* REPORT : 36

PHILIPPINES REPORT

Leo's Reports on his trip to the Philippines


...Now in a hotel in Quezon City, Philippines, I sit sweating. I have joined a cash fat powwow of UN Habitat ‘poverty alleviators’. A 3 Cities Alliance jamboree. Mumbai, Manilla, Durban. Sponsored by the UN, hosted by the Philippines this series of conferences addresses frameworks for slum upgrading in three countries. There is a UN Habitat trio led by an effervescent Algerian, Farouk Tebbal with two (Ghanaian and Canadian) aides. Filipino civic authorities and slumdwellers. Indian city administrators and slumdwellers. South African housing officials and Shackdwellers. There are also a contingent of NGO representatives who are supporting the process. People’s Dialogue, COURC and Utshani Fund from South Africa, CLIFF and SPARC from India and the UK. PACSI, the Vincentians from Philippines. From being in the periphery I am now VIP. I am not comfortable with this. I seek concealment, camouflage. I have slick equipment; tiny tape-recorder and digital camera, I have a swish broadcast quality three-chip video cam-, which I have never used before (Blair witch project here we come). I will hide behind these.

I suck on a ‘San Miguel’ beer with small sour green oranges instead of lime. I chase with shots of well-aged single malt. I am drinking with a great Filipino priest – Father Norberto. We crunch on slightly miff prawns, braaied on charcoal. I relax. Naively, I enjoy the tender young things, selected for their peachy complexions, who serve us. Clad in avocado green ultra-minis with just the barest hint of nestled treasure, they present the perfect visual foil to my Catholic Padre. (Later, I see on a gaudy display that each has a price; “Room service-massage. Ps 480 - Ps600.” Holy smoke. Innocence here is only a dollar deep.)
Stunned by the journey and grog I return to my room. I find that I am opposite the Offices of the National Gamecocks Association. Throughout the night, cheerful, chubby characters flit in and out.
Some sort of skulduggery seems afoot. In my room, my hastily shower-laundered washing hangs damply off every fixture. Steamy vapour rises like a swamp. The air-con howls. The radio blares forth a lekka mix of Filipino pop and seriously golden oldies. Don Maclean and Bread, phucque me! For an inexplicable reason, I feel marvellously alive and joyous. The sheer impossibility of it all.

