Earthquake

Just before midday today we were hit by an earthquake, 6.7 at its epicentre on the nearby island of Negros.

Immediately the electricity went off and everyone fled out of the buildings onto the playgrounds and streets waiting to see what would happen. Shortly after it was followed by a smaller aftershock.

Earthquakes hit other parts of the Philippines quite regularly but don't occur in Cebu very often. For Cebu this one was big. The ground shook quite vigorously for something like 15 seconds, although it is hard to be precise about how long.

There doesn't seem to be any visible damage to any buildings, and no one here (at least) is hurt in any way. However there was quite a bit of shock, and following the shock there was a lot of giddiness and excitement from all the children. Lessons have been cancelled for the day and everyone sent home.

We are both completely fine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16901385

Founder's Day Part 2

What does it mean to be a Saint?

There are a handful of people in human history who have managed to realise a bit more deeply than the rest of us have just how much they are loved by God. Because they have embraced this love so fully they have a clarity of vision when looking at the world which enables them to see more clearly what is really important and what is not so important. Sometimes these individuals are recognised and celebrated, often they are not.

Giovanni Bosco was such a person in his time. As a young priest working in Turin during the Italian industrial revolution he was shocked by the poverty which was growing all around him, especially the number of abandoned and neglected children. He was also shocked by the reaction of the many wealthy people in the city which was to be blind to the problem or to blame the poor themselves for being poor. So he took a leap of faith and began welcoming some of the street children of Turin into his own home. From there his work grew, in his lifetime he founded many children’s homes and training centres teaching practical skills. He also wrote many books on working with children and on the teaching of all sorts of subjects.

The Salesian congregation today sees its vocation as the continuation of the work of St. John Bosco. Much of the work they do is extremely good, among the poor and destitute children of the world. Here in Cebu they run a youth centre in one of the poorest areas of the city, they work with child prisoners, they run several technical training centres for young people who would not otherwise be able to afford to be educated, and they run a children’s home for abandoned children. They do a lot of very good work.

However, here at DBTC where we are based they also run a private school which charges fees which only the wealthy can afford; and they have a further education college run on similar lines. Here at DBTC the TVED department, where we work, is very much an island of the less well off in the midst of a community with plenty of wealth. Such realities are very much points of debate among the Salesians here, many of them prefer not to work in the institutions orientated towards the rich.

For us there is no room for judgement, after all Steph and I were lucky enough to be born into a country where a good education is provided to all free of charge. The rights and wrongs of private education are set against a very different reality here where what those who cannot afford private education receive is normally substandard.

And yet there is still a contradiction, St. John Bosco’s vocation was to serve the very poorest and let the rich look after themselves, as indeed was the vocation of Jesus in his time. Hence I can’t help feeling that whenever Christians, in any country, choose to work for the rich they haven’t really understood clearly enough the vocation God is calling them too.

Speaking these challenging truths must of course start at home; otherwise I am not really challenging anything but rather scapegoating my own inadequacies onto others. I am acutely aware of Steph and mines failings in this regard having just spent two years in Paris working with those far richer than any of the pupils in the Salesian school here in Cebu. Perhaps it is in seeing the enormous inequality which exists here that I am able to acknowledge and regret where I have been an accomplice to its perpetuation. 

Founder's Day Part 1

The Salesian Congregation was founded by St. John Bosco in Italy during the 19^th Century to work with the young, especially the many poor and abandoned children which the industrialisation of the period was producing. Salesians, all over the world, see their work as a continuation of the work started by St. John Bosco. 

The feast of St. John Bosco, 31^st January, is a big event!

Here at DBTC lessons came to an end at lunchtime on Wednesday 25^th January.

On Thursday the whole community gathered at the nearby Lourdes parish church for a procession back to the school in honour of St. John Bosco. The procession was followed by Mass in the Gym. After mass there began three days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) of games, sports and festival.

