Quezon City, Manila, Philippines.

We're now in Laos and nearly at the end of our trip. We made a quick dash through Bangkok and Cambodia after a bad mistake not pre-applying for a Vietnam visa. We had to forfeit our ticket to Ho Chi Minh City from Manila and also our plans for a leisurely trip up the Mekong. We also had three of our four credit cards stolen. Anyway, this post is really to fill you in on our time with Servants in Quezon City, Manila. So without further ado... We spent 1 month in Quezon City with a couple from our church who are working with a NGO called Servants. Servants work with urban-poor communities across Asia. They work with the people in their communities to develop cooperatives, schools, pharmacies, micro-enterprises, community leadership programmes and whatever else needs doing. However, their main focus is, before doing anything, to learn the language, culture, community dynamics and most importantly to make friends with the people they want to help. This means all of the workers live in urban-poor communities. Most of these places are "squatter communities" where people have moved in and built shanties on unused government land (of which there seems to be a lot). When we talked with Murray and Shona about visiting them in Manila we agreed that instead of coming to volunteer the best thing for us to do would be to get some exposure to life in a squatter community and to use our time there as a 'retreat' to read and think about how we could respond to poverty. It would also be a chance for us to build a relationship with a family who were worlds away from us in all sorts of ways.

Melchor, Clarisa, Micheal, Meliza, Nanay, Tatay

Murray did some scouting and arranged a family who were keen to take us for two weeks, spoke some English and had a sit-on-ish toilet! We were very nervous about meeting our hosts as were they. While entering the community for the first time we were struck with plenty of unfamiliar sights, sensations and smells. It was an odd feeling traipsing through crowds of busy Filipinos with our pack and sleeping rolls with every other person yelling "Hey Joe" or "Welcome to the Philippines!" It was hard to tell if that last comment was supposed to be genuine or ironic, given the place we were visiting. The community, called Nia, was crammed into 3 or 4 hectares of government land that ran alongside the moderately busy Nia Road. The housing was more dense than we expected and most buildings were two or three storeys, although a short storey by NZ standards (Josh spent a lot of the time walking around with his head bowed). There were clearly no standards applied in the construction of Nia. It is basically first-come, first-served for a piece of land and if you can cram an extra building into an un-used space then it's yours! The density of buildings means not much sunlight can get in and a lot of alley ways were dark all day round. (Not as bad as you might think in a culture of sun-adversion. Dark skin colour it seems, comments on your socio-economic status and people with 'white' skin (Americanos) are looked up to... far too much. We recieved an uncomfortable amount of attention and special treatment just for being us.) The basic infrastructure, however, seemed pretty sound; all the alleys and houses were founded on concrete, most places had legal electricty and water and some had broadband, and everyone had some sort of septic tank (however, these just somehow seep into the ground - no connection to the city system. In the wet season it can all come up again!). Apparently there is a rubbish collection system but it's hard to see.

Debs negotiating for mangos at one of the many road-side stalls

The community was unexpectedly industrious. The whole frontage along Nia road was lined with vendors of all kinds from the local Bingo shop and Karaoke machine to fruit and veges, jandals and hair cuts. Down every major alley way there were people selling food or running a 'sari-sari' store (translate: "all sorts of different things"). Even the family we were staying with, who lived down a secondary alley way, ran a small store. Our reception when we finally met was very warm. We were greeted by 'Nanay' (mother) Remi, who was the grandmother of the household. We also met her daughter 'Ate' (older sister) Clarisa who was our host. Clarisa and her husband 'Kuia' (older brother) Melchor have two children, Michael and Melissa. The household also includes 'Tatay' (father) Patea. Tatay is in charge of the dog, Brownie, his three fighting cocks and the egg-laying native chicken (manook). The two-storey house was built by Nanay and Tatay 20 years ago and still seems to be sturdy. Our 'bedroom' was the upstairs lounge, separated from the family bedroom by a curtain. There was just enough space to squash our two single mattresses in and hang a mosquito net. We slept well although we did have a few incidents that took us by surprise. It took a bit to get used to the large rat that used the planks on our ceiling for his daily commute. He liked to fight during the night about a metre away from Josh's head. Fortunately he never invaded our bed unlike the mice. Josh woke up one night to hear a scratching sound coming from his pillow and discovered that a mouse had managed to get inside the mosquito net. While trying to get rid of it it ran up his arm and over to Debs. It then woke Debs up by running over her forehead! We managed to banish the mouse and had patchy sleep for the next few nights. The mice and the rats soon became our friends as we saw them each day. The bedbugs were less friendly and claimed Josh's back as the new local restaurant.