10 November is spent in conference. After a lengthy opening prayer (to the disgust of Durban Land Manager Faisal Seedat) The 3 cities do their stuff. The big-shots and the slumdwellers. Cross-pollinating ideas. The fundamental sincerity about it all is quite refreshing. The big-shots are surprisingly humble and appreciative of their poor constituents. Maybe because that’s where the vote lies? Whatever, there is a recognition of the mutuality of predicament. The poor are occasionally stagestruck but on the whole undeterred from introducing their issues and solutions. Ideas are aired and shared. Problems unpacked and discussed. Ways forward are agreed to. Encouraging noises, are made by all. Prayers terminate proceedings. I discover that the church is everywhere. Not an aspect of life in the Philippines is done without scarecrow worship. The shadow of the cross and cloying clericalism is everywhere. It is an incessant presence, overtly and subliminally. It explains the child like ingenuousness of the population. Adulthood (and presumably the autonomy therein) is relinquished and transferred to the Padrés, the fathers, the church. A medieval bubble- psychic hegemony in church hands.
At the close of the day, we are carted off proudly by our hosts, to see the ‘Mega-Mall’- an absolutely grotesque exaggeration of mallness. Here I see the distance travelled from Asia, thru colonialism and US botheration, which Filipinos have undergone. Passing thru a robust security cordon, this is Hardt and Negri’s ‘Empire’ mademanifest. Gleaming, brand boasting, sterile, loud, glazed, tiled, ergonomic, generic. Vast and packed with crowds doing ‘retail therapy’- the trite northern cliché heard often in the bustle. Needless to say, the slumdwellers loved the excursion. They could peruse Cash’s waterhole at ease. Without being stalked by the machingla’s (nguni parole: marching lines – security guards). They could browse without suspicion, and buy items, which in the domain of the poor cost considerably more. The truth that the poor pay dearly for everything reinforced by their savings made that afternoon. The evening closes with regulatory hard drinking and surprisingly shabby food.
At 4.30 am (in the morning! groan) we fly to Gensan (General Santos) in the troubled Mindanao region. The airstrip is blindingly hot white concrete. As I descend the stairs, dodging brutal sunspots and hangover cluster bombs, I notice a column of tint-glazed vehicles parked in front of the buildings. There is a small group waving a large banner. Next to them appear to be a bevy of sashed cheerleaders, behind whom, on a wall, a line of gently swaying girls in flowing garments are exotically dancing. There is the irritating thud of drumming. Along the perimeter of my vision, encircling the airplane is a troop of heavily armed soldiers. Dear Cheezus, who the phucque, is getting out the plane? I pause, already soaked with sweat, to look back at the plane for the eminent one. Dizzy and parched it dawns on me, that we are the ones. Holy Kow! What a welcome. Miss Philippines and her two princesses, curtsey cutely and bestow flowers and preposterous ribbons about our necks.( A medallion of a giant laughing fish wearing a fedora; “General Santos – the TUNA capital of the Philippines”), beaming chaps take us by the arms and lead us to frozen SUVs, whereupon which, (neglecting our baggage which somehow meets us later) we race, with sirens howling and a phalanx of preceding motorbikes straight thru all traffic (surprised drivers, forced off the road, glare at us with deserved resentment) to a hotel and conference centre. Luckily, after a press conference we are at leisure to soothe our hangovers and I decide to go for a plunge in the pool. As I step outside, two combat troops bristling with weapons and badges together with a civvy clad man, join me. Corporal Rocha (sic) and his subordinates have been detailed to be my bodyguards. What? Yes, owing to kidnappings, bombings and sundry other acts of terror, I have my own private army. Well, whether to protect me, or protect society from me, the upshot was, wherever Leopold went, the three stooges went with him. The pool was huge 50m of pristine blue water, surrounded by grass and bamboo pavilions. Not a soul about. The whole area seemed to have been deliberately swept clean of humans. Concealed in the shrubbery though, equatorial as such, pockets of camouflage clad primates stealthily sat or stood. This set the tone for Gensan. Hot, off-beatly funny and militarily menacing. In the evening we gather on the lawn alongside the pool for a welcoming party, hosted by the mayor “Jun” Acheron. A man who seems to drag a darker shadow and talks with a sinister, chalk hoarse voice, yet affable and a good sport. Dancers in colourful garb leapt and pranced. Our charismatic UN man, Farouk, performed great feats of diplomacy, singing and prancing with gusto. Considering the rigours of Ramadan, this man was obviously born to party. Much whiskey and beer was drunk, and to much applause, the director of Utshani Fund, Anton Aiello unbuttoned his composure to dance upon a narrow bench with a lass in a flouncy skirt. The flying slumdweller, Jockin skipped across ankle slapping sticks. The South African Mama’s regally did a turn or two. Cathy Glover of PD, kicked out and got into the groove. Dr Joshi, director of housing Mumbai, ignoring his hearing aid, beamingly spun about in the arms of a plucky Filipina. Fun, somewhat forced, flourished. In the heat of the moment, I volunteered to fire-breathe. At first, all went well, the kerosene blazed perfectly, the fireballs lighting up the night, the crowd cheering with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the mayor -clad in black, was invisible to me in the dark and in a seering gust of flame, I came horribly close to vapourising the fellow. He dodged and caught only the residue spit of unburnt fuel all over his suit. We were both surprised. After all the safety precautions- the bodyguards, soldiers and police- to protect me, not him, this was farcical. A sudden and heavy storm cooled things down.
Nov 12. Venue: Family Country Hotel and Convention Center, Gen.Santos City.
Cities Alliance 3-Cities Project/ Slum Dwellers International Meeting: Partnership for Slum Upgrading and Resettlement in Gen. Santos City.

