Birthday Time!

Yes, May the 14^th was my birthday. As the 14^th fell on a work day I did most of my celebrating the day before. My host family very kindly held a party in my honour, cooking loads and loads of food. The inevitable videoke (karaoke) machine was wheeled out, and songs were sung until the early hours. It was really kind of Mama Angel, my host mother, and her extended family to all come out to celebrate with me.

Waking up the following morning, my 29^th year was greeted by the sounds of yet more videoke (yes, Filipinos are addicted to singing!). After gulping down breakfast I made my way to the municipal library to meet my volunteers and start work. However, this day was a day with a difference – the group’s first Global Citizenship Day. Each week, a pair of volunteers has the responsibility of organizing a day on a development topic of their choice. This time the two volunteers chose to explore the theme of “Relative and Absolute Poverty” (for basic definitions of these terms please click here).  The day started off with a presentation on relative poverty, with a focus on the wealth divide in the UK. It’s fair to say that many of the Filipinos volunteers (and indeed British) were unaware of the poverty that exists in the United Kingdom. The high child poverty rates in the UK, and the comparison between other wealthier areas of the country, proved to be a shocking and interesting point of study.

Payatas – After digesting all of that, we all boarded the coach to Metro Manila to see a community in which absolute poverty is rife. Payatas is community in the north of Manila. It has gained notoriety not just for its poverty, but also because it is home to one of the biggest rubbish mountains in the country. The mountain towers about the community, and is controversial for two main reasons: 1). the growth of the mountain has led to the government forcibly evicting local residents, 2). large sections of the rubbish mountain collapsed in 2000, killing 218 people.

We were guided around the community by some local volunteer health workers, who gave us a real insight into the lives of some of the local people. It was surreal to be passing by shacks, all the time seeing the large rubbish mountain dominating the skyline.

Like much of the Philippines, unemployment is high in Payatas. Many of the local people thus turn to scavenging, going on daily trips to the rubbish mountain searching for any items that can be sold on. What might already sound like a difficult job recently became tougher when the government sold on the rights to the rubbish mountain to a local colonel. He has since started charging local people to access the mountain, and has struck up deals with the local recycling/scrap businesses so as to cut out the actual scavengers from the negotiating table. One local resident told me that this has led to a drop in wages, with scavengers now only earning about 40 Pesos per day (about 60 pence) for their tough work. I find it hard to believe that someone can charge the poorest of the poor to scavenge through public waste (which let’s not forget, has been dumped in the local residents’ community). Such an advanced form of capitalism was previously unknown to me!

Those who do not scavenge often turn to crime or prostitution. In both these situations, it is again the poor who suffer. Thefts primarily take place within the community, so the poor are stealing from the poor. Prostitutes have most of their earnings taken by pimps, and those that engage in cyber sex take home only 6-10% of the money paid by the watcher, whilst the person owning the computer and webcam walks away with the vast majority.

The wealth divide between the rich and poor Filipinos was highlighted during our short trip to Manila. After visiting Payatas we stopped off at a very posh and clean SM shopping mall. SM malls are the biggest shopping complexes I have ever seen, and are full of lots of designer clothes shops and restaurants. The malls seem a world away from the surroundings of Payatas. Indeed, a resident of Payatas would barely be able to afford the transport fee to the mall, let alone a cheap burger there (which, incidentally would cost about the same as an entire day’s work rummaging through rubbish). Residents of Payatas would joke that they have their own “SM” – their Smoky Mountain. I’m glad they can find humour in their situation, but it really is sad to see the contrast between the two worlds, just a 30 minute bus ride apart.

Anyway, I returned home feeling very happy at the way I spent my 29^th birthday. It was a fascinating day, I certainly learnt a lot about poverty and the human spirit. Some of the residents of Payatas were really inspiring, doing so much in the face of many challenges. They were so strong and had a real “goodness” about them. I hope that I will have the opportunity to visit them again sometime in the future. It was also a rare privilege to play my part as a group supervisor on this day, helping young people get more of an understanding of poverty. I hope that I’ll be doing similarly useful things during my future birthdays!

Phew, a bit of a long one this week – well done for reading this far! Lots of love and best wishes,

Robert