A thorn in the flesh

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Two fine priests were buried last May 17.

Fr. John Schumacher was laid to rest in the Jesuit Novitiate, Novaliches. He lies near his mentor in Philippine history studies, Fr. Horacio dela Costa, and the gathered bones of the Spanish Jesuits who had actually known Jose Rizal and his contemporaries.

Vincentian Fr. Norberto “Bebot” Carcellar was buried in the lovely cemetery of the Daughters of Charity along the South Super Highway. The choir of the Payatas children sang at the funeral Mass. Father Bebot began his work in Payatas.

Father John helped us understand Church-State matters in Manila in the decades immediately before and after the death of Jose Rizal and the Revolution against Spain. Father Bebot taught us the value of people’s savings in development work, not only as a way of gathering funds, but also as a means of organizing people and instilling pride and self-confidence in them.

We can imagine the two priests outside the gates of heaven later that day. They are a funny pair. Father John is 6’4,” Father Bebot 5’7” or 5’8.” They wear the clothes they had worn regularly in the last years of their lives and not the vestments they were buried in. Father John wears his pajamas since he had been in the Jesuit infirmary at Ateneo for years; Father Bebot is in the plaid shirt, black windbreaker and denim pants he wore to construction sites, meetings and celebrations.

Father Bebot peeks through the gates and sees the poor have housing as good as anyone else, so he’s happy. Father John looks for Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini and the other people he has written about. An angel knows what Father John is after. “Most of the people you are looking for are with the Filipino group here, but some are still appealing their sentences. We don’t have many Filipino lawyers, so the process is slow,” the angel says. Then he sees Father John’s jaw drop and adds, “It’s only a joke, Father John. They got this far, so they’ll be all right. Just some small matters of belief.”

We talk of our priests, but we know very little about their fears and sorrows. They suffer of course as any person does, but in addition the priesthood has its own sufferings. There is in every priest, I believe, what St. Paul called a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor 12: 7-9). He describes it: “It was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.” Scholars disagree on what the thorn was. They think it might be anything from a physical pain to a very obnoxious individual. St. Paul asked God three times to remove the thorn, but God said, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

Loneliness and depression are such thorns.

Jesuit friends tell me they have heard older Jesuits weeping because of loneliness. It’s disturbing to think of the old priests who should, we would judge, enjoy a peaceful old age, wracked with loneliness and depression instead. And there is no consolation. Such pain has driven younger priests to drink, or to seek love elsewhere. Loneliness can take the heart of flesh out of a priest.

In some places in the United States priests are ashamed to wear the Roman collar which identifies them as Catholic priests. So badly has the image of the priest fallen due to the pedophilia crisis in the Church that people now look on the priest with suspicion and even hostility.

In the Philippines, bishops have taken money from politicians, and even specified the exact type of gifts they want. This troubles a good priest. He can wonder about the soundness of his Church. Is it all hype and propaganda like so many other institutions, or is it truly the One, Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of Jesus? A group of bishops acting so cravenly can erode a priest’s respect for the Church’s fidelity and bravery.

Many priests today are saddened by the reluctance of the Church hierarchy to be more intensely involved in work for the poor, and the narrowing of income between rich and poor, and in the very straightforward struggle to save poor children from life in the slums.

If we appreciate the effort these priests must make just to hold together the tensions in their lives, we will all the more be amazed at their accomplishments. This country has had great priests from the first days of Spain down through the centuries, men of all nationalities who faithfully tried to serve the people that were given into their care. There have been rascals, but no group has done nearly as much as they have done for the good of the country.

Priests are not all easy to deal with. I offer these tips from my own experience:

• Compliment them on their sermons and talks, even if you can’t remember what they actually said.

• Be patient with your priests. It’s not a normal life they have chosen to live.

• Give them a thoughtful gift—a good novel or historical book, a bottle of good wine.

• Get together with other parishioners and buy him a good TV. The Cubao Diocese used to have norms on the sort of TV a parish council should provide its priest.

• Pray for him.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

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Boats for Tacloban Fishermen

Urban Poor Associates (UPA) together with Holy Spirit Sisters (SSPS) turned-over 40 boats to fishermen on February 13 at Barangay 90 Payapay, San Jose, Tacloban City.

Fishermen together with their wives and children gathered by the shore as Bishop John Du and Fr. Hector Villamil blessed the boats. The fishermen asked the Lord to drive away unfavorable wind from their boats and to always calm the sea. They prayed for fervent protection against typhoon like Yolanda.

The boats are painted blue with length of 20 feet and width of 18 inches. It has motor engine, paddle, nets and as part of disaster preparedness, a life-jacket.

Rene Labucay, beneficiary of the boat and resident of Barangay 90 said, “I know that this boat will bring us luck because the boat united all the fishermen. We worked hard in making the boats and that what made it different from all the gifts we have received after typhoon Yolanda.”

