From Manila to Angeles, City of Fallen Angels..
Before moving to Angeles to catch a plane that wouldn't leave on account of yet another typhoon passing by, I decided to see what the other cemeteries in Manila where like. I was growing accustomed on being approached on the streets of Malate by gloomy merchants of all sorts of vices by now and even having a riot gun stuck up my nose didn't bother me anymore while getting cash out of an ATM (There' security guards wearing guns in front of the bigger hotels, so a bank has to make a difference in size I guess. And anyway, rather a couple of smiling security guards waving riot guns standing next to me while I get 500 pesos out of the wall than getting some undetermined sharp piece of cutting device in my kidney from some desperate cowboy.) and even the hassle of getting taxi drivers to use their meter was more like some sort of a game by now.
After the adventures of yours truly on North cemetery I decided to spend some time on South cemetery in Manila, since it seemed to also be housing squatters. By now I was quite accustomed to moving around in Manila with my camera and I decided that reading "The Tesseract" by Alex Garland was maybe not such a good idea to feel safe in this country. After all it turned out that these people where mostly very friendly and welcoming and con artists always lurks where people mingle and congest into traffic lanes on public sidewalks, so nothing out of the ordinary there.. (Still, if a man in uniform walks up to you and demands to see your money to verify there are no fake bills amongst them, simply refuse. Uniforms are cheap here, and official uniforms don't cost more than a janitors uniform.) Anyway, I started to feel at ease in this big city and appreciate the curious melange of several non-native backgrounds. Some people might feel disappointed entering the Philippines and expecting a full-on Asian country, as with the Spanish colonial history and the less hidden Americanizes way of living mixed in.. But truth is that this country is as exotic as any other destination in SE Asia. You just had to look beyond first impressions to note how different things where here. But back to the South cemetery. I was expecting much of the same as North, mausoleums everywhere and people setting up shop in them, kids playing on tombstones and funeral cars blasting music at top volume after having dropped of very seriously their not so living cargo... But no funeral cars where to be seen, some parts of the cemetery seemed desolate, and most people here seemed to be in worse shape than on North cemetery. Cholera, Hepatitis, even TBC still roamed this place. It was not as well organized as North, one might say. Indeed, the garbage seemed to be piling up between tombstones (Not really flattering for visiting families of departed loved ones, especially if you think of the squatters main income came from "caretaker" activities... Not much care was taken it seemed, and not much visitors either...) and there was the constant smell of human waste floating like an invisible cloud over the graves. As I wandered around and noticed there where far less mausoleums here I came across a family living here, and started talking to them. Apparently the sanitary was a big problem, but water in general was a problem for these poor people. There were big jerrycans lying around everywhere near there little improvised bed, and filling them meant walking all the way to the outer limits of the cemetery, paying one of the guards 5 pesos a can as some sort of "custom tax" and outside the cemetery filling up each can for another 5 pesos. Now 1 euro is about 63 pesos, so to me 10 pesos is no biggie. I wondered what 20 eurocents could buy me back home... Maybe a chewing gum, but I don't think that would be one of my biggest concerns living in a place like this... Given the fact that those people had no official income whatsoever there only income came from being "Caretakers" of the place, and one set of graves generally made about 30 to 40 pesos. But families of deceased ones didn't always come by, so all saints day and other special days where a welcome period of economic blossoming. Except that they were evicted more often than not when lots of people came to visit, since the officials running the cemetery don't like the squatters. The whole difference with North cemetery it seemed was the surrounding area. North is in a poor area of Manila, with lots of slum areas. This seemed like a blessing in ways, as they where mostly unbothered by government and officials. But South was almost smack in the middle of Makati, the booming business district of Manila. Skyscrapers, securityguards on every corner, no punters or hasslers roaming the streets, lots of shopping bags sporting names such as Prada or Givenchy and the likes... This it seemed was making life very hard for the people trying to survive in the cemetery. They were like dinosaurs that still hadn't given in on the meteorite striking the earth. They were not really considered as a part of the future of this place. So I could not get rid of the notion that their difficult lives were being made even less easy by some hidden forces at work. The water supply, the lack of garbage disposal units taking away the garbage... Everything seemed to be aimed towards letting these people feel as uncomfortable as possible. But this is me thinking here, it's not rocket-science. It's funny yet also seems like a given fact that where rich people get richer poor people seem to be getting poorer. It was written in the garbage piling up between the brightly painted angels, it was written on the rashes and sores on the skin of people carrying their jerrycans from A to B, it was carried around in the foul smell coming from between the graves. As I said goodbye to the honest and ever smiling family I was talking with, I glanced up to see the skyscrapers towering like detached soldiers over the angels dancing on the gravestones. Even turning the corner I could still hear their warm pinoy jokes about this strange tall white guy walking in the place and exchanging jokes and buying mango candy for the kids as if it was Christmas. I wondered if any of the rich Prada people ever got around to come here and try and talk with them.. Actually I didn't wonder, not really...