On   Sunday all of the students, along with their parents, gathered for mass again. This time we were outside on the playground. Mass was celebrated by the Provincial (read: Regional Leader) of the Salesians in the Southern half of the Philippines. The rest of the day was given over to a party. The parents of each form group organised their own food together, for some a simple shared meal, however in many cases a highly organised feast with table clothes, decorations, caterers brought in the provide the food and waiters employed to serve.  Around this eating there were ice-cream stalls, doughnut stalls, a bouncy castle, an acrobatics show, a climbing wall and even a zip wire from the schools roof.

The last part of the celebrations came on Monday with a trip to a nearby beach for the whole staff of the school. We had a chance to relax, to play silly team games and to swim in the sea.

this first video shows the procession and opening mass which took place on Thursday 26th January.

Sinulog Part 3: The City Centre Procession

To continue the series of posts about Sinulog here is a short video of the our second procession of Saturday 14th January. In the afternoon the statue of Santo Nino was processed along the streets of city centre Cebu at the head of a 3km long column of people. It took us about 4 hours to complete the route.

The Santo Ninos you can see in the video are not the real Santo Nino, but some of the many replicas!

Operation Second Chance

Up until quite recently children in the Philippines who were convicted of criminal offences were treated in exactly the same way as Adults. If their crime merited prison then they were sent to adult prisons.

A few years ago the Documentary Bunso brought this situation to light. It is perhaps the most disturbing film I've ever watched. The film follows the stories of three young boys being held in a Filippino prison. I have attached a short clip at the end of this post but I recommend that you see the whole film if you can find it.

In response to this film, and to the disquiet of those working in the prison service here things have changed.

Today Steph and I went to visit Operation Second Chance which is what we would call in the UK a Young Offenders' Centre. Conditions are still harsh, 169 boys and 5 girls are kept in quite cramped conditions, occupying large communal cells. Facilities are very limited, they had not been able to wash for seven days because there is a problem with the water supply. However crucially these young people are separated from the adult prisoners.

Operation Second Chance is a government run centre, however the Salesians are very involved in the work which takes place there. There is a (nearly) full-time member of staff there funded by the Salesians. They have provided a woodworking workshop and a library where education and skills training can take place.

The Salesians are also involved in the rehabilitation of the boys after they leave the centre, they have a home which accepts the boys after they are released.

Sinulog Part 2: The Parade Through Pasil

After we disembarked from our boat after the Fluvial Parade we were launched immediately into a parade through the streets of Pasil which is one of the poorer areas of Cebu, the video below hopefully gives a small taste of the joy of that procession. This local parade was something organised quite separately from the big city centre parade. It was an experience of religious celebration at its most popular level.

Last weekend Cebu was collectively celebrating in a way that we just don’t have any more in Western Europe. Virtually everyone takes part in the collective celebration, estimates went as high as 3 million on the streets. As we walked through the city people were outside on the streets, smiling widely and shouting out “Pit Senyor” (“Come Lord”) to everyone who passed by. Communities gathered together, slaughtered a pig, lit a fire and roasted it right there in the street offering food to all who passed by. Overweight women could be seen everywhere waving and dancing with Replica Santo Nino statues!

Sinulog Part 1: The Fluvial Parade

Last weekend Steph and I were fortunate enough to experience Sinulog.

Sinulog celebrates the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines in 1521. The Spanish conquistador Magellan landed in Cebu and shortly after baptised many of the local inhabitants (probably more by coercion than conversion). As a baptism gift he gave the community a statue of the child Jesus, the 'Santo Nino'.

This Statue of 'Santo Nino' is still kept in the basilica of the Santo Nino here in Cebu. Once a year he is taken out for a huge celebration. Sinulog is the biggest event of the year in Cebu, literally millions of people flock here from across the Philippines.

On the Friday the statue is taken to the Church of the Virgin Mary on the nearby Mactan Island, from there, on the Saturday morning, he is brought back to Cebu by boat. Thousands of people line the shoreline to see the boat sail past, waving to Santo Nino as he passing, and a lucky few (including us) get to be aboard boats taking part in this fluvial parade.  