Gosh – the banners are tongue twisters. And the programs, so many words. Overview. Introduction. Presentation. Sharing. Experience. Participatory governance. High risk communities. Collaborative slum upgrading. Resettlement. Action plan. Sanitation. Sassure, Eco and the semiologist horde would yelp with glee. Foucault would knit his eyebrows. Again, the ambivalent wind of post-modernity blows about the embers of development and the remnants of the modernist agenda. What can we salvage from the ruins of the State and how can we best ensure our continued election. What can we use as a lever for our upliftment in the relentlessly cruel world. What art can we make of possibility. How can we make friends and influence the future. Win win through the window of opportunity between the tides of globalism and local governance, the networked society and absolute inescapable, atomistic poverty. How to redistribute limited resources in a closed system. It’s a ganging together of the governors and their populist electorate. The neo-liberal ‘democratic’ agenda has forged an unholy alliance between the two losers in the globalising world. The diminishing state and the burgeoning poor. The Poor are the majority that the State desperately cling to for legitimacy. Capital has colonised the world, upsetting the old ‘modern’ order. In its wake, State joins the poor majority as a jackal fossicking for survival. It is a Macchiavellian pact, born of necessity. No longer does Capital require the State as its agent. As it runs free across the globe, States position is altered. Ironically, the ideological method which wrested Capital out of feudalism, ‘democracy’, is now becoming a counter-force. Capital has outgrown State. And State now turns to Capital’s victims for support. The Poor know what to do. Specialists in survival and incessantly creative in adapting to hostility, they are the perfect partners to the weakened State. The Cities Alliance is what this is all about. And friends in need are friends indeed.

After hours we are taken on site visits. Land although geographically abundant in Philippines, is legally scarce. The national authority, a sanctified aspirant capital mafia of the old ‘modern’ variety, hold much of the title to land. This historically, has been parcelled out through ‘pastoral long leases’ to various cronies. Consequently, local authorities (national authority’s weaker and lesser rival) find themselves in territorial competition with the beneficiaries of National largesse. This tension too facilitates a rational link to the homeless. Incidentally, it is interesting to see how the deposed ex-President and filmstar, Joseph Estrada, who, not part of the elite cabal and elected through populist support, was a very close ally of the poor. To this day he maintains a constant friendly correspondence from prison with SDI’s guru, Jockin. On his removal from office the populist honeymoon for Filipino’s was over and tenure issues reverted to the hands of the old rich. Surplus land just does not exist. Urban areas are choked. The incessant flood of people to the cities have placed an impossible burden on space. Consequently, the only ‘free’ spaces for occupation are in uncontested places. Rubbish dumps, river banks / flood plains, the foreshore (out to sea), highways, rail tracks, under bridges, church lands become the new homelands. Most of these places are uncontested obviously because of their inhospitable and dangerous location. Populations living in these zones live intensely precarious lives. There is no ‘safe haven’ in their homes, in fact their homes are potentially lethal. High tides, floods (an increasing problem due to rampant deforestation from legal and illegal corporate logging and mining operations), toxic leach and other such troubles jeopardise life in these places. Life has been squeezed to the absolute margins. Casualties are enormous. Over 2000 people vanished without trace in a dumpslide in Payatas in 2000. Whole townships of shacks are swamped in river floods. Homes on stilts are constantly being washed away by the sea. It’s a desperate situation, worsening each day as more people arrive in the cities. Space is utterly exhausted. It is this reality that local authorities and the occupants of these places are confronting. With this in mind we visit some of these sites.

1. Houses along the foreshore:

Tightly packed timber and bamboo structures, a claustrophobic labyrinth of people, planks and pathways. Gradually rising on stilts as the waterline is passed. Filth and sewerage are either eaten by swine and dogs or compacted underfoot, washed about in the tide. There is a homogeneity of borders, edges and surfaces. Land and sea are bridged by structures. Solidity battles the attrition of the elements. Waves swirl beneath marriage beds, sucking at the pillars of the home. Dominant Catholics share walls with Moslems who in turn rub the haram backs of pigs and feral dogs. Heavenly dictates abandoned in the desperation of everyday life. Washing out to dry and smiling faces proliferate. On an upturned tin, a thin, tattoed man plays a hauntingly sad melody on an acoustic guitar. A puffy, overly made up woman, drunkenly sways to the lamentous tune. Youths lean back, bare chested- posing the splayed thumb and forefinger under the neck, declaring their gangstah affiliation. Delightful, engaging little girls, beam cheerfully from beneath chadors loosely veiled. Men gently carry and caress their splendid gamecocks. The trench warfare of surviving each day has resulted in a concentration on living for the inhabitants, which is admirable, and in the post-mod milieu of adrenalin sports and existential vacuity, even to envy. This is something that I constantly keep coming across in different slums. The harsh, precarious reality of the ‘poorest of the poor’ has forged a rare diamond like intensity of existence, where creativity and resourcefulness dominate as opposed to routine and complacency. It is a ruthless and ironic inversion of the egoistic idealism of Nietzsche.

