To the end of the earth and back

I’m writing from a posh coffeeshop with internet, trying to find words to describe the experience we had Friday. Two social workers from Adamson took us to visit Payatas, a community on the edge of Manila. The hour and a half drive across the city was a lesson of its own as we fought dense traffic past business high-rises, crowded storefront shops, elegant public buildings, and rough shacks—a panorama of a city of 11 million people.

Our van joined a parade of garbage trucks up and down muddy hills: Payatas itself is a seemingly endless landfill where the city’s garbage goes. Woven throughout the dump site are settlements of tin shacks. Grim as it looks, the area has a bustling informal economy with row upon row of small stores selling everything from rice to flipflops in tiny packets. The whole settlement reminds Charles of the worst poverty that he has seen in Chiapas and Nogales, but the scope dwarfs anything either of us have experienced. Garbage is everywhere, ground into the soil.

Most people in Payatas make their living by scavenging. Plastics and other recyclables are gathered, bundled and sold to recycling companies. We were there on a rainy day but people were hard at work, trudging through the mud. Toward the end of the afternoon people flocked to the streets that had food stalls. Human life in all of its urgent struggle to survive and flourish has rooted itself in the vast dump.

Blooming in the midst of all this is a catholic parish led by the young (maybe Daniel’s age) and enthusiatic Vincentian, Fr. Rowen Carlos. It serves 400,000 people (not a typo) by building small groups on the Christian base community model. There are 13 satelite chapels, and they’ve organized a food coop, an elder-care center and a day care center, where the children sang us three songs and broke our hearts. A new church is under construction—a spacious steel beam and concrete floor and roof, open right now on the sides but planned with a beautiful painted dome. The temporary altar is a folding table with plastic cloth, and the area is bustling with children and young people in some activity. I can’t begin to process all this—Charles is writing a piece that puts it in context for his DePaul colleagues and you’re welcome to a copy. All I can offer here is my experience of expecting overwhelming despair, and finding an inspiring expression of what's best in the human spirit.

The people here project the project's energy: Brother Cesar, Fr. Rowen, Sheila Rebecca, and the overwhelmed DVs. The structure just barely visible on the far left is one of the satellite
chapels.