Punishment for losing a game of chess

Our days were spent waking up, having breakfast (typically rice, dried fish, tomatoes and coffee) chatting to Nanay, having lunch, sleeping and reading for a while, hanging out with Clarisa and her friends while she sold food on Nia Road (in the island in the middle of the road), hanging out with the kids in the evening, watching lots of T.V. in Tagalog, having dinner about 8:30 (we were treated to many Filipino favourites) and going to bed. Most days we also went for a trip or got up to some activity. One day we learned to wash our clothes by hand. Our incompetence was a source of hilarity up and down the alley way as we were enthusiatically taught to "make it dirty-clean" by our teacher Bernadette. Josh got introuduced to chess Filipino-style which meant that the loser was painted in lipstick (see picture of the loser)! We went for a trip to take the kids to school. School starts at 7:00 which means we were up at 5:30 with the kids and into the school bus at 6:30. The school bus is actually a converted 4WD with an extended back section into which they manage to stuff about 40 kids into. Clarisa had to hang out the back door all the way there as we'd run out of room. We also visited friends around the neighbourhood and got to learn their stories and chat to them about their lives and ours. These times of hanging out and sharing (kwanto-kwanto) were really the most special. We had lots of good laughs and learned plenty of Tagalog. In fact, the kids on the street were probably our best Tagalog teachers. We sat with them for hours at times describing our favourite foods and music and learning games and words. Hanging on the street in the evenings were some of our favourite times as the day had cooled down and people drifted past to chat, pass babies around, paint their toenails and keep tabs on their kids. We were able to feel like we were just fitting into the rhythm of the community rather than being the strange white people. One of our most enjoyable events was when we attempted to cook NZ's national dish for our family - fish and chips (served with rice of course)! It was satisfying to be able to serve and provide for our hosts for one evening as they had put in so much effort to serve us. The dish went down OK we think, but we learned never to try deep-frying battered fish in a wok; it was more like batter and fish, rather than battered fish.

Washing clothes by hand, "mano-mano"

One evening we went to a party for Clarisa's cousin's daughter's seventh birthday, an important event in Filipino culture. We had a good time chatting to some great people but found the attention we received a bit difficult to handle. We had the same experience on several occasions and tried to be gracious while not drawing more attention than necessary to ourselves. The most difficult times for us where when we felt like we were being an imposition, or if we felt like we had offended our hosts by turning down offers to go places or eat more food. Because we were staying for two weeks it was easy to feel like we were a burden for the family although we were paying them good board. It was also difficult for them to host us as they were always conscious that we were well fed and entertained and it was also hard for them to speak English all the time. Sometimes it was hard to communicate that we were content. We realised, though, that even though it was a challenge for the family to host us they really enjoyed having us stay and would much rather we didn't go at the end of two weeks. Our last day with them was lots of fun. We went for a day trip to the local Eco Park which would usually be too expensive for the family to visit, but it was cheap for us to shout everyone plus friends for day of fun. We ate lots of good Filipino fiesta food, swam with the kids and chatted for the afternoon. We said goodbye, although promised to visit them again before leaving Manila. Our next two weeks were spent reflecting on our experience at the Servants team centre and also visiting a few Servants-related projects. We spent three days at a rural retreat centre run by Lilok, a partner organisation of Servants. It was a very peaceful place with only solar electricity. We also visited Kamay Krafts, a large women's cooperative that creates bags, jewellery and other products from recycled or discarded packaging material. It was great to see how the business is growing and able to provide an income for more women. We also visited a Servants couple (from Wellington) staying in a nearby squatter community. Murray and Shona also showed us around the community they lived in until recently. It was a real privelege to meet their friends and chat with them. The community itself however is looking rather sad as a recent fire (which was devestating, given the cramped living conditions) paved the way for the government to order a demolition. We learned that many of these communities get demolished and the residents are offered houses at a relocation site. However most relocation sites are over an hour away and most families can't easily afford to travel to their jobs each day. At the end of our time in Manila we went back to visit our host family for an afternoon. It was a very special time and sad for us knowing that we are unlikely to see them again. Hopefully the opportunity will arise in the future for us to visit.

Hanging out with Murray and Shona and Grace at Eco Park (photo by Grace Shearer - 4 years old)

The garden at Tanay rural retreat

There's so much more we could have written, but it's already a very long post. Our time in Manila made us think a lot about our lives. Of our many thoughts we came away clear that we want to follow Jesus' call to always serve and show love to the poor, whoever they are around us - see the Sermon on the Mount.

Details on our quick trip through Cambodia and Laos to come...