Confessions of a Cartographer in Crisis: Don’t Precariatise Yourself to Get Out of Precarity

This 3-year scholarship in Aotearoa New Zealand is the longest “contract” I’ve ever had, but I used to live on 3-month contracts for a long time. Now, I’m a bit past the first year of the PhD study. I must say that just having an improvement in material conditions is helping me have longer-term plans. I am still in precarity in many ways, but the experience has helped me heal my precariatised mind.

For many years prior to the PhD study, I used to run after flights, classes, side jobs, networking events, etc. The work week was like this: Monday, you’re having a workshop in an island. 3 days later, you have to rush to the other end of the region to catch a public official. Then, back to the capital for reporting. Get stuck in endless traffic congestion. Go get your things in the slum where you’ve been living for seven years. Then, rush to another crisis zone. Make a map in the 4x4 car, airplane, taxi, Mang Inasal (barbecued chicken) restaurant, hotel room, etc. Make a map of everywhere, anywhere you are. The reports are always due yesterday. Wait, there’s another typhoon. Oh, the humanitarian cluster meeting is in 15 minutes, and I haven’t prepared anything. Oh, you forgot to write that proposal and make progress in your masters degree. Foreign consultants are calling, and they need that big piece of geospatial data now, while you are travelling in a zone with only 12kbps of Internet connection in the middle of Samar island, which faces the mighty Pacific Ocean. And budots, an awesome folk-modern fusion song genre, playing in the background of the van. HQ needs to present the work in the next big international conference, so make and send the map, whatever it takes. The disaster-affected population are still in temporary housing, and they don’t have water. Meanwhile, the property developers are waiting to demolish their coastal homes, and you are powerless to stop them with all your evangelical upbringing, planning license, nationalist education, geospatial training, and humanitarian experience. But don’t worry, your work is an offering to God, Country, and the UN Secretary-General anyway. That’s good enough for now.

Your bag must contain the essentials: key documents, medicine, gadgets. Berocca, a performance tablet, is your candy. Your shoes must be good, just in case you have to run because there’s some explosion somewhere. Or just in case soldiers fancy that you’re a subversive and try to abduct you, even if you’re working with government at various levels. You’re both friend and enemy of the state. Your country needs you, but it also wants you dead.

Then comes the weekend. Wash your laundry. Slice tomatoes and salted eggs and have a normal Sunday morning. Then, say hello to your love (and don’t forget your mom), and then quickly a goodbye again. Set your alarm for an early, 4 am Monday flight. Pack your stuff and clothes, even the wet ones. If you’re lucky, then you can go back to Manila more often. Home? What’s that?

Everyday, check your email every 15 minutes if you got the foreign scholarship and university offer. And change your password often because of the hackers. Do this for a long time.

This habit of endless running will break your mind and soul into a thousand pieces.

Once, there was a young, hopeful, and talented person who approached me and asked for advice. “Do you have any tip for me to become like you, David?”, he said. I answered, “Please don’t do it exactly the way I did it. Please don’t damage yourself.”

Fast forward to here in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand: for a year, I just walked to and back to school. With friends, I travelled for a bit. I had time to read more, write more, have therapy, make maps, fall in love, play the guitar, sleep less irregularly, prepare food, etc.

After a prolonged time of working in disaster and war zones, I see that the ordinary, intentional life is not bad.

But that life is not possible when our whole generation is in seemingly perpetual precarity. My case is not extraordinary. We the current young adult cohort was taught to glorify the manic, entrepreneurial, risk-taking, over-achieving person, but that is just rushing our way to extinction. The promise of “just work hard and trust the process” is both false and wrong on a systemic level. Only a few get through, only for them be thrown back into precarity again because of the unsustainable and annihilationist systems we have today. Meanwhile, the inequalities are jarring.

And then there was the terrorist attack in Christchurch last 15 March. While the white supremacist was gunning down our muslim brothers and sisters, there was a school strike by children for the climate nearby. I was with the children, and I felt very hopeful for the planet. While the white supremacist terrorist was implementing an outdated imperial project, the children were doing the haka for the planet and everyone.

But the experience is very difficult to process. My house is only a few blocks away from the mosque where the murders happened. In the past, I’ve been writing and telling everyone that there is no place that is completely safe in the Philippines, that there are only places of varying risk. That applies to Aotearoa (New Zealand), too. Anyway, I’m in a city that unfortunately went through devastating earthquakes not so long ago. Apologies if this paragraph is still very incoherent.

Anyway, we need to dream and work for a future where the climate crisis is gone; a universal basic income is popular; pluralism and diversity are always expected; and worker-owned tech cooperatives that prosper are the norm, etc. Regarding my mapping, I’m thinking of a careful and caring cartography — a caretography. That makes sense to me.

Also, it’s time to keep moving again. I think that too much of the settler life will hasten my entropy. And I miss making maps for and with the Pacific.

“If you don’t become the ocean, then you’ll be seasick every day.” — Leonard Cohen

This provisional season in my life is a privilege. It’s not forever. And I will use it to help the people and places I care about: Aotearoa and Pilipinas. Especially the second one. To do that, I promise to stay sane and stable somehow, especially materially. I need to continue to be stronger, so I can help. And I don’t have to do it alone.

Look it up: precarity. We need to beat that together as a generation. We, the precariat, must fight, build, and grow our way out of it as a group.

“For one of us to make it through, a hundred of us have to try.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez