Street Immersion Notes

I climbed a thirty year dormant trash mountain in Manila. I passed several houses on the mountain, trekked through fields of camote and saw corn stalks speckled about. The ground looked almost normal, the road was muddy (but not mud at all), the crops looked fine, the landscape was rolling and looked serene. It's what's just under the surface, and even still sticking out, that makes this mountain different, it's just trash. Trash that's older than I am. It hadn't been added to in a long time so the mountain just decomposed as best it could and began to look like a shaggy hill. The farming done on the mountain certainly adds to the lushness of the mountain, there are tight rows of camote that look just fine to eat (I'm not so sure though). It's pretty and it's impressive, the most beautiful trash mountain I've ever seen. After climbing down from the summit, my group of trainees went down the street to the new budding mountain.

This is a much different mountain. It's low lying in comparison and has nothing growing from it's surface. One side of the mountain butts against Manila Bay, the other side is against a Barangay full of people who live right there. The road into the small town is muddy and it's the blackest mud you've ever seen, slimy and thick. Children run along the roadside in different states of play, some have boots, sandals, or are barefoot (a majority I'd say) and quite a few children were stark naked, staring at the Americans piling out of a caravan of vans. We walked to the edge of another section of the Barangay where charcoal is made. The smoke was very thick and billowed out of so many buildings. We didn't get any closer. This was a fully functional town, it had a Barangay hall, basketball court, sari-sari stores, and places to have your hair cut. Just had a landfill right next to and spilling into it.

On the way home a friend of mine was transferred to the van I was in and we rushed to the hospital. My friend was having trouble breathing and was complaining of losing feeling in the arms. We made it to the hospital in about 25 minutes, which was pretty fast considering how much time we spent passing on the left, in the left lane, of huge strings of traffic backed up at traffic lights. My friend is fine.

At night we left the hostel we were staying at and went to see what prostitution looks like. My idea of what it would be was pretty spot on, it's still hard to see. I'll paint you a word picture of my first stop. It's dark out. Imagine a square open park, without grass and with brick, that has a water fountain in the center. Well lit by flood lights, dark outside the park. Each corner of the park has raised benches that are part of the park, the benches are sides of plant filled concrete boxes. The plant-benches part for openings into the park at the center of each side of the square. Seat yourself on a corner, and put about seven girls in another corner. You can see them and they can see you. Now put in twelve men here and there, not far off but not next to the girls. Put a couple guys really close to the girls, you can't tell if they're customers or pimps. Finally have four families spread across the rest of the park, the parents seated, the children running around. This is what I sat in and watched prostitutes from.

I think it's a pretty tall order to ask anyone who really doesn't want to, to proposition a prostitute. That's what I was asked to do, although I could just say no and walk off. I didn't actually get to to talk specifics with the prostitutes I did encounter, I couldn't think of what to say to them. I did tell Sugar that “that's not your real name, is it?”

The next day I watched a man of about sixty (I'm guessing here) haggle with three prostitutes of young age, about 16-18 years old. I saw the pimp too, he didn't look stereotypical at all, could have been any guy off the street. This time the location was directly beside a carousel.

The street kids were fun to work with. We watched an educational session occur and returned the next day to run some games. We did one where you race the clock to make a hula-hoop travel all the way around a group of participants holding hands. First time we did pretty bad, second we did it three seconds faster, third time we knocked ten seconds off the tree prior. The second game is a favorite of mine but is also hard to get off without a hitch, action relay. It's like telephone, you have to relay a word or series of words through actions, without talking. We did alright and I think the kids had a good time.

That's what I did for twelve hours a day for two days in Manila.