The Tondo Trinity: Bat People, Drainage Dwellers, and the soon to be displaced

Visited the Tondo slum where millions of people are trying to cling to a life so precarious that any piece of infrastructure, no matter how crumbling, provides a piece of their survival strategy. There for we have what are being called "Bat People", those who piece together shacks that hang suspended from freeway overpasses. They cannot stand up in them, yet some have been there so long they've raised their kids. Having no land rights or access to land, they claim the air above it, baking from the heat of the cement and being rattled by constant traffic overhead. Some 150,000 per year come from the country to the city in Manila and and about 50,000 end up here. Or they end up here:

This is a drainage pipe under a road. We crawled inside and met a family of four who are living there, along with three other families have made that wet, dark space their home for the last two years. Crouching over as we listened to their story I could not stand up straight as the sweat dripped off my nose. The father had seasonal work, the mother had her hands full, the oldest daughter had just dropped out of high school because she didn't have the extra money needed for school projects -- amounting to about $1.50. Her future is turning on such a small hinge.

As I travel to observe these dramatic situations and help my students formulate strategies, it seems like there is a fine line between voyeurism and gathering the information, personal experience and perspectives necessary to be an advocate. I pray that my glimpses into humanity may lead to God's bringing of peace for this family and others in the cities of the world.

Have I become so strange?

In the Botocan community (slum) in Manila I visited Aaron and Emma Smith (he an American and she a Filipina that grew up in the Balik Balik slum that nancy Donat ministered in -- she as a little girl knew Nancy). They are Servant Partners staff who are living there incarnationally. I walked with them down a labyrinth of alleyways, over an open sewer ditch, past dogs and roosters, by dozens of children playing between rusting tin siding, sprouting in the slums like daisys in the cracks of the concrete. I sat in their two-room space where they live with their 2 year old son Zach who sleeps with them on the floor. They have running water and electricity which makes them slightly better off than their neighbors but it means a greater chance of them being able to sustain their efforts at planting a church over the long haul. The kids on their alley love them and kept peeing in out of curiosity.

Had my first ride in a Jeepnee yesterday, and also my first ride in twhat they call a Tricycle here, a motorcycle with a side car. I sat sidesaddle on the back and held on for dear life as my friend got the side car. It reminded me of the question Ray Bakke always asks: "what is better, a bicycle or a jet airplane? Answer: depends on where you want to go and who is with you. The same is true of ministry models and churches. No one size fits all needs and goals."

We also visited a house church in the Welfareville Slum, Block 37.1. This area was flooded in the recent typhoon. What a mess. What chaos. What amazing beauty in the lives of those we met. It was the worst labrynthine slum I have ever been in. Worse than Calcutta, worse than San Jose - CR, worse than Mexico City, worse than China. Trash burning, the black acrid smoke clogging the lungs. Shacks cobbled together -- housing made of trash. Thousands of illegal electrical connections.

We sat under a tarp covered area next to a shanty -- a space for the church gathered. At one point a woman shared her testimony in Tagalog. She and her son had been separated in the flood from the typhoon, and was missing for three weeks. He had just been returned to her. She herself was nearly drowned as she tried to cross a street to get to work. The raging waters carried her away. Because she missed work, she lost her seamstress job, and the $4/day wages. She was in tears with gratitude for her life and the life of her son, but in need of a solution.

That night I ate dinner alone, exhausted from the exposure, the issues, the discussions. I signed my bill for the dinner and realized what had just spent could have fed her for five days. As I travel to the slums of the world, I am more troubled, not less.

As we ended the service with songs and prayers I told the women gathered that our students had come from around the world to visit them because we heard that Jesus (Hesus) was in their midst, in Block 37.1, and if they loved one another they would see him. I aid they are not alone, that people all over the world are praying for them. Their warm smiles and attention told me that they felt encouraged, but I continued to be troubled. Had I over-spoken? Did I promise too much? Weren't these words easy for me to say? Nevertheless, I felt it was right.

From there we went to a mega church that meets in a mall. They are reaching young, affluent youth. Thirteen services, the latest media, lots of energy. It might be said that they are reaching a constituency that no one else is through their methods. But I left with the question, "what does reaching mean?" I hope their vision of the church includes the poor I had left earlier that morning.

I felt empty. I wondered, "have I become so strange that I cannot enjoy worship among the comfortable? " God help me if I am becoming judgmental. God renew your church to include justice for the poor.

My Search for Sex Workers in Manila

So we walked along Quezon street in Manila tonight, horns blaring, sewer vents stinking, nervously picking our way across crumbled concrete hoping to run into young women selling themselves. Our Samaritana guides rehearsed what we would do. They would make the contact, we would step back and pray. Before long we came upon a group of people gathered on a storefront porch out of the rain, some sleeping on cardboard mats, others preparing for the evening ahead where they would trade sex for money, where little pieces of them will die one customer at a time. Only, our guides introduced the girls to us directly and asked us to pray for them directly. The group of leaders from Myanmar that I was helping to lead were deeply moved, and began to tell me that they had never seen this kind of ministry before, one like Samaritana that reached out in friendship with these young women, invited them into relationship, provided job counseling and assistance, medical care. They prayed with fervor, and began talking about what it would take to start such an outreach in their cities. In the end we prayed for seven women, Jenny, Janette, Nancy, Vanessa (who started taking drugs recently), Sherry, Carasita, and Camille. We prayed for a 15 year old girl. And we prayed for the committed women who led us. Oh God, have mercy on your children.

Typhoon's impact increased by human sin

The vision from my hotel room includes this building that has collapsed from the recent Typhoon Ketsana in Manila. This is but a tiny example of the devastation that residents are still dealing with in the aftermath. Now, even two weeks later, the waters are still creating a glut of piled up trash, and sludge. Typhoon Parma followed Ketsana and is still parked over the north of Luzon dumping meters of rain on a fatigued population. But here's my question: Is this an act of God, as they say? Well, of course. It's a natural disaster, right? Rain is God's territory.

OK. I'll give you that. But there's more to the story of the 250 people who lost their lives in the flooding. Rain is an act of God, but not the choices that city planners made about how to handle the rains in historic flood basins. That corruption, greed, and lack of moral leadership that led to those deaths is man's specialty. Government abandoned the role of stewarding the commonwealth of the people, caved into commercial interests, cut costs of projects that could have led to better draining even thought the engineering was there. And worse yet, God's people who are in key positions in government have been taught that their faith is best expressed in praying over their meals and sponsoring office prayer meetings, rather than shaping more just policies in local government. In fact, many of them have been taught to separate religious belief from political involvement.

But we are called to seek the well-being of our cities (Jer 29:7), to invest ourselves in them. That's what I have been doing here in Manila. My students are learning about the relationship between Christian ministry and city planning -- learning about how to help the church contribute to more just policies, the alleviation of suffering, and the stewardship of God's creation that we were meant to tend. Pictured below are students from Myanmar, Brazil, the Philippines and Nigeria working together on a plan for shalom in their cities.

May God use our time in Manila to create cities of God across the globe.