Once ashore a 5 hour procession starts which this year travelled nearly 7km and was about 3km long, the back markers arriving an hour later than the statue at the front.

The day culminates in a mass at the basilica celebrated before enormous crowds, many of whom kept a long way from the altar by the number of people present.

Sinulog is a day of celebration which is very hard to describe in words (hopefully the video below and those coming later will help). Music, dancing and singing abound. Replica Santo Ninos, often outnumbering people, being waved and held aloft at every visible angle. Real joy and exuberance rings through the streets. They certainly know how to celebrate!

Thank You for the Christmas Cards

The Philippines postal service is rubbish, despite that a few Christmas cards have made it to us all but one of them after Christmas was already over! Many thanks for thinking of us.

Feeling Loved

Today is my birthday. It goes without saying that it has been a bit different from any previous birthday I've celebrated. 

Being far away has not meant it has been depressing, in fact quite the opposite. One of the joys of being in a different culture is being able to be surprised. I have been genuinely overwhelmed and humbled by all the greetings I've received from the community here. 

Likewise the messages and presents sent from the UK have also been especially meaningful this year. Receiving a Christmas pudding in the post, or an English magazine, would barely merit a mention in normal life but from the perspective of being far away they are real sources of joy. 

I feel very loved.

the video below is my christmas present from Br. Francis, another unexpected joy........

“You intended to do me harm, but God intended to turn it to good”

Today is the feat of the Epiphany! A feast day which in the Western Church celebrates the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus. In the Eastern Church it is a much greater celebration marking the Birth of Jesus, the Baptism of Jesus, the visit of the wise men and the changing of water into wine at the Wedding at Cana.

Over the last few months since arriving here in the Philippines I have been spending some time each day reflecting on the first two chapters of Matthew's Gospel, the chapters which refer most closely to today's feast day. These reflections have gradually become a piece of writing. For those of you who are interested what I've written is available at the link below.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BzVxKp_r3opxOTYwNWE4YzYtNDM5My00OWZjLWI0YTctNjRmNDg0NTQyMjBl

The text is quite long and quite technical so will probably only be of interest to those of you interested in biblical theology and who have enough leisure time to read it. It also has nothing to do with the Philippines except that it was written here.

If any of you are interested and do find time to read it then your opinion, ideas and feedback would be appreciated!

Holiday on Bohol, Part 2: Jungle Living

Tiny pin pricks of light

      dabble through palm leaf lattice.

A gentle patter of rain

drums down on distant leaves.

Goats play and joust

while insects flutter.

Unknown beasts call out shrieking,

unseen from forest walls of every shade of green.

Mosquitoes feast on fresh white flesh,

as giant ants walk in ordered file.

Salamanders run along shadowy beams,

then stop, then run.

The symphony of jungle of life,

lingers long and touches deep.

Holiday on Bohol, Part 1: Peaceful Silence

The gentle stirring of the sea,
the shimmering surface of the water
    reflecting its green tinted sandy bottom.
Light sparkles from wave crests
    while far out boats silently drift along.
Just a touch of breeze drifts
    cooling the tropical air.
All around is silence, not a shout, not a cry,
    only the waves softly breaking nearby.
Oh what beauty! Oh what peace!

New Year in Cebu

Over the course of the last few years I have had the privelege to experience New Year in several different cities, and in all of these places they like fireworks. Last night however was of a completely different order of magnitude, it isn't possible to exaggerate how many fireworks the people of Cebu launched.   

Happy New Year Everyone

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone

Chicken Ala Carte

This video was shown to me by one of the Vietnamese brothers who live here (hence why the link is in Vietnamese), it is a short film which was made in Manila in 2006. I think it is worth a watch.

This Year's Christmas Card

As many of you know Steph and I usually send out Christmas cards. This year unfortunately we won't be sending any cards, so please accept this picture and poem as our offering to you for Christmas 2011!

(Both were produced by Steph)

The gift of Christmas

As Christmas time approaches

And the cold, dark nights draw in

Curled up beside the flickering firelight

Watching snowflakes begin to fall

In a swirling of frosty blue

And dazzling white

Comes the warm golden glow

Of the gift of Christmas

The warmth of a fire of burning love

Of a comforting spirit of hope

Wonder and joyfulness

Warming hearts and souls

Cradled in a manger in a stable

Cradled in a heart full of love

Is the bright warm flame

Of the gift of Christmas

As Christmas time approaches

And the sun still beats down hard

Stretched out beneath the canopy of shadows

Watching palm trees rustle and wave

In a haze of dreamy yellow

And fiery red

Comes the cool silver light

Of the gift of Christmas

The freshness of a breath of inspiring change

Of an unsettling spirit of challenge

Newness and vitality

Refreshing hearts and souls

Cradled in a manger in a stable

Cradled in a heart full of energy

Is the cool refreshing breeze

Of the gift of Christmas

Misa de Gallo

 Literally ‘Masses of the Cockerel’ or ‘Dawn Masses’. There is a tradition here in the Philippines that during the nine days leading up to Christmas mass is celebrated every morning at dawn.

So both yesterday and today we have dragged ourselves from our beds and made our way to the church for a mass beginning at 4.30am.

On the first day we were expecting a half filled church populated by the ultra-faithful. We were wrong! Arriving at 4.20am the church was already packed to capacity, far fuller than for a Sunday mass, with only standing room available within the building. Outside there were half as many people again stood or sat on portable chairs. The attendance was truly impressive. All sections of society were present from new-born babies to the elderly, and unlike many European churches those in their teens and twenties were very much present.

These masses are a form of fasting. To attend them is to give up a usual activity in order to assert that following the way of God is more important. For nine days those who attend sacrifice a bit of sleep in order to make time to prayer more.

For me as a foreigner, these masses are testament to a better understanding of fasting than we sometimes have in our western churches. The masses are in no way woeful laments; rather they are celebrations of joy.  Sleep is sacrificed in favour of something better, a really life giving celebration. The pain of losing sleep is more than compensated for by the joy of celebrating God’s love.

We are only two day in but the sense of joy and positivity emanating from these masses has so far been worth a bit of lost sleep.    

How valuable is human life? How valuable is my life?

Living here at DBTC these are two questions which I find myself asking a lot.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and humanism all preach the equality of every human being. Every person is of equal and infinite value. According to these traditions the value of a human life cannot be attached to a person’s level of productivity or usefulness. We have a value greater than what we do. This is a tenet of belief in which most of us would assent to believe.

But living here in the Philippines the reality of inequality is powerfully evident to me every day. The Philippines is a deeply unequal society. The richest 10% earn more than twenty times more on average than the poorest 10%¹. The rich live like middle class Europeans or Americans whereas the poor live in slums without running water and without access to decent education or health care. Virtually every service here is privatised, state provided services are very sparse and of a very low quality. If you have money then all is well, if you don’t then life is very hard.

Already we have had a student drop out of his studies because his grandmother became ill, the families already stretched income couldn’t stretch far enough to pay for medicine, so he left his training in order to work and be able to buy the necessary medicine. It is possible that he will never get another chance to study.

Privatised health care means that the poor are thrown into poverty by illness and the destitute are simply left to die. Private education means that the wealthy get their children well educated and into well paid jobs while the children of the poor are taught in larger classes, and with fewer resources (sometimes without even paper and pens), so all but a few are destined to end up in poorly paid jobs.

Many of our students have to work in the evenings to earn money despite attending 11 hours of college every day. Lots of them try to eat only once in the day so as to save money.

Being here has made me appreciate the importance of public institutions like a good postal service, a good library service, clean water and reliable transport networks. Universal access to these things is a hallmark civilised society; in the Philippines they are available only to the wealthy.

To live in a land where one life is so obviously not of equal value to another is deeply unsettling. I don’t deceive myself into believing I come from a land where things are any more civilised. The globalisation of economics means that inequality is the responsibility of all of us; be it visible outside our front door or thousands of miles away.

