Life in Manila -part 1 -an Introduction

I am sorry I was not able to post anything about my time in the Philippines until now. Obviously we had no internet, and uploading pictures at one of their 'Internet cafes' would have been long and difficult. I was blessed with a very intensive 10 day visit with the Heart's Home community in Manila -my Polish friend Tomek Przybylo is volunteering with them for 14 months. For more information about Heart's Home, please click on the title.

The Heart's Home mission in Manila is by far the poorest (and most difficult) mission I have ever visited in my life. I will begin by saying that the people are WONDERFUL! I was greeted by excited children yelling my name as we 'paraded' down the street to our house. Manila may have 14 million people living in it, but the Philippino culture is so open, so childlike, so joyful that you must greet every person you see as you walk down the street. Everyone is excited to have an 'Americano' (foreigner) visiting their neighborhood. Children surround you taking your hands and pressing them to their foreheads for 'a blessing.' They do not care if you don't speak Tagalog, they go on talking to you only desiring a smile in reply. Yet the poverty I witnessed in Manila was a huge shock to me -it reached a level so inhumane that I never could have imagined such a life existed for so many people. The mission house of Heart's Home is located in 'Navotos' -a slum city included in 'metro Manila'. My backpack had been lost for 5 days on my travels there, and when it arrived in Manila I received a phone call from the airport saying that they would not bring it to me because of where I was living. Unfortunately this meant that Tomek and I had to travel 2 hours by train, bus, 'jeep' and tricycle (a cart attached to a motorcycle) back to the airport to get the luggage.

In general I was shocked by the poverty in Manila. Most people live on a level way beneath what you would find even in the poorest areas of South Bend. People live in very close quarters, with entire extended families in a few small rooms of houses made of concrete, tin or cardboard. There is no such thing as 'privacy' in the Philippines -everything is done as a group and the Tagalog language does not even have such a word in its vocabulary. The poverty these people live has many forms:

Music (noise) -Music blares about 22 hours a day -I found that the only quiet one might find would possibly be from 2-4am. Such music is so loud that my ears pounded even for a few days after flying back here to Poland. Silence 'echoed', since I had had absolutely none during my stay. This is a suffering for the missionaries living there.

Trash -It is everywhere. People throw it everywhere. You will see in the pictures that it covers the streets. It smells awful and when it rains this trash/mud/water floods the streets and into the houses (including ours). I am not yet speaking of the trash dumps where hundreds of thousands of people live -I'm talking about other 'normal' areas. There is such a difference between 'clean dirt' and poverty in the countryside somewhere, and 'city dirt' -poverty in the city in the midst of trash. The first is difficult, but livable. The second I think is not only disgusting and dangerous, but inhumane. The modern world should not have such places.

Polluted air (from trash and cars): -When the sun beats down on the trash filling the streets, it smells. When the rain pours into it, it smells. Wet trash drying out in the sun smells awful -and so the entire city smells like this. There are so many cars in Manila that you are constantly breathing exhaust. The smell was so bad that I was sick from it the entire time I was there. Two days the room was spinning so fast around me that I had to stay in bed. Mind you, this was from the smell mostly.

Dirt, sickness, disease: -It is dirty (like bathroom, trash dirty) everywhere. People are covered in it. Therefore disease spreads quickly. It was such a fight of love in my heart to open my arms and allow the children to climb all over me when they are covered with such dirt. My heart had to fight to love when my nature was so repulsed. Love won... but it was a fight. Because of the living conditions, people are constantly sick.

Physical poverty (living with tin walls, leaky roofs, cardboard, under the bridge): -Heart's Home mission houses try to live on the same poverty level as those they serve. Although it would be impossible to live and serve homeless people (or those in trash dumps) while being on 'their poverty level', the mission house lives on the level of their neighbors in the 'nice slums.' This means that they have very little -no fridge, no oven, no running water and rats, mice, cockroaches, dangerous centipedes, etc. running through the house.

Food (dirty/nuts/weird meats –dog, pork skin, duck embryo): -the food was extremely difficult for me. Most things are made with nuts, coconut or coconut milk. I was allergic to almost everything. Other foods were absolutely disgusting -they eat dog, cooked duck eggs with baby embryos in them, chicken intestines, etc... I was so sick from the environment and disgusted by the smell, trash, dirt, etc. it was difficult to eat in general anyway. Bananas, mangoes and papayas became my close friends. And I did eat rice.

Bathrooms, cleaning clothes, etc. –no running water, so dirty: -No running or clean water is difficult enough in the country, but it has a whole new level in a dirty city. I was never able to really get clean the entire time I was there. We had a bucket we could fill with cold water (questionably clean -for the only water source where we lived was the dangerously black polluted 'river' nearby) -yet the room where we could wash was so dirty I kept my sandals on and tried not to touch the walls. Mice and rats could run in and out of it.

Weather –typhoons, sun –changing pressure (dizziness): -It is always very humid. It is always very hot. The sun makes it hotter or the storms make it wetter. Changing weather makes people very sick.

mix-up religion and cult/ homosexual stuff… -Many in Manila are Catholic, but unfortunately when the Spaniards brought the faith to the Islands people simply added it to their own cult religions and superstitions. Deep catechized faith is difficult to find. Most poor people do not attend Mass or practice the faith. There is great room for evangelization.

I have never seen so many homosexual problems as they have in Manila. It is 'normal' for a family to decide to make one of their children dress like the opposite sex. They think it is funny. If they wanted a girl and had a boy (or if a boy does not have strong masculine traits) the family 'decides' he will be gay -grows his hair long, dresses him like a girl, takes away his name and simply calls him 'gay' (even if the child does not want this and cries). I was shocked on several occasions to find out someone sitting by me was a man -they dress so much like women. Although it is not as common for this to be done with girls, it also does happen.

Toys –bugs on strings, baby chicks/cats until dead… -they have very little, including toys. Often they will sell children huge bugs tied to strings to play with -or baby chicks which the children carry around until they 'accidentally' die.

Here's a picture of part of Navotos, including a part of the Navotos river:

Here are a ton of pictures. The first few are of public transportation. The 'jeep'-trucks were left by the American soldiers when they left the island years ago, and they have been turned into the popular 'jeepny' form of public transportation. The last picture shows a 'tricycle'.

Here is the Heart's Home mission house:

The alley off of the kitchen where they do laundry. Unfortunately the neighbor boys and men love to go to the bathroom through the gate into this alley. It goes directly into the house and the smell is awful. In Philippino culture something is only considered wrong if they are caught, therefore notes posted and reprimands are ignored since they are never caught actually in the act of doing it. The children are always looking for 'friends' and they often come in and help the volunteers cook, clean, etc.

The 'washroom' where we would bathe:

Tomek's room where I slept:



The kitchen -where we would find mice and cockroaches and other fun visitors every time we turned on the light:


The front room where they would welcome guests. There were always children peeking in the windows calling for us to open the door:


Every morning each volunteer takes one hour to spend with Jesus in Adoration. And each night after Night Prayer they stay to spend some more time with our Lord:


Mary, Mother of the Philippines, pray for us!