Mangoes on the Dashboard

It took a while to adjust.
I couldn’t get over the cleanliness of our house where we stayed, it was luxury!
The abundance of fans,
internet,
and a lovely open kitchen with good knives and refrigeration.
We even had a toaster.
Toast! What a novelty!


We got receipts for things,
we ate fresh fruit and vegetables in abundance
(fresh produce is nonexistent in Indian cooking),
and we could wear shirts that showed our shoulders.
What is this place!

Despite feeling quite jarred and shocked at the overt Americanization of this place,

we still managed to find the real Philippines.

Large open markets,
mangoes on the dashboard,
cats in the fruit boxes,
the smell of fresh fish
side by side the smell of freshly baked goods,
slums that flood with tides of sewage water each morning,
children whose teeth fall out at 4 years old from rot,
mothers who are too poor to pay for their birth at a clinic
and thus give birth at home, alone,
families where the father chooses to spend the food money on alcohol,
houses that are caving in and have tarps for doors.

We found these people.
They were just a walk away from the paved highways,
just down the road from the retail stores and fast-food joints.
And they became our friends.

Friends from the slum, attending church. They are so lovely.

Free prenatal check-up in a slum. Measuring the belly....
This is Odette. This is her fourth pregnancy, and the father has run off and refuses contact with her. Her other children have a different father, and he's not around either.

We also saw the effects of generations and generations of broken families.
Years and years of fatherless families have left a gaping hole in the understanding of commitment, nationwide.
Many of the women we saw who where pregnant had never been married and had children from various “husbands”.
The word “husband” and “boyfriend” is interchangable there,
so often I’d be doing a prenatal interview with a woman, and ask who would help her with the baby.
“My husband.”
“Oh! Are you married?”
“No.”

In the Philippines, being a Catholic country,
once you get married, you can’t get divorced (it’s illegal),
and only on special circumstances can you get separated.
Thus,
this generation has decided that they don’t want to get married.
If there’s no way out, why commit in the first place?
Besides, weddings are glitzy and expensive...
so they just move in together. It’s easy.

Unfortunately,
as easy as moving in,
it’s just as easy to move out.
So after a kid or so,
fathers move on to other girls,
and children are left with no dad.
These children grow up with the knowledge that relationships don’t last for long,
and that although their 19-year old boyfriend/husband is with them now,
he will most likely not stick it out for the long haul.
He may even call it quits during the pregnancy.

I did a prenatal check up on a girl who was 18, and thought she was pregnant...
if it was positive,
this would be her 3rd child.
She skipped her period the last month,
and so we did a pregnancy test,
turned out to be negative, and she did a little leap of joy.
18 years old. She already has two kids!

This was such a drastic change from India, where there are virtually no babies born out of wedlock. Marriage is such a big deal,
it means security and strengthening family lines...to disregard it would to bring shame to the whole family.
Here, it would be a surprise to find someone who’s having kids and is actually married.


One time, we were doing a teaching at a free women’s class at a clinic,
and women at all stages of pregnancy and motherhood came pouring through the gate.
As the chairs were filling up,
there were two girls in particular who caught my eye in the second row.

Still having the frame of a young girl and not yet a woman,
a bulge that could have been adolescent fat was showing under her t-shirt.
But no,
she was 16... and 6 months pregnant.
Her friend was also 16,
but a little less far along, maybe 4 months.
The two girls had such young faces,
joking about things here and there,
being teenagers...now having a new life grow inside them.
Being a mom at 16.

During our teaching,
we asked the women any complaints they had of minor things during their pregnancy.
The young girl put up her hand and said she was getting acne.

Pregnancy, or puberty?

And this was not the exception,
it was what was saw everyday.
Most of the women we met had their first child (or two) before they turned 20.
One girl that we got to follow week after week, Michelle,
she was 24 years old and having her 6th pregnancy.

The government's solution?
The hospitals advertised free bilateral tubal ligation (female sterlization) for women with 5 or more children and are under 30 years old.
... is that really the way to fix things?


What about issues deeper than surgery...
commitment,
repairing the fatherless generations,
faithfulness...


We also got to know local women (and their stories) through the government-run clinics.
Our team who had been there for the month previous,
had paved the way with open doors
into various maternal health centres all over the city.

We got to see organized clinics,
midwives and doctors who were relaxed and loved their job.
We saw prenatal care like we hadn’t seen before.
The health centres were civilized.
Needles were disposed of properly.
Every pregnant woman was getting immunized for swine flu,
because the goverment provided it,
and the workers were diligent in following through.

Mothers were on track with their tetanus injections,
and babies were immunized at all the right times.
If they were showing signs of anemia,
iron pills were freely given,
and the women were educated on danger signs in pregnancy at every visit.
They were treated with dignity and love. It was wonderful to see.

