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’)

Images of November

Teaching

After two weeks of teaching the first conclusion I can definitely report is that teaching is Hardwork!

Steph and I are teaching English and Maths to the technical trainees. They spend most of their time learning practical skills but also have lessons in English, Maths, Entrepreneurship, Ethics, Theology and PE.  This education is alongside, daily mass, frequent prayers, practical chores and hobby time.

We are teaching all the English and Maths, and also writing programmes for both subjects which will be used by the teachers who follow us in years to come, not just here but also at the other Salesian Training Centres across the Southern Philippines.

Every week we each have 14 hours of teaching, 8 hours of assisting the others teaching, 1 hour of faculty meeting and a Marathon Saturday afternoon when we give extra classes to those who need them for as long as it takes, yesterday it took just over four hours. On top of that there is all the planning, marking and logging of results. I am sure the experienced teachers among my readers will think nothing of this relatively light workload. But for someone who has never taught before, and so is lacking confidence, it is pretty tiring.

We have 220 students, the biggest class is 37, the smallest is 23

Despite the tiring nature of the work I am enjoying the challenge. Teaching the intelligent students is relatively easy, it is the less able ones who present the challenge, but they also provide the biggest reward. There is definitely a certain thrill in helping an 18 year old to grasp simple addition.

This experience of being a teacher is itself teaching me a lot about the virtue of patience, teaching involves a continuous need to be patient. Understanding how concepts which I find easy can be difficult for another person does not come naturally. The temptation to get frustrated with their slowness to learn is an ever present.

This necessity, as a teacher, to try to see the subject through the eyes of the student is, once the frustration has past, a real gift.

Why didn't Noah Swat the Mosquito?

These are really annoying....

A New Reading Site – Part 1: Reading the Reality before my Senses

Whenever I encounter a new experience or encounter a new reality my brain quickly goes into overload trying to make sense of it. My brain does not sit easy in the midst of experiential chaos; I like to make order out of chaos at least to the satisfaction of own mind. I am pre-disposed towards finding conclusion to situations quickly. This tendency is not a bad thing, intelligence is there to be used, and yet at the same time it is an approach to new realities which is full of risk. I have to continually remind myself of the arrogance of a resident alien believing he can make logical sense of the Philippines within a few weeks or months.

So I have been getting very philosophical, thinking a lot about how I see the world, and how I make sense of the world. Here is where I am up to!

Whenever we encounter something new our pre-existing dispositions, ideas and prejudices weigh heavily on how we see, interpret and understand any information we receive. The way in which we make sense of the world depends very heavily on the place from which we view the realities in front of us; all of us have a particular location from which we read the world, our own personal ‘Reading Site’.

Take for example a written text, a novel, a sacred script or a newspaper article. The interpretation of this text often owes as much to the ‘reading site’ of the reader than it does to the intentions of the author. Two people can read the same text and yet construct a very different interpretation of it.

What goes for written texts in this example applies also to wider experience, to the sights we see with our eyes, to the discussions we have, to news media, to films, to liturgy, to art, to magazines and to music.

I as a Western European, so my first instinct is inevitably to make sense of The Philippines from my Western European ‘reading site’.  I have to be aware that this affects what I notice, what strikes me as important, what affects me emotionally, what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense.  I have to remember that ‘Objective Truth’ is always hidden behind a thick wall of ‘Subjective Truth’. As a human being I cannot stand outside the reality I have brought with me. (Incidentally I am very aware that these ideas about truth are in fact the result of my own very post-modern reading site!)

To believe we can read reality without a ‘Reading Site’ is to delude ourselves. However being conscious of my inherent prejudices and assumptions can allow me to be on alert to them. I can attempt to make judgements more slowly and listen to the world around me much more carefully than I normally would. The challenge while living here is not to make sense of the world here according to my own ideas and prejudices, that is easy. The real challenge is to deconstruct, and become aware of, my own ‘reading site’; and to attempt to understand how the ‘reading site’ of the people who live here is different.

What does reality look like for the very poorest people? Where are they seeing reality clearer than I am? And at the same time, what are their prejudices and pre-existing ideas that obscure their lenses?

What do I, as a wealthy European, look like through the eyes of a Philippino child living on the streets of Cebu? What do I, as a citizen of a seemingly secularising nation, look like through the eyes of a devoutly Catholic Philippino? Who am I from their reading site?

Pacquiao v Marquez

This morning we experienced another cultural phenomenon. Philippinos are not just devoted to Catholicism, they are also devoted to Manny Pacquiao!

Manny Pacquiao is the reigning World Welterweight Champion, and considered by many experts to be the best pound for pound boxer in the world. To the Philippinos he is much more than that, he is their only world class sports star and probably second only to 'Imelda' as the most famous living Philippino. The man himself is an unusual boxer, in interviews he is quite humble and complimentary towards his opponent, he prays in the ring before he fights, and when he isn't boxing he is an elected congressman in the national parliament.

We were woken by the sound of the sports coverage being played on loudspeakers. This was a full five hours before the fight actually started. Most Philippinos can't afford the pay-per-view cost of seeing the fight in their home. So neighbourhoods will club together and split the cost. The fight was as much a social occasion as a sporting event. Early masses were packed with people who would normally go later, even the homily was about Pacquiao.

At 1.00pm everything in the Philippines stopped and they collective paid homage to their hero.

As it happened the fight was much closer than we had been lead to believe it would be. At the end most of our fellow watchers seemed to think that the Mexican Marquez had won, but not according to the judges. Pacquiao edged it on a split decision.

As you can imagine they are all very happy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/boxing/15710641.stm 

Praying for Peace

Here in the Philippines today is a national day of prayer for peace. We, along with the whole school, stopped lessons at 11.00am to pray the rosary for peace. It was not just a two minute pause, everyone stopped for twenty minutes of prayer.

11^th November has no historical significance for the Philippines. The First World War was a very European war fought a long way away. The Second World War was, of course, very different. The Philippines lost 800’000 lives, of which 750’000 were civilians.

Today (11^th November) is not a day on which soldiers are honoured or remembered, it is simply a day of marking the cost of war, of mourning, and of longing for peace.

This of course contrasts with the UK. Over recent years (in the UK) the 11^th November has drifted from being a day on which we lament the cost of war and pray for peace towards being a day on which we celebrate our military in a very partisan way. Wearing Poppies has subtly become understood as supporting our soldiers at war rather than remembering all the victims of war regardless of political allegiance. Unquestioning support of the military is now main-stream, to criticise soldiers has become a form of heresy. (If you take offense at me expressing this opinion then that illustrates exactly my point)

All of this is nothing new, in the 1930s there were significant numbers of First World War veterans who felt that their experience, and the deaths of their comrades, were being used as a justification for future uses of violence. These men rejected attempts to give retro-active meaning to their (as they saw them) pointless military experiences, or to the (as they saw it) pointless death of their fellow soldiers, and spoke against a cheap military jingoism which was beginning to grow amongst a younger generation who hadn’t experienced the horrors of the Somme or Paschendaele.

Today’s time of prayer for peace has been quite eye-opening. It has allowed me to see a different, perhaps more life-giving, way of marking Remembrance Day.  A day to free ourselves from the partisanship of only mourning our own dead; a day to rid ourselves of the immediate assumption that what is ‘us’ is always righteous; a day to be very cautious in declaring any war worth the price; a day to question ourselves as to the ways in which we can be builders of peace; and above all a day to let the indescribable pain of war overwhelm us and in the midst of this pain to allow ourselves to be inspired to change.

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie;

Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.