I would wonder lots of things however after arriving in Angeles and getting stuck there while sporting a 38.5 degree fever.
After the adventures of yours truly on North cemetery I decided to spend some time on South cemetery in Manila, since it seemed to also be housing squatters. By now I was quite accustomed to moving around in Manila with my camera and I decided that reading "The Tesseract" by Alex Garland was maybe not such a good idea to feel safe in this country. After all it turned out that these people where mostly very friendly and welcoming and con artists always lurks where people mingle and congest into traffic lanes on public sidewalks, so nothing out of the ordinary there.. (Still, if a man in uniform walks up to you and demands to see your money to verify there are no fake bills amongst them, simply refuse. Uniforms are cheap here, and official uniforms don't cost more than a janitors uniform.) Anyway, I started to feel at ease in this big city and appreciate the curious melange of several non-native backgrounds. Some people might feel disappointed entering the Philippines and expecting a full-on Asian country, as with the Spanish colonial history and the less hidden Americanizes way of living mixed in.. But truth is that this country is as exotic as any other destination in SE Asia. You just had to look beyond first impressions to note how different things where here. But back to the South cemetery. I was expecting much of the same as North, mausoleums everywhere and people setting up shop in them, kids playing on tombstones and funeral cars blasting music at top volume after having dropped of very seriously their not so living cargo... But no funeral cars where to be seen, some parts of the cemetery seemed desolate, and most people here seemed to be in worse shape than on North cemetery. Cholera, Hepatitis, even TBC still roamed this place. It was not as well organized as North, one might say. Indeed, the garbage seemed to be piling up between tombstones (Not really flattering for visiting families of departed loved ones, especially if you think of the squatters main income came from "caretaker" activities... Not much care was taken it seemed, and not much visitors either...) and there was the constant smell of human waste floating like an invisible cloud over the graves. As I wandered around and noticed there where far less mausoleums here I came across a family living here, and started talking to them. Apparently the sanitary was a big problem, but water in general was a problem for these poor people. There were big jerrycans lying around everywhere near there little improvised bed, and filling them meant walking all the way to the outer limits of the cemetery, paying one of the guards 5 pesos a can as some sort of "custom tax" and outside the cemetery filling up each can for another 5 pesos. Now 1 euro is about 63 pesos, so to me 10 pesos is no biggie. I wondered what 20 eurocents could buy me back home... Maybe a chewing gum, but I don't think that would be one of my biggest concerns living in a place like this... Given the fact that those people had no official income whatsoever there only income came from being "Caretakers" of the place, and one set of graves generally made about 30 to 40 pesos. But families of deceased ones didn't always come by, so all saints day and other special days where a welcome period of economic blossoming. Except that they were evicted more often than not when lots of people came to visit, since the officials running the cemetery don't like the squatters. The whole difference with North cemetery it seemed was the surrounding area. North is in a poor area of Manila, with lots of slum areas. This seemed like a blessing in ways, as they where mostly unbothered by government and officials. But South was almost smack in the middle of Makati, the booming business district of Manila. Skyscrapers, securityguards on every corner, no punters or hasslers roaming the streets, lots of shopping bags sporting names such as Prada or Givenchy and the likes... This it seemed was making life very hard for the people trying to survive in the cemetery. They were like dinosaurs that still hadn't given in on the meteorite striking the earth. They were not really considered as a part of the future of this place. So I could not get rid of the notion that their difficult lives were being made even less easy by some hidden forces at work. The water supply, the lack of garbage disposal units taking away the garbage... Everything seemed to be aimed towards letting these people feel as uncomfortable as possible. But this is me thinking here, it's not rocket-science. It's funny yet also seems like a given fact that where rich people get richer poor people seem to be getting poorer. It was written in the garbage piling up between the brightly painted angels, it was written on the rashes and sores on the skin of people carrying their jerrycans from A to B, it was carried around in the foul smell coming from between the graves. As I said goodbye to the honest and ever smiling family I was talking with, I glanced up to see the skyscrapers towering like detached soldiers over the angels dancing on the gravestones. Even turning the corner I could still hear their warm pinoy jokes about this strange tall white guy walking in the place and exchanging jokes and buying mango candy for the kids as if it was Christmas. I wondered if any of the rich Prada people ever got around to come here and try and talk with them.. Actually I didn't wonder, not really...
I would wonder lots of things however after arriving in Angeles and getting stuck there while sporting a 38.5 degree fever.
posted by crisscrass at
3:40 PM
1 Comments:
Ahaa, blijkbaar had je "The Tesseract" al gelezen. Tja, zover was ik nog niet met het lezen van uw posts. Wel grappig dat je die dan ook effectief aan het lezen was. De foto hierboven vat het wel allemaal goed samen. Peace brother!
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