23 – Slumdog Millionaire

The Philippines is a country of contrast particularly between the haves and the have nots, the slumdogs and the millionaires, and nowhere quite as starkly it seems as here in the island of Negros. Only in recent decades a middle class has started to emerge. The society still remains very feudal in nature. Land ownership is the privilege of the few elite wealthy families while more than half of the population are squatters.

Adjacent to one of our GK sites is the largest slum area in metro Bacolod. Hundreds of families have been squatters for decades in this area that is supposed to be an easement between the wall of a gated subdivision and the road that leads to the wharfs. It is an area notorious for drugs, firearms, gambolling and prostitution. Gradually, little by little, GK is reclaiming the swampy land, rebuilding houses and in the process rebuilding lives. We often take international visitors there as it is a perfect example of the ‘before’ and the ‘after’, side by side. I took my Mum and Aunt there when they visited over Christmas. We always enter with a GK local for safety and so as not to get lost in the maze of narrow waterlogged alley ways. It is quite confronting and almost impossible to fathom how people live in such conditions.

Also when my Mum and Aunt were here, we visited the other extreme – some of the ancestral houses just up the road in Silay. Silay was once known as the Paris of Negros. Landowners made their fortunes on sugar cane and built grand homes, some of which are now open as museums … of a not so bygone era.

The work of GK’s is as much about appealing to the rich to donate land as it is about helping the poor to have a better future.

22 - Tet and Australia Day in Hanoi

Three flights interspersed with several hours lying on a bench outside Saigon airport in the middle of the night and I finally arrived in Hanoi where Jordi was waiting for me with 2 dozen red roses and a ‘year of the ox’ balloon. I think we were both a bit overwhelmed and speechless for a few minutes but we soon clicked backed together and it was like we’d never been apart.

Arriving in Vietnam from the Philippines it didn’t feel like I was arriving into another developing country. Where were the slums? Where was the rubbish? Where were the beggars? It is very different in comparison to the Philippines, not least of which was the weather. It was freezing! I’d left all my warm clothes in Australia. Luckily Jordi had saved some jumpers and jackets for me, left behind by another AYAD who’d recently returned to Australia.

As I had visited all the toursity places in Hanoi as part of a trip with my Mum 3 years ago, I was content to spend these 10 days discovering the Hanoi of Jordi Bates. This involved a lot of bike riding through Hanoi traffic and ‘joining the dots’ between his favourite cafes, restaurants, bakeries, bars, parks, lakes etc. During the 2 weeks I became quite good at weaving through oncoming motorbikes and scooters in order to turn left! It is a great city for riding being predominantly flat and it felt great to get back on a bike after so long. Thanks to Jordi’s flatmate, I had a bike for the duration of my stay. Although, I was quite unnerved by the statistics that an average of 4 people die each day on the roads of Hanoi.

Meeting Jordi’s colleagues, seeing his workplace and talking with him in more detail about his work, really highlighted the contrasts between our AYAD experiences. While working for an international corporatised NGO such as UNESCO means Jordi gets his own workstation and has regular working hours with free weekends, it can also mean that the nature of the work is more high level Project Management. For me working with a local grass roots level NGO, the work is more hands on with almost immediate tangible results. Another difference is that GK is a Filipino organisation, by Filipino’s for Filipino’s, with a smattering of long term international volunteers while Jordi works with half/half locals and ex-pats. There are very few paid staff in GK, most are volunteers and the organisation relies on the power of their Christian faith as motivation for the work. The staff at UNESCO are all employed, albeit on meagre salaries, and the organisation is non-religious. Perhaps, as a result, Jordi has more scope to be able to tell colleagues about a weekend trip without being made to feel like a rich foreigner or have a drink or two with colleagues after work without being made to feel he’s doing something sinful.

