Thoughts about the Philippines
I write this as someone with parents and many relatives in the Philippines. Like other folks with ties to the Philippines, I was watching Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) closely. I had spoken to my mom the day before the super typhoon hit, and she seemed nonchalant about the whole event.
“It’ll miss us,” she said, “don’t worry.”
It did miss the island of Luzon, staying south and hitting its target: the island of Leyte. Even though I knew that the storm wouldn’t hit my parents’ home turf, there was nothing comforting about knowing that a super typhoon was on its way.
I go to the Philippines at least once a year, now that my parents have moved there permanently. I’m always struck by the extreme contrasts that I see immediately after leaving the airport in Manila. Whatever route you make it out of the airport’s immediate vicinity, you’ll notice the extreme contrasts between the modern skyline of Manila and dwellings that are quite the opposite. At stops you’ll encounter Filipino vendors (adults and children) hawking cigarettes, water, flowers, or wanting to clean your car windows for a peso or two. The sight of these vendors or the old hunchbacked women sweeping the sidewalks continue to unsettle me whenever I’m in Manila. My parents, however, have become inured to the sights. So have, I imagine, much of Manila’s population. To me Manila is a paradoxical city. It imagines itself as a thriving, modern city. But if you look more closely, and you’ll see the stark realism of poverty, shoddy infrastructure, and children everywhere. Manila can trick the eyes.
The media categorized the Philippines as “developing” as the reportage on the typhoon increased. Only in times of great natural disasters like the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 and now with the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan and its significance to climate history does the media care about the island nation. More so, it constructs the Philippines as a “developing” country. In someways, the qualifier is true, seeing the shoddy infrastructure blown to bits after the typhoon it. Yet, I also wonder if the Philippines will ever be thought of as anything different. When does the Philippines become “developed?”
My parents decided to move back to where they were born a few years ago. The drive to their home in the provincial countryside cuts through areas where landscapes have clearly not been developed and government ineffectiveness, dare I say corruption, can literally be felt. Paved roads without warning can turn into miles of dirt and gravel. Every time I’ve taken the three-hour drive to my parents’ home, there’s always a bridge project that’s incomplete or a detour to be taken. Infrastructure projects are often left unfinished as allocated money for these projects allegedly goes “elsewhere” as I’m told by the locals. Ask anyone in the provinces willing to speak about the Philippine government and you’ll often hear the same word repeated: “corrupt.”
On the drive to my parents’ house, smack dab in the middle of rice paddies, you’ll also see gigantic mansions built by Filipinos who have worked abroad. New SUVs and cars are parked in front of them. Working abroad has helped many Filipinos, including my parents, build their dream homes. This is abundantly clear when you see the strange juxtapositions between modern architecture and the picturesque rural backdrop of the provinces. It’s a landscape of contradictions that defines a nation of extremes. These contradictions exist in Manila, as anyone will tell you whose experienced flying in and out of the airport, and are amplified when you start your drive outside of the city to throughout the surrounding provinces. A gigantic three story mansion against the backdrop of rice fields is a sight to behold. When I ask my parents about the structure, they respond indifferently, “That’s your uncle’s house.”
I imagine that the landscapes of the island of Leyte is much like the landscape of Luzon—an island of extremes. Manila is to Luzon as Tacloban City is to Leyte.
Photos and videos of the destruction in Tacloban City have populated the Internet. The typhoon didn’t discriminate between modern and shoddy structures. The typhoon bulldozed vast tracks of land in Tacloban City and the surrounding locations. As I looked at more images published on various news websites, I started seeing similarities that existed in my parents’ province. My parents also live close to the shore, and only a short distance away from their house is a pop-up shoreline shantytown built on stilts—homes made of scrap metal and reclaimed wood. I saw this image again and again in the pictures of Tacloban City, with only the stilts standing.