“We are very grateful that the Holy Spirit Sisters chose our barangay to distribute the boats. We are also thankful that the sisters brought UPA and the local organizers to help our community be organized. We are very happy and felt loved by many people who helped us,” Labucay added.

Sr. Marie Claire Manding, SSPS said, “The livelihood project in Tacloban is a collaboration of the South and North Holy Spirit Sisters (SSPS) provincials. We are planning to increase the number of beneficiaries by providing 125 boats or more. This signifies the 125^th year of foundation of SSPS congregation in the whole world. We would also like to extend our gratitude to all the donors who believed in the project. This entire activity is a celebration of life.”

UPA partnership with SSPS resulted after UPA held a forum last December 17, 2013 entitled “Build Back Better” that aimed to ensure that the people of Tacloban will be consulted in all aspects of national reconstruction, including land, houses, health, jobs, administration, and hygiene kits.

Alicia Murphy, UPA Field Director said, “UPA helped in organizing Barangays 89 and 90 two areas hard-hit by Typhoon Yolanda, where the beneficiaries of the boats live. We aim that the organizing of 2,000 families will not only be for the livelihood program but eventually decent and resilient permanent housing.”

“We are thankful with DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman who gave us tents and generator for the construction of boats,” Murphy added.

The fishermen put up peoples organizations called Yolanda Survivor Fishermen Associations to help them have a dialogue with the government agencies who can help in providing solutions to their needs. The women are also creating an organization that will focus on the needs of women and children.

The group earlier distributed 14 pedicabs. The drivers are now earning 100 a day. It also helped them transport all their belongings every time there is call for evacuation. The Holy Spirit Sisters and UPA are also doing a Saturday feeding program that aims to give 165 children in Payapay a nutritious meal.

Murphy concluded, “We are doing this to make sure that the government acknowledges the best practices in reconstruction. We want worldwide acknowledged best practices to ensure that the majority of Yolanda survivors be served with integrity and that all their needs will be given priority.”

-30-

Organizing Forever

By Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 08, 2010

FORTY YEARS ago this week the people of Slip Zero, Isla Puting Bato and other Tondo Foreshore areas met with Protestant and Catholic church people to sign a covenant. The church people said, “If you wish, we will help you set up, through community organization, a democratic, non-violent people’s organization that will be strong enough to resist government’s attempts to evict you. You will get the land here. You will be a strong body respected by all, even in other Asian countries.” The people led by Trining Herrera and David Balondo said, “Yes. That’s what we want.” Zoto, the Zone One Tondo Organization, was born. It was the first of the urban poor community organizations that would revolutionize urban social action throughout the country. The Philippines became a leading advocate in Asia of community organization and the promise that poor people can gain power through non-violent and democratic people’s groups and actions. History has shown that without some form of people’s organization there will never be a fair distribution of wealth in countries. Randy David (Inquirer, 10/28/10), while discussing conditional cash transfers, notes they alone will not end poverty. “Only economic growth and the equitable sharing of its fruits” will end poverty, he writes. True, enough, but isn’t it also true that without people’s organizations (unions, peasant associations, coops, urban poor organizations, etc.) the wealth will never be fairly shared? Organized people compel the powerful to share. In a 10-year struggle Zoto forced the government of President Ferdinand Marcos to turn its plans for developing that area upside down. Marcos had planned to clear Tondo of all its poor people and build a modern commercial-residential complex. In the end some poor people had to relocate, but they received lots of 96 sq m in Dagat-Dagatan just a five-minute jeepney ride north of Tondo. Two-thirds of the 30,000 families won land titles and upgrading on site. Community organization is not just a struggle for land. It has proven to be the most efficient way for communities to get legal light and water, sanitation, medicine, better schools and even jobs. It gives good government a partner in the slums. It gives bad government an opponent with which it must come to terms. The community organizers that started Zoto included people like the late Fr. Jose Blanco, the late Oca Francisco, Ed dela Torre, Fernando Yusingco, Herb and Jessica White, Holy Spirit Sister Victricia Pascasio, Bishop Roman Tiples and Rev. Henry Aquilan. They convinced the people they were, despite their poverty, as valuable as anyone and should stand up and speak as free men and women for what they believed were their human, God-given rights. The COs, as they were soon called, showed the people how to analyze problems, how to find solutions, how to plan mass actions, how to carry them out with discipline, how to negotiate and how to carry on despite setbacks and arrests. They never, however, told the people what to struggle for or what plan to follow, at least not most of the time. CO was meant to help people gain the skills and vigor needed to win a seat at life’s negotiating tables. It gives power to the people. Zoto was disciplined. If they said they would gather at 9 a.m. they were there at 9 a.m. All of them. It was a strong organization, but women loved it. I remember talking to a group of women who had been evicted from Slip Zero and moved to Dagat-Dagatan. They were crying, remembering their years in Slip Zero and Zoto, their weddings and the birth of their children. “I loved Zoto,” one woman said after many stories and they all cried. CO won land tenure security for hundreds of thousands of urban poor families, and it often failed. Whether it failed or succeeded it encouraged people to take their future into their own hands and struggle for change. That is just about the best thing people can do for their brothers and sisters. CO allows poor people to negotiate effectively with public utilities for legal light and water connections. These connections bring large savings. Legal piped water, for example, costs only a third or less of what people in the slums pay for illegal water. Savings can be used for other essentials. As a companion to the CCT in the war on poverty these savings are important. In the R-10 area of the North Harbor, families save P300-P400 on average per month on water now that they have legal connections. They can afford to use all the water they need (250 liters per day per family, according to the United Nations) and still save money. In the new Dumpsite area of Tondo, families pay the syndicates P60 a day for generated electricity. This is P1,800 a month, while the average monthly legal electric bill for a poor family that consumes 50 kWh is about P297 (with light, TV set, radio, flat iron and electric fan). The light and water utilities usually require some form of people’s coop, which won’t come to be without a people’s organization. The people’s organizations also provide the courage needed to offset the threats of the syndicates. They sometimes threaten death. If families can save P800-P900 a month on light and water, they can increase their food budgets by 25 percent. CO and peoples’ organizations allow good governments to function better. They force bad governments to reform. It’s appropriate to thank all the Philippine community organizers for what they have done and suffered. May God reward them all. (Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)