2. Village submerged by mud.

Floods inland surprised and engulfed a sleeping village, without warning. The survivors have built makeshift, shelters on the roofs of their old homes. Tall trees have platforms in them, as safes for precious possessions. Floods are now anticipated as a constant and immanent part of life. In the chaos and disorder of a place superimposed on itself at a slightly higher elevation, things go on. The Federation consolidates savings for the community, for use in emergency or for acquiring new land elsewhere. A community is hard at work reconsolidating and rebuilding itself.

3. Resettled communities in ‘greenfield sites’, neat, orderly homes. Affording privacy and above all, safety.

4. Federation Bonsai collective on the slopes of a highway, to be relocated to a new purchased site. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be space enough for the trees.

5. Another highway community, of tired old people and young children.

All the others I presume were out working. I wander discretely about. A Mother, aged about twelve, proudly shows me her baby in a wooden crib. Outside her shack, a pig desperately tries to attract my attention. The laughing consensus of the villagers was that because of the similar skin colour, the pig had mistaken me for one of her kind. Well, well, well. That night, padre Norberto, Anton and myself wallow in the vast, dark, piss-warm waters of the pool. Drinking whiskey. Lots of it and beer, again. Wrinkling up like sodden albino prunes, we discuss the extension of rights reductio ad absurdum. Their naïve credulity as to the existence of ‘rights’ provoked my rabid cynicism. Biting my tongue was not adequate, and I’m afraid I bulled a china shop of PC taboos. Conversation became debate too, when the universe and divine purpose were included… Hopefully, I did not totally destroy my standing with the pleasant Padré, whose intelligence and integrity I certainly value. Later, Anton discloses his deepest, darkest secret: He is a closet pasta maker. He really would like to burst free and start a pasta empire! Extraordinary – considering that this confession was made to someone who had spent two years slaving in the pasta mines. Maybe he could see that indelible mark of semolina upon me.
Nov13,14 and 15 are spent in the central island city of Iloilo. Once more we are received with fanfare and garlands of flowers. This time I abandon the official transport, and using the VCR as the reason, climb aboard a truck full of drumming drummers. This was great. Conquest stuff. Riding through a city on the roof of a truck, with a wild troop of renegade percussionists beating the hell out of their drums beneath me. The streets thronged with onlookers. Police on bikes, klaxons screaming, racing ahead. Behind us a train of rushing vehicles. This, definitely is the cure for an inferiority complex. Everybody gets out of the way, and stares mouth agape at you. I can see why heads of state go for this kind of thing. Power.
Well, in the light of the sad truth of Iloilo’s poverty, this power trip was just a dream. Again, like elsewhere in the country, local authorities were up against the wall for resources and facing a human catastrophe in terms of housing and environment. We were welcomed in the city hall by the mayor and staff. Biscuits, coke and big smiles were handed around. Enthusiasm abounded. Yet, looking beyond the civic staff, I could see their offices. Large unpartitioned areas. Jam packed with inkstained, old fashioned, 1950’s wooden desks. Cluttered with different types of antiquated typewriter. Shelves, crammed with masses of files, folders, reams of paper. Pots of glue, typewriter ribbon, pencil sharpeners. A well-worn roneo machine, an oil-filled tray protruding from beneath, suggested a world decades past. Not a computer in the building. Here, time had remained as curtailed as space. It looked like a museum exhibit.
I play the videographer card, and ensure that while the conferencing continued, I got out and about as much as possible.
I have a great guide, Hajji (not muslim). He takes me all around. We use the wonderful colourful cargo-cult car- the jeepney taxi. We travel by motor riksha. We are pedalled about by eight year old boys on bicycle rikshas. We walk. As space is reduced, so too does transport shift in scale. Decreasing in size and power as the dwellings become more congested. We visit a stilt village out to sea. Awesome, fragile bamboo structures, linked by tracklike bridges. Rickety, roller-coaster tracks out in the water, clustered about with swaying houses. Shit and the dogs that eat it abound. So do holes in the suspended pathways. I nurse an unpleasant unease at falling through the brittle fabric and landing in the bubbling filth below. Children swarm about. Running without a care across the gaping gaps and agiley leaping the chasms between houses. In this space are small industries, men manufacturing building materials, bending wire wall ties for brick homes they’ll never occupy. Women cooking food for sale, doing laundary. Kids as young as four running food stalls, or selling water, washing soap. Industriousness and hard work are the watchwords of the Philippines. And here it is abundantly proven. Collectives of little boys, live in tree houses along the waters edge, when big enough, pedalling rikshas. Beachcombing kids sleeping under boats pulled up along the shore, fossicking along the shoreline. Everywhere people are busy, eking out a life in an adverse world. A drunk character, an asian version of Charles Bronson, insists on accompanying me, pulling faces and killing himself with laughter at doing so. He captured the grotesque humour of it all. Laughing at himself, trying to be funny, he actually was funny. He eventually abandoned me as a no-hoper, splitting his sides with laughter. Wearing a tattered pair of shorts, a faded sailors tattoo and a greatcoat, he lurched off, for a moment; life’s winner. Well, there was a lesson for me. No-one’s richer than the laughing man.
