31/08/2023
Thank you very much Dr. Harald Friedl for sharing us your reflections on your visit at Eskulayan Aroma, Tondo in Manila.
May our Almighty God Bless you Always..
The Back of the Pink Moon. Visiting the children of Aroma on the Outskirts of Manila
By Harald A. Friedl
On 2 August, I was honored to be welcomed into an extraordinary world, a world far away from popular tourist crowds, rich commercial centers and magnificent palaces of power: a place called Aroma, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Manila. Several thousand families live here in cramped quarters, struggling to survive every day because they have been evicted from their land and soil by rich, powerful landlords. So, they are stranded here on the precipice of the big, noisy city....
We are guests of the teachers of the organization “Eskulayan”, which has set itself the goal of providing the children in this settlement with at least a minimum of education: Reading and writing, hygiene... basic skills to nurture the seed of a chance in this universe of hurdles, burdens and obstacles for a childhood in a biotope of confinement, heat, drugs, waste, oppression, prostitution, disease, violence, spying and rats....
Such set pieces of this world at first seem alienating to a visitor from a supposedly wholesome sphere of the European bourgeoisie with its symbols of the good life erected like high walls around its green gardens of prosperity: a secure income in a respected profession, beautiful houses, tasty food, stimulating leisure activities, safe cars... palaces of plenty, built on the shards of the existences of people whose habitats are banished behind the borders of perception, behind the borders of the big noisy cities, where the rich and beautiful deposit their left-overs at the end of their celebrated days.
We sit in the small office of the Eskulayan school, which also serves as a classroom. Cooled by a whirring fan, we listen spellbound to the stories of Ella and two teachers. A poster about children's rights, decorated with colorful drawings, is emblazoned on the walls. It says that children have the right to a healthy, non-violent environment, to education, to development, to a hopeful future ...
Ella describes the living conditions in this settlement. For me, a child from a quiet suburban settlement with wide, swept streets, her sketches of existence in Aroma sound at first harsh, stifling, hopeless. Endless hours of monotonous work, such as peeling garlic, at the end of a long day a meagre wage, just enough for a few kilos of rice and a few hours of pre-paid electricity to keep the fan in the flat running, to relieve the heat, so as not to go crazy herself... This is how a good day in Aroma goes.
But when a typhoon touches the town and floods the entire settlement with fetid rubbish and thriving pathogens, when drug dealers walk the alleys touting their fleeting fortunes, when the military patrols to stifle unwanted thoughts of change, or when a global pandemic breaks out....
While the world froze in face of Covid-19, life in Aroma was all but stifled. The lock-down turned this maze of cramped alleys and even more cramped dwellings into a prison, indeed a space of collective torture: under threat of violence and arrest, people were forced to hold out in their dwellings: for hours, for days, for weeks, cut off from any possibility of work, of procuring food... instead suffering waiting, crammed together, in stagnant heat. There was a lack of everything except anger, despair, and violence. The government "supported" the people with a few portions of rice and a few tins of sardines – for each family every month. Was this a deliberate mockery of the rich and powerful of this country?
Necessity is the mother of invention; great need shifts moral boundaries. The higher the pressure, the more painful the hunger, the bleaker the hope for relief, the weaker the resistance to the unimaginable. Years ago, when I was researching prostitution in Thailand, I learned about parents who sell one of their children into prostitution to keep the remaining family from starving. In Aroma, during the lock-down, the business of online prostitution flourished. Young women and girls, their own children were encouraged to expose themselves on camera to seduce potential clients on the other side of the world-wide-web... and to alleviate their own distress. When I heard this story, I was initially stunned. As I walked through Manila the following days, I perceived the city with different eyes: Suddenly someone tried hard to sell me Vi**ra, while a block away young girls were showing off their bodies to me; from a church wall of the Iglesias Filipinas Independente, a banner appeals to the fight against cyber-prostitution of children...
Why don't these people from Aroma fight back, it pops into my head? How can these people endure such injustice? Why didn't a rebellion break out here long ago? An overthrow of social conditions? A struggle of those who seem to have nothing left to lose against those who could lose everything.
The people behind the high walls of the sprawling, elegant villas or behind the tinted windows of the bulky, cooled SUVs probably think exactly the same thing when they are chauffeured to their swanky, air-conditioned offices in the government district: To ensure that the prevailing order remains so, to ensure that their elegant wives and bored kids can continue to shop unmolested in the "Mall of Asia", to ensure that this country remains "safe and stable", they take precautions: so that, for example, the people of Aroma do not vote for the "wrong" candidates, they are "encouraged" to vote the "right way" with some gifts, such as rice and other necessities of life. To ensure that no “stupid ideas” arise among those people, the military is posted in prominent places and "provides general security". To ensure that "stray sheep" find their way back into the care of its flock or, better still, do not get lost in the first place, "forward-looking" government informers, who, as teachers or other seemingly harmless representatives of the powerful, identify potential troublemakers in good time and "red flag" them so that they can be "defused". So that everything remains as it is: for "those down there" and for "those up there".
I think of my favorite passage in the Bible. I call it the "first wellness advertisement" in world history: Jesus let Mary Magdalene massage him with precious oil. Then Judas came and was outraged at this waste. The oil could have been sold at the market and the money donated to the poor. But Jesus is said to have replied: "There will always be poor people. But you rejoice that you are here and now with me." Without this grace of "being here and now with Jesus", there is no free space to reflect on this world, on the existing conditions, on our views and habits, on our responsibilities... and on what we need to change.
We set off again. We leave the narrow alleys of Aroma and return to our cooled car, to our clean hotel, and sometime later to our intact home world. I can, indeed may, pick up my own struggles again, continue my personal path, build my own world, help myself to my hopes and illusions, eat with my children, enjoy their development. However, this world of mine also includes the people of Aroma. It also includes the narrowness, the heat, the corruption, the prostitution, the drugs, the hunger, the waste, and the dreams of the people of Aroma. Without my world, Aroma would not exist. I may not have known of Aroma's existence for so long, but Aroma has always been a part of me, a part of my life, my world. To ignore or even deny this part would be to lie to myself about the legitimacy of my own privileges.
The fact that I am allowed to live where I live - here in Austria, one of the richest, safest countries in the world, where there has been no war and no critical civil unrest for almost 80 years, where people enjoy high quality health care, free access to schooling and universities, where the police politely explain the way, where politicians are brought to justice on suspicion of corruption - that I am allowed to be part of this world is not a merit, but a major prize in the global lottery, a privilege. This privilege obliges. That is why I am a teacher of sustainability and ethics. That is why I encourage my students to develop projects with the intention of changing the world at least a little bit, if only to understand this world a little better, after all to save our souls and to become a little humble.
And because I am indebted to the people of Aroma for allowing me to be their guest.
Harald A. Friedl, August 2023
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