Words about equality are very cheap! Sadly most of us live within the sphere of influence of an economic worldview which acts to commodify everything and everyone into a unit of production then hang a price tag on it. None of us are worth anymore than the value of our function. In a world where everyone and everything has its prices there are inevitably those not worth the spending money on to keep alive.

At the heart of all of this is a sickness of which it is hard to make sense. Dwelling too long on these questions forces me to question whether the world would really gives a damn about saving my life had I been born in a slum in a poorer part of the world. Confronted by the shocking negative answer to that question I become driven to try to earn the privileges acquired by an accident of birth. But this striving in turn leads to dead-ends; trying to earn our right to be considered valuable can only ever lead to dehumanisation and all too often it leads to mental illness.

But what alternatives do we have?

¹ http://www.newint.org/columns/country/2004/09/01/philippines/

A Day in the life of a TVED Student

This video, which was created by Steph, tells the story of an average day for a Technical Trainee.

A New Reading Site – Part 2: Reading the Bible

Continuing from the thoughts I shared two weeks ago this week I want to expand on that theme a little. Being aware of my own reading site is of paramount importance when living in a very different culture from my own.

One exercise I have found fascinating during my time here is to attempt to deconstruct my own reading of the bible. The bible is a very ancient text; it has continued to be read through thousands of different cultural, political, economic and religious worldviews. Through all of this history up to today people have found within these texts meaning and inspiration, but crucially they have found this meaning and inspiration in very different ways. Too often we assume that the truths we find (or don’t find) in these texts are those which were intended by the original authors and those understood by all peoples throughout the world and throughout history. I all too easily assume that my interpretation is ‘The Interpretation’.

One of the challenges of reading the bible here is to try to put to one side what seems to me to be the most obvious interpretation of the text and instead to try to see it, as best I can, through the eyes of the people here.  The reading site of the people here is, of course, much closer to the reading site of the first Palestinian Christians who actually wrote the New Testament. The Philippines is a country of vast inequality, it is dominated by powerful neighbours, and it is a country of visible religious fervour.

Take the example of Matthew 23:14-30, the text to which we give the subheading  ‘The Parable of the Talents’¹. This is a text which reads very differently when read from the different perspectives of the rich world and the poor world.

In the rich world we understand this parable in completely non-economic terms; the master is a benevolent God who demands that we make best use of our abilities. We with all our wealth and opportunity look at the text from the perspective of the servant given Ten Talents. This parable has influenced us so much that we have even come to call our abilities ‘talents’. So most often preaching on this text in the rich world will be about making the most of our abilities and not being like the bad servant with one talent who wasted what God had given him. His punishment at the end of the story is just desserts for his wasteful behaviour.

Try reading this text from the perspective of the poor man of the story, the man given only one Talent. This man, like many people here, maybe struggles to find enough money to survive, this man’s opportunities are maybe very limited, each day this man might run the risk of not being unable to feed his children. Such is the world in which many people here in Cebu live.

From the perspective of this man the actions of the master (in the parable) cannot be those of a benevolent God, they are the actions of an unmerciful master, they are the all too familiar actions of the rich and powerful over the daily lives of many people here who are made to suffer merely for being poor. Thus the parable is no longer a metaphor for the kingdom of God, but a symbolic narrative of their real world where the already rich get richer and the already poor are trodden on. The consequences handed out to the servant with one talent at the end of the parable are not the actions of God but the callous reaction of the rich towards those who are unable or unwilling to participate in the economic world of the rich. Take for example the many people here who suffer for lack of the medical resources which the richer world takes for granted, or those who suffer from a lack of access to the education that the richer world takes for granted, while at the same time the richer complain about (what they call) high taxes. Those in poverty are all too often blamed for being poor.

One biblical story, but two very different reading sites produce two very different interpretations. Neither is necessarily right or of more value. The challenge to all of us is not to believe that our own perspective is the only possible perspective.

(¹ I have borrowed, and adapted, the two reading perspectives of this text from the ‘The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics’ by the American theologian ‘Ched Myers’)