For the middle weekend of my stay, Jordi had planned a getaway to the mountains 4 hours North West of Hanoi in a place called Mai Chau. The area is known for its communities of ethnic minority groups. We stayed in the very nice Mai Chau lodge. We visited the caves – a former Vietcong hideout. Our guide took us on a tour of a ‘White Thai’ minority village in the valley where the houses are all built on piers with post and beam construction – the space below used for weaving and the sale of home made goods. In contrast, the Hmong ethnic minority we visited prefer to live high in the mountains and their homes hug the ground with a concrete or earth floor. Both types of houses are constructed from timber with ratan or tile roofs and are typically one large long room. The Tet holiday had begun and in the White Thai village we came across all the men celebrating together in one of the houses. They invited us up and we sat cross legged with them on the floor while they offered us food and copious amounts of rice wine! On our walk back to the lodge, our guide, who had done the polite thing and not refused when they kept topping up her glass, was amusingly tipsy and suddenly her English improved out of sight. I won’t forget her classic line “oh dear, I’m frying tru da sky!”. In the afternoon she had luckily recovered enough to take us on a beautiful bike ride through several villages and along the edges of rice fields. That evening after dinner we were treated to a show of traditional folk dances of the various ethnic minorities.

My 2 weeks in Vietnam, as it worked out, was timed perfectly to experience bustling pre-Tet Hanoi followed by Hanoi during Tet – when it becomes almost a ghost town by comparison. Tet is the Vietnamese name for the Lunar New Year, or what’s known as “Chinese New Year” elsewhere in the world. We saw in the New Year with the crowds of Vietnamese and tourists who flocked to Hoan Kiem Lake for the midnight fireworks. I guess we’re spoiled in Australia with arguably the best fire works in the world, so what intrigued and entertained me more about the celebrations was all the coloured paper lanterns that were realeased into the sky by individuals in the crowd.

The first day of the Lunar New Year also happened to be Australia Day this year. There are quite a number of Aussies working or volunteering in Hanoi. Around 20 or so came to Jordi’s Triple J Hottest 100 party. We streamed it live over the internet. Due to the time difference, it started at 6am local time, which was quite a challenge after getting home from the New Year celebrations only 4 hours before! But in true Aussie style, it was a pretty laid back day. The Australian open on the TV, the cricket on one laptop, and the hottest 100 streaming on another laptop! Snacks, beers and bundy. One guy came dressed for the occasion in stubbies, footy jersey, Aussie flag cape and, for a bit of a local flavour, a green and gold Vietnamese hat! For another Vietnamese twist, we had a red envelope lucky dip containing song lists for the random sweep. Jordi had obviously done his homework as he ended up being crowned Hottest 100 Sweep Champion for guessing the most number of correct songs in the top 10!

On day 2 of the Lunar New Year we had the privilege of experiencing how the Tet holiday is celebrated in the provinces. Jordi’s counterpart from UNESCO invited us to go with them to her husbands family in Hai Duong, a town 1hr east of Hanoi. Tet is very much a family time, in a similar way to Christmas in the Philippines, and around the world. It was a wonderful insight into Vietnamese culture and family life. The religion is based around honouring the ancestors. Every house has a shrine to the ancestors where offerings of food, money, alcohol etc are made. We arrived for lunch at the family house, a typical long narrow house where the room fronting the street houses the family business, in this case a clothing store. But for Tet all the goods had been taken down and the room cleared as the main eating space for all the men of the family. As we proceeded through the house there was a room with all the women next to the kitchen, at the back a room with all the elders, and plenty of children running from one room to the next. The children had reason to be excited as it is tradition that children be given crisp clean money. It doesn’t seem to matter how much money is given, it is more important that the note be clean and crisp for the new year. I also learned it is important to give and receive with both hands as a sign of respect. I noticed since the last time I was in Vietnam, the country had adopted the Australian mint technology and Vietnamese Dong notes are now plasticised like the Australian notes.

First of all we were taken to meet the elders in the back room and both of us were overcome with emotion at the sentiments expressed by the head of the family, welcoming us to their home and celebrations and wishing us a wonderful stay in Vietnam. We then joined the men in the front room where plenty of rice wine drinking was taking place to the sounds of “Mot, Hai, Ba Gio!” (one, two, three Go!). This was accompanied by delicious roll-your-own fresh Vietnamese spring rolls and noodle soup. After lunch we accompanied the whole family (about 50 people) down the street to the steps of the bank where a family portrait was taken. We ended up staying the night and visiting a nearby Pagoda which is also tradition during Tet.