Hajji and I tour to a number of communities, some were successful Federation housing projects, others slums under threat. Everywhere we encounter the indomitable spirit of the Filipino. Along a busy beachside road of low wooden shelters, sandblasted stalls and dwellings, we stop at a restaurant. A charcoal brazier and a counter of intriguing comestibles; orange tubes of chicken guts tightly folded on sticks, various fish, soups, cuttlefish on sticks, piles of massive rock oysters. Proudly, Hajji tells me that this is a Federation business. Stooping under the palm frond roofing we enter a palm and bamboo screened area of grey beach, with rows of low tables and benches. It is noon and quite full. Smart young marine cadets in starched white uniforms, chatty students, families and solitary diners. A typical seaside spread of cliental. The poor are in business. A collective venture draws a little money from those with a little surplus. We feast on a lavish table. Crocks of oysters, the squid/chicken gut kebabs, mounds of rice, steamed, fried, braaied, fish flushed down with dripping bottles of San Miguel. Belching, we return to the conference like happy truants.
In the evening, festivities are arranged. The mayors of Iloilo and Gensan host a Monty Python gala; songs (dirges and laments) sung by the Municipal Workers Choir, dancing (stiff, ungainly waltzing) by the Civic Staff Dance Group, the lord’s prayer sung (ala Barry White) by the Federation Tenor. Hilarious. The program of games prove to be a jocular failure. Owing to anatomical miscalculation, a swinging basket of surprise gifts, suspended from the ceiling, was hung so low (not for Filipinos though) that all the foreign visitors could quite leisurely take whatever they felt like, leaving the hosts the booby prizes. A greased vertical bamboo pole with a Philippine flag atop (considered so unclimbable, that the mayor promised a sexy night with the female MC, as a reward),
was swiftly scaled by the fifty plus Farouk after a day of fasting. Needless to say, he chivalry gave her, her liberty (though she seemed a little hurt by this ). It was a ludicrous occasion, with the poor locals being the buffoons. Sweetly expressing the desperate lengths they go to, to accommodate and host guests. And maybe, of how they engage more broadly with global identity. Adopting the inappropriate in a vain wish to belong. American consumer culture. Shopping malls. Pop idol fashions. The incongruity of their mania for basketball for instance, refusing to lower the hoop height… An issue of national self-esteem? Rather sad, considering their industriousness, courage, strength and ability to endure. Which would put to shame any yankee/ northerner.
The last days in Iloilo we visit Federation achievements. Again the official motorcade. We are greeted everywhere by flagwaving children, marching bands, drum majorettes, troupes of performers – flickflacking and dramatising scenes from Jesus’ tales. Buffets, groaning under green, sweet rice cakes, banana wrapped chicken, fried pork (Faisal and Farouk’s ‘favourite’ Ramadan choice!), fly magnet iced cakes. (Under the eves of the tablecloths, starved cats and dogs lurked… one mangy feline dragging its dirt crusted prolapsed rectum after it). We meet savings schemes who have purchased land and are developing it, Federation housing projects, in situ slum upgrades, land grants given by the City to the Federation. Throughout, disciplined urban planning, order, cleanliness and civic pride are triumphant. Children attend schools, families build their homes, a civil society is constructed. Our trip south ends on a high note.
In Manila once more. Responding to Mr Shinde (AD Housing and Land, Mumbai) task of investigating slum upgrading, a few of the men end up in the ‘red light’ district. What a dismal zone. A walk through central Cape Town at lunch time would be more titillating. Sad, bikini clad very young girls strut gauchely on a stage. Called euphemistically; ‘centrefold models’ they passed in their droves before an empty barroom. I gathered that the point was to be chosen and taken to one of a number of mirrored chambers at the rear. Red or green lights indicating occupancy. All the lights were green. Through a chink in the stage curtains I could see the girls self-consciously and boredly sitting – waiting in vain. The sleaze was so cheesy, it failed completely. It was discomfortingly amateurish, and the girls younger than some of the City officials daughters. It was like school beauty pageant, with pigtails and all. I felt ashamed by the experience. It just didn’t have any oomph to it. It was licensed paedophilia. Horrid.
After an hours sleep, I am picked up before dawn by Father Norberto and his annoyingly stop-start driver. We head to the dumpsite at Payatas for sunrise.
Words struggle to describe this place. Dante’s Inferno and all pictures of hell fail to capture
this real pergatory, on earth.

