ANDREW GARTON visited the Philippines during October to attend a conference of non-governmental organisations. He found time to investigate social and environmental issues.
Manila must be the filthiest city I've ever visited. The trip from the airport was flawed by thick clouds of diesel dust flushed from the thousands of cars screaming to get anywhere.
Dust limits vision to the point that one has no peripheral view — no horizon, barely a sky with dense haze to the left and to the right. Often I had a foreboding of being trapped alive in a coffin, dying slowly in dense traffic while the air diminished amid the plumes of carbon monoxide.
A recent study indicated that the greatest health danger was not the thick diesel dust but the invisible fumes from ordinary cars. There are no lead restrictions on petrol in the Philippines. High lead intake can restrict the development of various mental capacities, and there are serious fears that within two decades Manila will have produced a population of mentally deficient people.
Seventy per cent of all the cars in the Philippines are concentrated in Manila. The popular jeepney has become the most reliable form of transport. They're cheap and fast and move more people than buses or taxis. But the government has threatened to ban them in an attempt to solve the horrendous traffic and air pollution problems. The loss of the jeepneys will be the death knell for thousands of jobs and the end of affordable public transport for marginalised people.
The roads and walkways are so dense with motion that people merge with the traffic as if they were one filthy, noisy body of metal and flesh. Children play amongst the traffic as if it weren't there. But then the traffic is so often at a standstill that there is little chance of anyone getting hurt. Someone suggested to me that a "sign of development in the Third World is when the traffic stops".
During a typical day, the average Filipino may have to cross a variety of roads and expressways, dodging jeepneys, cars, buses, trucks, bikes and other people. One day I spent a terrifying 15 minutes crossing a 12-lane expressway to get to a bus stop. The traffic was furious. Half-way across I had to let out a scream. Those without cars are forced to do this every day.
The locals whom I met were extremely political, passionate and tireless. All were NGO workers, and a dedicated and resourceful
crew they were. They had a collection of stories of degradation, poverty, human rights abuses, mail-order brides to Australia and the beatings some endure, child molesting and paedophilia among tourists, many of them middle-aged Australian males.
After the conference, I stayed with activist and author Roberto Verzola. Three families shared the small house. The children made it wonderful for me. They would wait by my door, or climb up the window to watch me wake in the mornings. I must have looked so odd to them.
One hot afternoon I brought back a grand tub of ice cream and some pastries. They ate as if it would disappear — glee mixed with caution. They couldn't look into their bowls; they ate while watching each other. They were delightful children — so much more fortunate than those I saw at Delores, within a 20 km radius of Mt Pinatubo.
I visited the relief centres around Delores with the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement. Walking amid, or rather, atop the remains of Delores, Mabalacat and Pamgainga was devastating. Thousands of homes were covered in anything from two to four metres of hard mud and ash, known as lahar. Window frames, sheet metal, plumbing and objects of unknown origin jutted from the grey landscape.
The region was ravaged by two typhoons after Mt Pinatubo erupted. The gross diversion of relief funds into private pockets is the continuing tragedy of Mt Pinatubo.
A small number of people have returned to where their homes may have been. They have no-where else to go. The children followed at my heels begging for money and medicine.
The people have but little shelter, no water or sanitation and only the hard ash to cultivate. Nothing will grow in it, but they sell it for 2 pesos a bag to Levis, who use it to punish their stone-wash jeans. For most it is the only income they will ever receive.
In and around Manila, everywhere people are building a complex maze of shanties that are barely secured from the elements. It's the same old story: the provinces are depleted of their resources; the indigenous peoples can no longer farm nor fish without the required licences so they head for the cities where there is some promise of respite from the poverty. But poverty inevitably meets itself face to face.
There appears to be no respite, no future for the impoverished. The local NGOs find the most difficult barrier to providing relief is that so many of the poor are resigned to their
conditions. They are the product of 500 years of colonialism.
During my last two days I investigated the plight of the "fisherfolk" of the islands of the Visayas. They now have no legal right to fish in their own waters. With the hot summer months depleting their islands of fresh water, the controls imposed on their fishing and the loss of three young lives a day, the Visayas, once mecca to the "Lonely Planet" tourist, are fast becoming a tragedy.
Roberto Verzola's greatest fear is the introduction of bottled water to the Philippines. He says, this will mean that tap water will become undrinkable. This will obviously affect the poor who rely on tap water and could never afford it bottled. The result may well be the spread of water-related epidemics as has already happened in the Visayas.