It was a fabulous 10 days – the perfect balance of cultural experiences with time spent together. I was very impressed with the life Jordi’s carved for himself in Hanoi, the friends he’s made and his grasp of Vietnamese which puts my Ilonggo to shame. Now when we talk I can picture who and where he’s talking about. I’m already looking forward to going back.

21 – The Power and the Passion

In the New Year myself, Aruna and Jo finally got around to making our official courtesy visits to the Governor of the Province, the Mayor of Bacolod and the Provincial Police Chief. These are a requirement of the PNVSCA – the agency that regulates all volunteers that come into the Philippines. Six months late, but better late than never! The Police Chief gave us each a coffee mug; with the Governor we had our photo taken, which appeared in the local Newspaper the following day; but the most eventful was the visit to the Mayor. We had an appointment to meet him in the new city hall which is still being fitted out but is open for receiving visitors. We were kept waiting for over 2 hours until he could see us. We happened to be there on the day that there was a stand off between the city government and the local power supplier. So our Mayor was detained in intense negotiations to try and resolve the problem.

The following article aptly describes the circumstances. It was published on the Experience Negros website on 11 January.

And So There Was Light

Several areas in Bacolod City including the downtown area experienced black-out last Friday night. Except for business establishments with generators, the rest of downtown area had no electricity. The "power struggle" between the city government and the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (CENECO) had shown its ugly face and the consuming public are caught right in the middle of it.

Who's to Blame?

CENECO disconnected the power connection of the Bacolod City Hall, new government center, Libertad Market and other government offices last Thursday morning citing the city's failure to pay its accounts with CENECO.As a result, the Bacolod City government padlocked the administrative building of CENECO after revoking its Mayor's Permit for its failure also to pay its franchise taxes and real estate property taxes to the city.CENECO claimed the black-out last Friday evening was because their vehicles were prevented by the City Legal Enforcement Unit from leaving their premises so they could not send their personnel.This allegation was denied by City Legal Officer Allan Zamora in the newspaper. He said they only closed the business operations of CENECO and not their maintenance department. He said the vehicles of CENECO were not prevented to go out and were even parked outside the CENECO premises.No matter how the two sides keep throwing the blame at each other, it's still the public that's in the losing end. This has to stop since it has already affected public service and the business sector and sending a bad impression to the investors.

All's Well That Ends Well

It's a good thing somebody mediated between the City Government and CENECO before things really got out of hand. Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairperson of the Committee on Communications and Energy, was reported to have asked Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra to mediate between the city and CENECO.The city government and the CENECO reportedly arrived at a compromise agreement during a closed-door meeting at the Bishop's House last Friday night. Power was restored in the City Hall and other areas in Bacolod City late Friday night.We hope this will be the last time this incident will happen since a repeat of this may have a long term negative effect for Bacolod. Most investors prefer investing in the city because of the "business-friendly climate" and we, the public hope it will stay that way.

While we were kept waiting, we certainly weren’t bored! Also waiting to see the Mayor at that time was a reporter and camera man from the local community television station who had an appointment to interview the Mayor. To kill time, they decided to turn the camera and microphone onto us! The questions were quite innocent to start with “How do like Bacolod?”, “How do you find the Filipino people?” etc, but soon moved to “Are you single?” and “Have you found Filipino boyfriends yet?”! When I answered I had an Australian boyfriend of 5 years he (thankfully) found that boring and quickly moved on to Aruna and Jo, and as one is single and the other has a Filipino boyfriend, they were much more interesting to interview! It will apparently air on the community television station in a month or so!

Speaking of television, a documentary has been produced to commemorate 10 years of the AYAD program. It follows the adventures of 6 AYADs on their assignments in 6 different countries. It will screen on network 10 in Australia on March 7. They don’t have a title or a time slot as yet so keep an eye on your television guide.