An estimated 17000 people live on and make a living off a mountain of rubbish (around the size of Signal Hill). Its mindboggling. The stench defies description (approx. take 6 parts methane, 2 parts acetic acid, 1 part ammonia, 1 part gunpowder…puke, burning plastic and rotting meat, diahhorea, sulphur, dead bodies…). The atmosphere is toxic. Father Norberto tells me that most children born on the dump die within their first hour from airborne tetanus infecting the cut umbilicus. Methane fires blaze furiously. From 4 am till 10 pm (when a curfew begins) the place is crawling with scavengers digging in the filth. Trucks without break roar up the steep track to the summit, disgorging an endless load of garbage. Cowboy like characters ride atop the vehicles, shouting and whistling directions. Below on the ‘ground’, bulldozers incessantly level the heaps, spreading and compacting it. Todays trash becomes tomorrows ground level. In their wake, the
fossicking hordes stalk. Eagle-eyed and specialised. Some focus on wood. Others, plastics. Solvents. Metals. Electrical goods. Toys. Furniture. In between, as my eyes become accustomed to the bedlam, I see islands of difference. Clusters of hovels. Collections of furniture. Piles of computers. Groups of men manufacturing picking implements. Women sorting clothes. children rinsing glasses, pouring water to sell on trays. A gold-tester passes, I witness him prove an earing for a delighted scavenger. “Fresh gold!” they triumphantly exclaim, “fresh gold from the shit!” laughter. A sign on a structure declares the HQ of the Payatas Scavengers Federation. High on a rise a security and first aid post stand. I begin to see the galvanising presence of the Federation at work. Marshals and medics can be spotted in the crowd. There is an underlying system to this weird place. Again the reassuring presence of positive anarchic federalism, victorious. On the lower slopes of the hellish heap, shacks cluster. Creative crystalisations of the very trash they rest on, these are homes. People are born, live and die here. Love, romance, loyalty, care, concern, anger, sorrow, curiosity, joy, fear – all abound here. It is a complete cycle of human life in one locality, feeding off the waste of the wealthier living elsewhere. Extraordinary. I feel an immense respect for these remarkable, adaptable people. They are the ultimate survivors. Phenomenal humans. I descend the slopes, witnessing trucks compacting tin cans as they ascend. The flattened metal quickly gathered and the next crop laid out between vehicles. I pause in the ‘suburb’, observing a small boy chop onions for a restaurant made of the burnt innersprings of mattresses and plastic sheeting. Inside, the gum-booted patrons fed at a high table with gusto. A cornucopia of fresh fruit, sweets, softdrinks and cigarettes add a vivid contrast to the surrounding world of greying fragments, broken things and homogenous decomposition. Outside a cheerful tinsel Xmas tree, gleaming with scarlet and gilt baubles, proclaimed the season of giving gifts. Leaning through a window in a shack, I spy a new born babe, swinging in a hammock. Cheerfully gurgling under the shiny proud eyes of its teenage parents. The sun was too high to spot any bright stars, but I’m sure there was one out there…