So in the Philippines,
with our concentrated focus on prenatal care, I saw how a working,
sustainable, basic clinic could look.
All you need is a room,
with a few dividers,
a few skilled dedicated staff,
a baby scale,
a fridge for keeping immunizations cool....

My perspective was wider for the look of the world’s health...
and it was a nice country to finish off in.

Next stop?
Australia.

Philippine First Days

When I first arrived in the Philippines from India,
I was in culture shock.

I had gone from wearing flowy,
modest punjabis with scarves in sweltering heat,
buying vegetables down the road from a family with a hand scale at a roadstand,
eating with my hands and drinking tea for 3 rupees (7 cents) on the street, to....

Western clothes,
tight fitting t-shirts,
the land of make-up,
hair straighteners,
big box stores,
aisles with everything wrapped in plastic,
plastered with a bar code,
and you could get Hamburger Helper in a box imported from America.

There was air conditioning in every store,
people had keys to their house,
and there was toilet paper in the bathroom.

The second or third day after we arrived
(there were 5 of us who came later, because we stayed in India for an extra month),

the team took us on their “regular Saturday routine”
which consisted of doing a children’s program at a slum in the morning, then walking through an airconditioned mall, to wait at the bust stop next to the fast food joint, to take the free airconditioned bus down the smooth civilized highway,
to an industrial part of town with massive Wal-Mart like stores, shopping carts and long lines.

My eyes bulged open wide as I slowly walked down the aisles in a shocked daze...
beholding rows and rows of canned foods,
mass produced clothing on hangers,
and bar code after bar code of packaged goods.

I didn’t want to be there.
I didn’t know what to do.

Any “list” that I had of things that I potentially wanted to buy,
had flown out the window of my mind. I was overwhelmed.

The others, more adjusted than I, casually filled their arms and baskets with sprigs of this and a can of that,
“Oh let’s try this,” and “Wow, I haven’t had this for months!”

I bought a pocketcomb.



We then proceded to a nearby, massive Starbucks.

The air conditioning chilled you as soon as you entered, and there was a “door opener” who greeted you through the wall-to-wall glass windows.
There was “cafe art” hung.
Shades of cream and mocha and espresso bean coated the walls,
and all the Starbucks “popular favorites” were professionally displayed on the board behind the baristas.
The latest jazz mix-CD played lightly enough in the background to find yourself leisurely tapping your foot while waiting in line.

I got a frama-lappa-chocolate something for 3 dollars ( enough for 4 lunches in India),
and sat on a plush velvet coffee-coloured armchair by the window.

What is this.

This looks exactly like North America.
This scene could be coming straight out of a downtown street in Winnipeg, and yet I am on an island in the Philippines.

My thrift store clothes are baggy and not matching.... but this is outreach, right?
Just this morning we were holding kids in a slum,
and now I’m drinking a frilly chocolate drink,
sitting in a luxuriously comfortable chair,
and I’m actually getting cold from the intense, unrelenting air conditioning!
I tuck my barefeet up into the plush seat and take it all in.

The half-litre of sugary-sweet coffee and whip cream were
settling in my stomach and shocking my system.
We didn't eat very many sweet things in India.

Culture shock.
I don’t like it.
Everything’s so.... organized.
so... excessive?

Oh man,
is this what it’s like?
How am I going to survive!



.....

What Have I Left Behind?

This is a poem:
that I wrote in the Philippines,
to reflect on India.
Remembering moments, situations,
pictures that remain on my mind...







what have I left behind?
dust
rocks in the road
the people whose smiles capture your heart
whose hands are stained with henna
and lean up against crumbling
moist
cement walls.

I have left behind
billowing fabric doors
and one room houses

chubby babies
and thin mothers

and smoke that is so potent with spice
that it makes a burn in
your eyes
your throat
and you cough.

I have left behind smooth
frictionless stairs
and
musty cobbled
ancient backways

that open up to a lively street
of sorting rice
wandering dogs
the whir of sewing machines
and the swing of incandescent bulbs.

Turn the corner and
the goats on the rubble
of the garbage mountain
stop their scurry for a moment
as we take swift steps
down a fork in the winding road.


I have left behind
a place
where rings on your hands
mean nothing
and rings on your toes
mean everything

a place where ears and noses
are adorned with a gold
that shines
bright against skin tones of olive and caramel

a place where
babies look better with eyebrows and
men look better in moustaches

a place that conceals the collar bone
but reveals the ribs

where
children with kohl-smudged eyes
sleep soundly on dark marble floors
of a goverment hospital

nurses scuttle in starched whites
gaggles of Muslim women
huddle in gowns of black
and a young girl faints in her chair
from her first miscarriage

this place
of joy mixed with sorrow
oppression and progression
hard labours and hot climates
silver shackles and pocket combs

in the midst
of it all--

yet
no necklace is too sparkly
no pattern is too outrageous
no crowd is too large
no smell is too strong
no braid is too long


and
there is
always
a reason
to smell of fresh
jasmine flowers.