Bagong Silang

I spent most of Friday at home, working on my monthly report. Peace Corps paperwork! I don’t mind it though – it will help when the time comes to write up my Description of Service, and it helps frame what I’ve done so far (not that the haiku didn’t frame it…). In the evening, I went to the mall (and now I hear from others that Shangri-La is one of the best malls in the city – Makati malls not included – so yet again it seems I really lucked out with my location) to meet Kate, one of the regular PCVs. I had met her a couple of times – during orientation and in the Peace Corps office – and I invited her over. She’s a neat person – interesting background, very involved in Peace Corps life here, productive volunteer at her nearby site; she would have COSed this August but extended for an extra six months (13 people from the batch that left the week we arrived – they call them batches here – extended for different lengths of time – so different from Morocco!). We had a quick dinner and went to see “Up.” A first-run movie in a plush movie theatre at a bargain (compared to the U.S.) price – wow! I found the movie quite touching, too. Four stars!

Kate stayed over, and in the morning we went out for a traditional Filipino breakfast – tapsilog, a compound word (and dish) consisting of tapas (dried beef), sinangag (garlic rice) and itlog (fried egg). It was surprisingly tasty and filling! We then went to the market nearest my home to buy fruit – Kate identified and described some of the items I didn’t know. Then we set off for Bagong Silang, a neighborhood about as far north as you can get and still be in Metro Manila, where Jonathan and Charlie live.

Bagong Silang used to have a reputation as the worst slum in Metro Manila – a million people are crowded into a space of five square miles. It didn’t feel unsafe or even overcrowded to me, though – there were a lot of people walking the streets and hanging out, but to me it seemed like a busy and thriving neighborhood! Nothing as fancy as a restaurant, but you can live there and get your basic needs met (except for the need for a less-than-a-three-hour ride into Manila!). Not to make light of it – I think the worst slums and shacks just weren’t on the main streets we walked on, and there is quite a contrast not only to Manhattan-like Makati but even to the more Queens-like neighborhood where I am. Jonathan and Charlie are staying in the home of the baranguay captain, which is by far the nicest in the area. The people who live in the house prepared a multi-dish Filipino meal for us (what a difference from the way I am living! – but their commute makes it too difficult for them to get their work done, so they are looking to give up the homestay life and move to somewhere more accessible). They are assigned to another agency that does housing for the poor, and we went to one of the villages that their NGO had built. Colorful houses, a sense of community. It’s bordered by shacks – in another phase of the project, the shacks will be replaced by more new houses; construction is ongoing. We played with the kids for a while; Kate, who is in the Children and Family sector, is a natural. I’m still a bit shy but was less so than I was in the orphanage. It helps to know some language – I could ask the kids their names and say a couple of other sentences. Taking their pictures and show them the pictures on my digital screen was a winning activity, though.

We then went on to the neighborhood market – it is big! Tables and tables of fruit and vegetables – much more than the market near me has – and a huge fish area. I miss the souk in Morocco, but the market (called a palenque) here is not all that different! With getting there, walking around and getting back, we were gone all day. Jonathan and Charlie came along to stay over with me since we were leaving early the next day. First, we went back to the M Café to meet some of the expats we had met there last time. One of them had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia – he was kidnapped at one point during his service, and the story he told was quite scary. I’m glad we were at an upscale café for it! One drink tends to be enough for me; after a while my mind left the conversation and I started thinking about my fellow Morocco PCVs, who I miss. Would they like it here? I also started thinking about Youssef and Abdou – I wish they could be here to see another culture. And I started thinking about my place in the scheme of things – I’m glad to be invited out by the guys, but I was never much of a bar person. Over the years I’ve had so many issues with belonging and not belonging. The other PCRVs are good people, and even though I may be different, I feel included (we all seem to like hearing each other’s stories). I think it also helps that I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I am comfortable with who I am in many a situation. That may sound like a lot of thinking that I was doing while conversations and beverages were swirling around me, but actually I was just letting everything swirl, living in the moment. That’s not to say that if they had expressed an interest in staying in and playing cards I wouldn’t have chosen that instead! But it was a fun day and evening.