The last 2 weeks of January I had booked to visit Jordi in Vietnam. We hadn’t seen each other since he visited me in the Philippines for a week on his way to Vietnam. I was eager to check out the life he’d made in Hanoi, meet his friends and colleagues and compare the experience of being an AYAD in the Philippines with being an AYAD in Vietnam. However, after some negotiation, it was agreed that I would reschedule my departure to leave a few days later than planned so I could be present for a very special event that was now going to be taking place on Saturday 17th January. It was the handover (or turnover as its called here) ceremony of the GK Hua Ming village at Handumanan – the village I did the site development plan for in August, construction began in September and 4 months later 50 houses are built! So understandably, I really wanted to be there. Part of the reason the ceremony had been rescheduled to this particular day was because it was the 59th Birthday of Mr Tony Meloto, founder of GK, and he personally flew in from Manila on his birthday to be at our ceremony!

The day was split into two – the paint-a-home contest in the morning and then the formal handover ceremony to the beneficiaries in the afternoon. It was a cool drizzly day. In fact, only a few days before, Bacolod had its coldest day in 10 years – it got down to 17 degrees centigrade! (Actually very pleasant!). Anyway, the weather did not deter the enthusiasm of the teams who came to participate in painting a home and luckily the rain held off long enough for both coats of paint to dry! We were on site from 7.30am and registration opened at 8am. Each team consisted of 5 volunteers and 1 beneficiary. The volunteers came from all walks of life, there were current and former students of St.Johns school who were sponsoring the village; there was a team from the local fire brigade; a team of nuns; and not to be outdone a couple of teams from Bacolod cycling club who arrived on their bikes and got stuck into the painting while still wearing their lycra cycling gear.

My role for the day was to be one of the judges for the paint-a-home contest along with fellow architects Butch and Joe. The criteria for the judging was teamwork, cleanliness and coverage of paint. Teams could receive an extra 5% if they were able to save 1 gallon or more of paint and were deducted 5% if they did not finish within the allotted time of 1.5hrs per coat. It was great to walk around and see everyone having so much fun working together – the bayanihan spirit was definitely alive and well.

In between coats, everyone stopped for lunch. All the teams had been asked to bring a picnic to share with their beneficiary which they ate inside the home they were painting. To supplement the lunch, the St Johns Alumni association had sponsored 5 big whole roast pigs which were cut up and distributed.

At about 3pm Tony Meloto arrived and the ceremony began in the usual fashion with a prayer, the national anthem and a welcome. The first item was to award the winners of the paint-a-home contest. I had the privilege of announcing the winners on behalf of the judges. There were 9 gift vouchers to award, so we had chosen 5 special awards and then the 4 top place getters from the points tally. The cyclists got an award for their dramatic arrival on bicycles, a family who just got on with the job got the quiet achievers award and 2 teams in adjacent houses got a special award for their cooperation on creating something artistic on the divider wall of the duplex. The overall winner had not only painted the house but also done some landscaping around it.

The ceremony then proceeded to the presentation of certificates to the beneficiaries, a speech by Tony Meloto, a response from 3 chosen beneficiaries and the blessing of the houses by the priests. Not all 50 houses were being handed over this time because only 36 beneficiaries had qualified in terms of the minimum 250 hours of sweat equity. The remaining 14 families will get their hours up in the coming weeks as toilets, doors and windows are installed and the landscaping completed. Another handover ceremony will be held for this batch later.

Once the ceremony was complete, Tony Meloto and all the GK people proceeded to GK ERH village (the most well established GK village in the province) where they were putting on a huge dinner and show for 450 guests in honour of Tony’s birthday. GK ERH village is a community of 130 families, a well established organic farm, a training centre and guest accommodation. A local hotel has been providing training in hospitality and a chef from Manila has been donating her time to teach food preparation. Much of the vegetables and salad is grown on site in the organic farm. Every time I’ve eaten there the food has got better and better, and this time, it felt like I was eating at a 5 star restaurant! The food was delicious and the service excellent. And to think that all this was prepared by people who some 4 or 5 years ago were among the poorest of the poor in Bacolod city, squatting on land that was not theirs in makeshift huts wondering where their next meal would come from. It’s truly amazing and inspiring to see what is possible.

After dinner the children of the village performed a dance number, the village band played a few songs and then a birthday cake was presented to Tony. It was in the shape of a GK house! He gave a touching speech in that incredible way he has of inspiring the passion in everyone to do more.