Philippines Solidarity Trip – Baseco

August 13^th 2010 – Baseco Barangay, Manila

For the past 24 hours we have been with the community of Baseco, hosted by the Kabilikat community group, who are allied with our partners – the Urban Poor Associates in Manila.

After spending the night and having breakfast with our host families in Baseco the group reconnected in the morning at the Kabilikat offices.

Time to take our fourth mode of transportation – ’ tricycles’ (motorbikes with side cars)! Squeezing fourteen people on to 4 trikes was a challenge but not a problem.

We appreciated the trickiness of local travel considering what we have learned about transportation costs here and how it relates to the tribulations of the job-seekers of the urban poor in Manila.

We visited 3 urban poor communities  and learned about their different struggles – the threat of eviction, the unsafe conditions (like living on the side of a large speedway), floods and fires, lack of services (like clean water, or sewage systems) and the constant struggle to find work. Under all these threats, the people have come together to organize themselves, to advocate for their needs and to request their municipal leaders to provide services to the urban poor communities. This kind of organizing happens all over the world – it’s each of our jobs to remind our elected officials of their responsabilities to the people.

After the noisiest meeting in front of one of the houses on the side of the busy highway, we left by jeepney for the next community we were visiting. I heard Marlon, a Community Organizer from UPA, say that the next place was the worst place to live in Manila. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The South Port is the garbage dump of Manila, where all of the garbage from the city arrives. From the port nearbly, the garbage is loaded onto boats and taken somewhere else. No one could tell me where the garbage goes. Walking into the site was intimidating, where we were about to see some of the most shocking poverty. How do you prepare yourself for that? I started by putting on my rubber boots.

From the moment we arrived we were walking on garbage and when we weren’t, we were walking through mud. We were one of the few people in the community with shoes on. Marlon tried to have us walk through the actual dumpsite but the leader of the families did not think it was safe. The garbage acts as fill, so that the people can build housing on land that is regularly swamped by water.

The people build their houses out of the discarded materials and make a livelihood out of converting wood into charcoal and by recycling plastic water bottles, a kilo at a time. Collecting a kilo of plastic water bottles brings about $0.50 Canadian. That’s a lot of plastic bottles.

The conditions in which these 1,000 families live would not be passable in North America. The smoke from the charcoal production hung above the site, and after walking for an hour I tried to re-apply my sunscreen but I was so covered in dirt that I ended up just rubbing dirt around on my arms and legs. In that moment I hated the part of me that wanted to go back to our hotel, shower and nap in the air-conditioned and clean room.

The big difference between the urban poor communities we met in Baseco and South Port  -  the people of Baseco have basic housing but no income to meet their needs, there are not enough jobs, even garbage collecting. The people of South Port  have a steady source of income but terrible housing conditions. I can’t imagine how the people coming to Manila from the different regions choose -dangerous work or dangerous housing? You leave your home for the dream that there might be work in Manila.

On this trip we are learning that there is no single cause of poverty. You can’t say the urban centres are rich and the rural people are poor, or vice-versa. It’s complicated. We are also seeing the amazing work of our guides – the Community Organizers, like Marlon, and how crucial it is to support the efforts of the urban poor communities.

Gillian Murphy