A Matter of Courage

A Matter of Courage
by Denis Murphy

Development of the urban poor of our big cities requires them to have the courage of warriors. It is usually the women who provide it.

In a Tondo barangay, poor women are threatened with violence simply because they want to bring legal water services into their community. The women want the legal water (Maynilad or Manila Water) because it is four to seven times cheaper than the water they buy now, which is often controlled by mafia types. Women are threatened over the water issue even in a barangay that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited and where she supported the people's efforts to get Maynilad by committing P7 million of the local congressman's development funds.

The threats can be alarming. In one barangay, a young woman community organizer received the following message: "Ginugulo nyo kami dito sa lugar namin baka imbes na tubig ay dugo ang umagos dito. Tigilan nyo na kami!" (Stop messing with our community or blood will be shed instead of water).

The threats are often from the kagawads and barangay hangers-on, the women say. They know these men and their families. It is a very emotional situation that easily leads to violence. In the area the president visited, 500 women are now dropping out of the water scheme she supported, because they have been threatened with violence if they continue.

Despite the threats, 40 women in the North Harbor gathered P15,000 and brought Maynilad water into the area, which will save each of them P500-P900 pesos a month. Families who buy water from these women will pay only a little more than the 40 women who invested in the mother meter. They, too, will have big savings. In these days of economic hardship, P500 or more a month is a godsend: perhaps the difference between a healthy child and a malnourished one.

In the beginning, only a few women displayed the courage needed, but courage is catching and the example of a few can create a brave community.

Just when the 40 women had the water problem licked, the Metro Manila Development Authority and the Department of Public Works and Highways came along to tell them they will be evicted, though no relocation will be provided. It took courage to struggle for water; they must now gather up the same courage to resist the eviction.

Such evictions were condemned as illegal by Chairperson Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights. In a CHR Resolution of November 6, 2008 she ordered the MMDA, local governments and national government agencies to stop conducting evictions and demolitions of structures used for dwelling purposes unless the families are relocated according to law.

The Pope's Justice and Peace Commission offers what should be a starting point in our thinking on the urban poor, squatting and eviction: "Any person or family that, without any direct fault on his or her part, does not have suitable housing is the victim of an injustice" (1988). The poor are in the slums as a result of injustice. Evicting them and leaving them homeless compounds the injustice.

The women met the 100-plus-man demolition team of MMDA and waved the CHR order in front of them. The demolition chief talked to them for a short while, then the demolition began. Now the women will go to the mayor. At every step they are warned that they can be hurt or they can "wind up with nothing." Fear is deep in the people. In Navotas, people who have been evicted but are living alongside the demolition area, say every time they see a blue MMDA vehicle they hold onto their children in fear.

It is not just about water or other items. Resistance is the poor's way to assert that they are free persons who want to live in dignity and security. We are not charity cases or useless people. We are not here to be manipulated or humiliated. We work hard and we have the same hopes as all men and women, they say.

