one child at a time

The majority of the population of the Philippines is either Protestant or Catholic. I have come to realize and understand more that, as a result of this, the work of Precious Jewels really is as the hands and feet of Jesus in this city. The need for evangelism, for spreading the gospel to those who haven’t heard it, is (by comparison to other nations) not nearly as intense as the need for people to be tangibly shown the love of Christ. There is a deep, deep need for relational giving, for showing love and compassion, for investing in friendships, for providing a shoulder to lean on, a listening ear. PJM serves the community this way, along with the more tangible elements of relief goods, linking families to doctors and specialists, social services, monitoring kids in the communities, etc. Needless to say, it’s an amazing project to be a part of.

I’m learning that this takes place, of course, one family and one child at a time. (Which means my tendency toward utilitarianism flies out the window).

This past week, I was with Allene in the San Lazaro pediatric wards. A large department store in the Philippines, SM, has outfitted a room (named Sentrong Musmos) on the pediatric ward with a tv/dvd player, couch, play house, little slide, coloring books and videos, etc etc. It’s meant to be a play space for kid and to provide a break from the monotony of life on the wards by giving kids developmental activities etc. The room was outfitted by SM, but operations are undertaken by PJM each afternoon.

There were 2 children with us in Musmos that afternoon – Patricia and Rey. Rey is about 9 years old, and has spent 3 months in San Lazaro because of a condition that resulted in excess fluid on his lungs, and the insertion of a tube to drain his lungs (or at least, that’s what I gleaned through interpretation…it’s always a little fuzzy). He’s been in rough shape, Allene told me, but when we saw him last week, he was a few days from being discharged and looked like a pretty healthy kid.

So, Rey and I played together – the usual playing with kids stuff, coloring books, Barney dvd’s, slide, puzzles, etc. (He was pretty disappointed when he realized that I couldn’t read Tagalog – he had about 10 English words, and I have about 5 Tagalog words).

Eventually, he motioned that I should follow him back to his room. I brought a coloring book with me, and he climbed onto his bed and I pulled up a chair. The room was about 8” x 15” – the size of a hospital room for a single patient in Canada – and had 3 cribs in it, each about 4.5” long (which meant that Rey barely fit in his). Rey’s father was crumpled into the crib on the far side of the room, trying to get some sleep. 2 small stainless steel carts provided the only storage for a family of 3 (Rey and his parents) who had now been living at the hospital almost full time for 3 months. The bottom of the cart was stacked with anti-TB meds. The window was wide open, the only fan was a small table top fan aimed at his father.

Rey fished out his crayons and sat on his knees and instructed me to color Ben while he colored Jerry (in his Ben and Jerry coloring book). It was another one of those moments like with Abby from a few weeks back – where the child is so totally stoked to have someone and something to play with. He was laughing and joking with me and teaching me words for the different things in the picture he was coloring. We were playing hide-and-seek behind his towel, peeking around the bookshelf, etc….he was a happy kid.

When Allene and I left, he asked if I would be there tomorrow. Via translation, we figured out that I would be here next Thursday when he would return for a check-up – he was totally stoked, because he said I was fun to play with. Later that night, Allene told me she thought he would never forget that – puzzled (I just played with him, nothing super special or extraordinary), I said, “You think?” – and she explained that I was someone different, and that for someone like me to play with someone like him was a really big deal for him.

She said the same thing applied to Abby, the little girl I played with last week. She lives in a squatter community with her mother, who also grew up in the streets. She attends school in the morning. Her mother sews the Philippine national flower (which are made into these sort of garlands which are often hung on the saints and other altars, esp in the Catholic church). Because people are less inclined to buy the flowers from an adult selling them on the street, Abby’s mother gets Abby to sell them, while she stays nearby to keep an eye on her.

On one hand, this doesn’t startle me at all; it’s economics of survival. On the other hand, it means that Abby is subject to rejection for hours every day. One of the PJMers who visited Abby and her mom last week said she saw Abby begging in the street, and that one lady gave her 10 centavos (worth ¼ of a cent CDN) – it’s the second smallest coin in Filipino currency (like the equivalent of giving a homeless person in Victoria a nickel). The staffer telling me this story frowned at this, frustrated with what Abby was dealing with. She explained to me that there is actually a law in Manila that forbids people from giving money to beggars; if caught, the fault lays with the giver, not the beggar. I asked, curious, whether people still did give – they must, considering the numbers of children begging – there must be some money to be had, even if it’s a pittance. She said that people did still give, but in a city where most people lack any sort of disposable income, pity accompanied by money is hard to come by.

I asked my roommate Mier if there is hope that Manila will no longer have squatter communities (I gather this is the PC term for what used to be called slums) – she paused, and said, “There is a hope, yes.” But she seemed doubtful that it was anywhere in the near future, and described the cycle of poverty that maintains the squatter communities.

For example: there are few jobs in Manila, but even fewer in the provinces. It’s nearly impossible to get a job if you don’t have a skill. To get a skill, most people need to have a basic education. There is free education available in Manila (although there are a lot of private schools as well). But the cost of everything that goes along with school – uniforms, school supplies, project supplies, transportation, food – means that some kids don’t attend. Those kids who don’t attend are often set to work small jobs to contribute to the income of the family. So, in adulthood, with no education, they end up struggling to find employment. Which means they aren’t able to see a life outside the squatter community where they will eventually raise their own families.

None of this is truly shocking to me, on one hand. It’s a story that repeats itself in cities around the world. But that doesn’t make it any less heart-breaking.