Smokey Mountain - Guest post by Natalie

The Scene

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

Around 15 years ago if you went to Smokey Mountain you would have found around 4,000 families living on andaround the active dumpsite. The families were mostly poor migrants who came to Manila from the provinces insearch of work. Smokey was a good location because itwas cheap to live on and its close proximity to theports 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 tryand scrape together a living from pulling anything ofany 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 intemporary accommodation nearby while the new permanent accommodation was constructed. The rest of the families were housed in other areas or accepted cashgrants.

The temporary housing, which stretched from what was supposed to be 2 years to about 10 years, is a fairlysqualid example of accommodation. From what Iunderstand, the two storey structures were open insideand families were to construct their own walls to getprivacy. There was only 1 bathroom per floor. Iimagine that would have had to be shared by 50families. The temporary housing is still there and anew bunch of squatters has moved in. Now, with noelectricity or running water and no-one responsiblefor any repairs, it is quite a depressing area.

Last year, the families were moved into their new accommodation, the permanent housing. This is alsosometimes referred to as Paradise Heights. Although Inotice that tends to be by outsiders, the residentsstill refer to it as Smokey Mountain. It probably hassomething to do with the still smoking, still 25 oddmetre high mountain of garbage never more than 100 maway 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 bathroomwith a toilet and shower head. The sleeping quartersare a mezzanine level about half the size of thebottom level. A lot of the residents have donerenovations and extended their mezzanine to cover thewhole 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 withher husband, five children, 2 dogs, 4 puppies and acat! So I think privacy might be a foreign concept insome of the units. Not to mention peace and quiet!

This is what it's all about...

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 ofcorruption, but it has also given me a greatopportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people. As partof my job I have been visiting residents in theirhomes, just getting to know them and to chat about their environmental concerns. I thought I would sharewith you a few of the stories.

The gay culture in the Philippines is like much of South East Asia – very definitely present, most oftenwidely accepted and involving a lot of dressing up tolook like women. Although, unlike Thailand, most ofthe gay men in the Philippines can’t afford boob jobsso you see a lot of skinny flat chested men in skimpy clothes and a lot of makeup. The giveaways are theflat chest and the adam’s apple. A few weeks ago I waschatting with some of the Smokey gay population, intheir hairdressing salon. One of the ‘ladies’ had alovely photo of herself up on the wall from when shehad entered the Miss Gay Paradise Heights. She didn’twin, although I thought she looked pretty good in herphoto, 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 growboobs for about 2 years, but had stopped taking thembecause she was worried about the side effects on theheart. They cost about $4.50 for 4 months. But it musthave worked because she had some great cleavage in herMiss 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 tome “Hi Maam” “Hi Joe” “Whats your name” “Americano”“Whats your favourite colour” or whatever else theylearnt in English this week. Normally I just smile,sometimes I have a bit of a chat in which case they goall shy and hide behind their friends and I always correct the American assumption. And of course thereis a lot of giggling and commenting in Tagalog. MostlyI have no idea what they are talking about butrecently I had a colleague with me and when a littleboy of about 3 was tearing around me yelling inTagalog I was able to ask her what he said. When shes topped laughing, she translated that he had beenyelling ‘Everybody, look at her, look at her face. It’s different to all the other faces’.

Kids here, who are normally so noisy go all shy when a camera is pulled out.

Yesterday I was talking with a woman who was clearly very happy. The story came out that the day beforethey had been on television and won 5000 pesos (amonths wages here or about $125). And how had they won this? Well they came second in some kind of a pettalent 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 seethis!

I have also heard some tragic stories. I was in a house yesterday and noticed there was no TV. I thoughtthat it was unusual, in fact it was the first house Ihad been in with no TV. It came out that their house had recently been robbed, by their son-in-law, who isaddicted to shabu (a cheap local drug). He also beatshis 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 grandmothers house is a safe haven. They make their living by making and selling arice sweet. If they sell all they make, they earnaround $4 a day. On that they must send their youngestson 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 uscan 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 povertystricken area, I hear stories that make me want to cryand 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 earningbetter money – it’s a very strong community, childrencan run around with their friends and everyone islooking out for everyone elses kids. People are smiling. A lot of the residents help set up livelihood programs, to help other residents who are probablyonly marginally worse off than themselves. It’s also agreat place for me to introduce a waste segregationprogram because I don’t need to spend much timetalking about the effects of poor waste management, these people know more about it than me and they areprobably some of the best segregators in the world.

So that’s a little bit of my world. I’ll be here for another 6 months or so and hopefully I will be able tomeet some more of the incredibly friendly andwelcoming Smokey folk. You can check out some photos of my workplace on my website – www.flickr.com/photos/nataliejiricek

Also check out this BBC article on Manila and Smokey Mountain

posted by batik billy @ 9:56 am