Smokey Mountain (guest post by Nat)

The new intake of AYADs are here! There are only four of them this time and one of them will be in Manila (and possibly sharing with Ange and I), while two are going to Bohol (where Lyndon is) and one to Bacolod (in the Visayas group of islands). I will write more about them later - it is interesting to reflect upon six months here as we now advise the newbies how to go - strange to think how much I have learned. But this afternoon we are going out with them to Smokey Mountain (sometimes just referred to as Smokey), which is where one of the existing AYADs, Nat, works. So I thought I would post an email she sent about a month ago about Smokey and her work there. I will give you my impressions after we have been:

The Scene

Smokey Mountain - named firstly as a mountain because it has been as high as 35 m and secondly because it smokes almost continuously during the hot summer months. Waste from the City of Manila was first dumped here almost 50 years ago. Before that it was actually a fishing village, the sea is now a kilometre or so away from Smokey. The land has been reclaimed with dumped garbage over the years.

Around 15 years ago if you went to Smokey Mountain youwould have found around 4,000 families living on and around the active dumpsite. The families were mostly poor migrants who came to Manila from the provinces in search of work. Smokey was a good location because it was cheap to live on and [due to] its close proximity to the ports where itinerant work could be found. Contrary to popular belief, not all the families living there were scavengers. Of course, a large number of them did try and scrape together a living from pulling anything of any value out of the numerous trucks that dumped rubbish there every day.

In 1993, Smokey Mountain was closed and the government made a promise to provide housing to the squatters and to rehabilitate the mountain (we’re still waiting forthat last one). Around 3,000 families were housed in temporary accommodation nearby while the new permanent accommodation was constructed. The rest of the families were housed in other areas or accepted cash grants. The temporary housing, which stretched from what was supposed to be 2 years to about 10 years, is a fairly squalid example of accommodation. From what I understand, the two storey structures were open inside and families were to construct their own walls to get privacy. There was only 1 bathroom per floor. I imagine that would have had to be shared by 50 families. The temporary housing is still there and a new bunch of squatters has moved in. Now, with no electricity or running water and no-one responsible for any repairs, it is quite a depressing area.

Last year, the families were moved into their new accommodation, the permanent housing. This is also sometimes referred to as Paradise Heights. Although I notice that tends to be by outsiders, the residents still refer to it as Smokey Mountain. It probably has something to do with the still smoking, still 25 odd metre high mountain of garbage never more than 100 m away from all the housing.

The new housing is 5 stories high, with 24 units on each floor. Someone said to me once the units are about 32 square metres. Each unit has its own bathroom with a toilet and shower head. The sleeping quarters are a mezzanine level about half the size of the bottom level. A lot of the residents have done renovations and extended their mezzanine to cover the whole area. They have electricity and water is available from 6 am - 8 am and 6 pm - 8 pm daily, which means water needs to be stored for toilet flushing, washing and cooking in big containers duringthe ‘off’ hours.

Last week, I met a woman who lived in her unit with her husband, five children, 2 dogs, 4 puppies and a cat! So I think privacy might be a foreign concept in some of the units. Not to mention peace and quiet!

The People

A strong part of the Filipino culture is dependent on having good relationships with the people you are engaging with. In my more cynical moments I would saythis practice tends to perpetuate the cycle of corruption, but it has also given me a great opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people. As partof my job I have been visiting residents in their homes, just getting to know them and to chat abouttheir environmental concerns. I thought I would share with you a few of the stories.

The gay culture in the Philippines is like much of South East Asia – very definitely present, most often widely accepted and involving a lot of dressing up to look like women. Although, unlike Thailand, most of the gay men in the Philippines can’t afford boob jobs so you see a lot of skinny flat chested men in skimpy clothes and a lot of makeup. The giveaways are the flat chest and the adam’s apple. A few weeks ago I was chatting with some of the Smokey gay population, in their hairdressing salon. One of the ‘ladies’ had a lovely photo of herself up on the wall from when she had entered the Miss Gay Paradise Heights. She didn’t win, although I thought she looked pretty good in her photo, so I wonder what the winner looked like! They were all very happy to talk candidly about themselves.This lady had been taking hormone tablets to grow boobs for about 2 years, but had stopped taking them because she was worried about the side effects on the heart. They cost about $4.50 for 4 months. But it must have worked because she had some great cleavage in her Miss Gay Paradise Heights photo.

Being a strongly catholic country with a growing population, there are a lot of kids at Smokey. Although I am not quite Pied Piper status yet, everytime I am there the kids will be yelling out to me “Hi Maam” “Hi Joe” “What's your name” “Americano” “Whats your favourite colour” or whatever else they learnt in English this week. Normally I just smile, sometimes I have a bit of a chat in which case they go all shy and hide behind their friends and I always correct the American assumption. And of course there is a lot of giggling and commenting in Tagalog. Mostly I have no idea what they are talking about but recently I had a colleague with me and when a little boy of about 3 was tearing around me yelling inTagalog I was able to ask her what he said. When she stopped laughing, she translated that he had been yelling ‘Everybody, look at her, look at her face. It’s different to all the other faces’.

Yesterday I was talking with a woman who was clearly very happy. The story came out that the day before they had been on television and won 5000 pesos (a month's wages here or about $125). [edited for Kate note: that can be a pretty good month's wage - many people make 2000 to 3000 pesos a month - AUD$50 to AUD$75] And how had they won this? Well they came second in some kind of a pet talent contest (I assume) with a pair of dancing rats. I was privileged enough to see the rats in question, and to see one of them dancing against the wall of its cage. What a talent! Paul McDermott you gotta see this!

I have also heard some tragic stories. I was in a house yesterday and noticed there was no TV. I thought that it was unusual, in fact it was the first house I had been in with no TV. It came out that their househad recently been robbed, by their son-in-law, who is addicted to shabu (a cheap local drug). He also beats his wife, their daughter, and has done so for years, and has made death threats against the whole family. They have a small child who wandered in while I was there, no doubt her grandmother's house is a safehaven. They make their living by making and selling a rice sweet. If they sell all they make, they earn around $4 a day. On that they must send their youngest son to school as well as all the other daily expenses. I felt helpless hearing this story, but I am sure there are many more like that. I guess all any of us can do is try and make a difference the best way we know how. Hopefully, my project will create a few more long term sustainable jobs for the community.

Wherever I go, I am almost always offered food and adrink. I have never been asked for money when walking around. Yet I know how much some of these people earn, my colleagues have not been paid for 6 weeks and are scrounging around for things to sell to make some money to be able to come to work. And still everyone is generous with what they have, if its their time, their contacts or what food they have. Some days at Smokey I look around and see a poverty stricken area, I hear stories that make me want to cry and I pass filthy children returning from scavenging jobs who look longingly at the other kids singing songs in the day care centre. But some days I can see why people don’t want to leave when they start earning better money – it’s a very strong community, children can run around with their friends and everyone is looking out for everyone else's kids. People are smiling. A lot of the residents help set up livelihood programs, to help other residents who are probably only marginally worse off than themselves. It’s also a great place for me to introduce a waste segregation program because I don’t need to spend much time talking about the effects of poor waste management, these people know more about it than me and they are probably some of the best segregators in the world.

So that’s a little bit of my world. I’ll be here foranother 6 months or so and hopefully I will be able to meet some more of the incredibly friendly and welcoming Smokey folk. You can check out some photos of my workplace on my website –

www.flickr.com/photos/nataliejiricek