right beside the barbed wire fence that partions off the runway. I must have flown over it on my way into Manila. The smell was not nearly as prominent here, but the noise from the planes was so loud that anytime one flew overhead, the shanties' tin walls would shake.

The house I stayed at here was larger- three rooms, one of which was a sewing cubby where the mother made handcraft rugs to sell on the streets. Getting into the home was difficult. It was on the second floor so to enter one had to climb a wooden ladder from the street. I quickly learned that there was no water there- on this particular day they didn't have the 2 pesos (4 cents) to fill get their container filled and since the father was at work there was no one strong enough to carry it up the ladder. I have no idea what they were doing as far as using the toilet, I didn't ask.

When I left the shanty town on my third day of the exposure, I didn't look over my shoulder- I was on the way to the promised land of personal space and running water. There can be no true solidarity when one can fall back on other resources, but I am ashamed to say in that moment I just didn't care. I was not strong enough to stay there.

Magandan hapon from metro Manila

2007-09-13T16:18:00.001-07:00

When I first heard I was going to Philippines, when I first tried to dream of the Philippines, of what any of this would be like, my mind went blank and empty- away from thick jungles, dirt roads, and rice patties. Like a potted plant moving from its container, I said, I am ready to live in a different soil, breath the air of a different dirt, gaze at foreign stars. Here now, at a desk in an office on the biggest thoroughfare in Manila, I am glad I did not dream of these things. Because so far, that is not where I am.

In the mornings here I watch the sunrise over large buildings and parking lots and palm trees. It comes early here, at 5:30. The first day I was hear I noticed a nearby rooster crows at daybreak. Then I noticed the rooster crows pretty much all the time. I no longer notice the rooster as much as abhor it. True though, without him, the juxtaposition of farm life and urban living would be lost. The Karaoke Bar down the street broadcasts its patrons' offerings well until the wee hours, along with the never-ending stream of traffic. Filippinos aren't agressive or angry drivers, but the majority of vehicles are older and so the noise can be a bit overwhelming. I am pleased I will only be in Manila through October 1st. I hear in Davao there are more trees and cleaner air. The smog here is quite terrible- when riding in jeepneys women will cover their children's mouths with hankercheifs or napkins. Needless to say, I have not done any biking or jogging since I've been here.

This past Thursday I went to a forum on the global "War on Terror", apprpriately scheduled on the 6th anniversary of September 11. There's a very pacificistic movement here, I think it comes from the Filipino experience in WWII (100,000 civilians were killed within one month when the Japanese were trying to take over the islands). Filipinos are concerned about protecting their civil rights after the passing of the Filipino version of the Patriot Act, as many Americans are at home. I continue to find more similarities here than differences.

Young people are politically active and gravely concerned about the economic issues here. The main line of work for most adults here continues to be international-focused (either they travel abroad to make a decent salary they can not get here, or they do telecommunications work outsourced by American companies.) The Western World seems keen on taking advantage of the cheap labor here and as in the United States, corporations seem to always win over the workers, especially the poorest ones.

The food is different. In my time here I have gone from being a former vegetarian to a conesore of stuffed squid, turkey intestines and fish. Lots of fish. But not like American fish- Filipino fish come with their heads and tails still attached. I find it hard to not look the fish in the eye while I scrape the meat from his bones, or more often, the bones out of the meat. The taste of the food is not altogether unpleasant when dipped in approprate soups. That being said- I am already one third of the way through on of the jars of peanut butter my grandmother sent with me. :-)