Diary of our “Street Immersion” program in Manila

We have done several practica here in Olongapo: literacy at an abused girls' home; sports camp for 50 abandoned children and tutoring at the Old Cabalan high school. To round out our exposure to and understanding of difficult circumstances that youth find themselves in here in the Philippines, we journeyed 3.5 hours to Manila to experience the lives of prostitution, living on the streets and other modes of livelihood of the truly poor (less than $1 a day).

Friday: Up at 4:30am to catch the 6am Victoryliner bus to Manila, where we had what is termed a “courtesy call” – usually a visit of respect to introduce yourself to a government official or agency. In this case, we visited the Department of Social Welfare D (USWD) and listened to a vice-official (the head of the department was in another meeting – something we’ve experienced here frequently and, I’m guessing, to be expected in general). Then off to Childhood Asia, who works educating street children via mobile units and educators who build ties with the children and actually conduct lifeskills and literacy education in the backstreets of Manila with urban activity all around. Our visit was cut short by rain, but we then visited Harrison Mall and witnessed pimp/prostitute action within minutes of arriving. The difference for me was how blatant everything was and how young the girls were. Casey had a pimp lead him to a row of young girls, saying “take your pick – 1500 pesos” which is the equivalent of $30US, and another in our group was approached by a mother, offering her 15 year old daughter for the same price.

Saturday: Several of us breakfasted at a new venture of Indigenous People from Mindoro – fascinating and brilliant man who has really helped his group…I got his email. We visited another agency – ERDA, based in Belgium, who worked with street children and schooled many of those out of school to pass the alternative skills competency exam (ALS) so that they could continue with their education. ERDA took us to a site they serviced, where children acted as scavengers: Smoky Mountain garbage dump – which had, by far, the most impact of anything I’ve yet witnessed. Walking on compacted trash 30’ deep, we watched ant-sized children comb the distant 100’ high mountain of garbage, smoldering as it decomposed. Well inside the guarded dump was an official barangay – with a captain, a council, church (fittingly, “Our Lady of the Sorrows”), daycare center, pool hall/videoke and sari-sari.The strangest thing was watching as people went about their lives - women walking with sun umbrellas and men bicycling to work. This neighborhood of many hundreds of people was staggering as Manila’s public acceptance of this as a way of life for its citizens. As low as this made me feel, I wondered what the city would otherwise do with the mountains of trash being “recycled” by these occupants, and secondly – what would all of these people do to earn their meager living if the dumps were all destroyed? Such are the issues here.

We finished the day by traveling to another wonderful agency to help them feed about 100 street children in a public park. After playing group games with them, we served them pansit , bread and bananas to them, noting how some of the children saved some to take ‘home’ to their parents who also lived on the street.

We ate that night at a schwarma place near to our Pension Natividad and in the red light district of Manila, where, after the best chicken schwarma I’ve ever had, we went to the corner bar to witness how prostitution works here. We saw old, ugly, white and Chinese men with the more legal aged girls probably 40 years their junior (although we were told that the 12-15 year olds were also housed upstairs). I’ve never seen this, but it didn’t seem that different from what I imagine goes on in the States – the difference is that I didn’t observe any young girls, which is the true focus of our work – preventing such child abuse…however, I can’t imagine that any prostitute wouldn’t swap her job for another paying the same salary, and the blatant debasement of women upset a majority of the group.

Sunday - After a brief language lesson, Kit took three of us (Matt, Annie and me)to Intramuros, the beginning of the Spanish settlement of Manila. The Peace Corps said that more Americans touring together would be a bad idea, but we missed our other two companions – we’ve formed a tight bond. Intramuros was beautiful, historic, and put smiles on all our faces, counteracting the stark reality of the previous day.

We rejoined Pa and Chris and headed for MOA – Mall of Asia, supposedly the largest mall in the world. Didn’t find much we needed, and headed back for an early night of packing with the anticipation of meeting our supervisors for the next two years – and finding out where we will be stationed and which area of Children, Youth and Families we will deal with for the next two years.