Poor men and women find courage deep in their hearts to do all they can about the ills that threaten their world. Can we say as much about the rest of society?

http://www.thepoc.net/index.php/Parokya-Sa-Web/Tinig-ng-Maralita/A-Matter-of-Courage.html

By the side of the road in Tondo

Commentary : By the side of the road in Tondo

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

WE sat with 12 women leaders of the urban poor at the edge of the homes that line the R-10 road in Tondo. Across the road stood the North Harbor piers. The women discussed the meetings they had had with the Maynilad water company about securing regular water in their area. It was hard to hear them over the roar of the big container van trucks that came within a few feet of us. It had rained a little while before, so the air was fresh, but not for long with all the trucks. Young boys and girls still half naked from playing in the rain squeezed through the group to get to Aling Marieta’s sari-sari store to buy candy or food items for Mama.

The women began with water, but later talked of hunger in the area, politics and family planning. When they talked of family planning Aling Marieta gave her opinion that the best method was to vasectomize the men. All the women agreed, even those who said they were pro-life. To the women it seemed eminently fair.

The families now pay on average P30 a day for the water they buy from private persons, or P900 a month. For this money they get 200 liters a day, which is below the minimum of 250 liters recommended by the World Health Organization for lower-income families. If the women can’t afford the amount of water recommended, they can’t clean the children or dishes and can’t take good care of their sanitation. Diseases result, but then there is no money for medicine.

If they had the Maynilad water, they would pay about P4 instead of P30 for the 200 liters they now buy, or a savings of about P780 a month. With this money they can increase their family food budgets by 25 percent a day on average; they can send all their children to school; they can afford medicine, storybooks, copybooks and new clothes and they can buy all the water they need.

The big obstacles are the fees charged by Maynilad: for a mother meter that would provide water for 30 or so families the fee is at least P20,000; for individual meters the fee is P7,000. The people are willing to pay, but little by little out of the money they save on water. They cannot easily manage a big down payment.

Cannot Maynilad and the people sit down and work out a solution to this fee problem? It seems a public utility backed by the government has some obligation to provide affordable water to the poor. Lawyers say there is a social welfare concept inherent in such an enterprise. In the worst of Metro Manila’s slums—the so-called danger areas—almost no family has legal and inexpensive Manila Water or Maynilad.

Legal electric connections could provide similar savings for the poor. An effort by the government to make sure the poor have affordable light and water would be a wonderful anti-poverty measure (families could save about P1,500 per month). There is little room for corruption in such a program.

Hunger, the women said, is increasing in the area. Most families now combine breakfast and lunch. They talked of the “pagpag” chicken business which flourishes there. Scavengers get the garbage of Jollibee, sort out the chicken remains, wash them and package them into: bones with a little chicken still on them, which sell for P20 a kilo, and bones with a good amount of meat which cost P40.

The women seemed to enjoy sitting together in the late afternoon and appeared rather lighthearted when they talked of politics and family planning. It was hard to know if they were really serious. When they came to politics, they mentioned support for only one candidate: Joseph Estrada. “Erap pa rin,” they repeated. They discussed vasectomy with devilish delight.

We all felt better after having talked with the women. They are poor, but they are buoyant, thoughtful when they have to be and caring of one another and their families. The families can thrive if the children could get a good education and they had a decent place to live and enough food. What a waste if they can’t.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

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Teaching kids to dream beyond Baseco

By Tarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:53:00 08/03/2008

THE MINUTE HE EXPERIENCED MAKING art with crayons on a clean sheet of paper, sixth-grader Rodel Candano started to dream about becoming an architect.

Though still in grade school at age 13, Mayka Rosaros learned she could aspire to be a doctor.

From their crowded regular classrooms, a select group of elementary school pupils from poor families has been chosen to take remedial instruction in a study center at the Baseco Compound in Manila. Here they learn to aim big with the help of two tutors who make up for what their regular schools lack.

Regarded as mentors more than tutors, Laarni Salanga and Ivy Espineli, graduates of the University of the Philippines, are providing a hands-on learning experience to a select group of Grade 5 and Grade 6 students in the port village.

Salanga and Espineli take turns teaching morning and afternoon tutorial sessions in English, Math and Science at the Edukasyong Kabalikat Para Sa Kaunlaran (EKK) learning center, a one-room facility established by Kabalikat, a Baseco people’s organization, and Urban Poor Associates, a nongovernment organization, with a P300,000 donation in 2003.

“Sometimes when we ask kids what they want to be, they say ‘I want to be a seaman, a porter, a vendor in Divisoria.’ They do not dream of bigger things. Nobody said ‘I want to be a doctor.’ But we tell them this is not all of the world. There’s a bigger world outside Baseco,” said the 25-year-old Espineli.

EKK’s thrice-weekly sessions (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) with 25 students per grade level are helping to bridge the learning gaps for low-performing students of Baseco’s public elementary schools.

“In school, they average 70 to 90 students per class, so only those in the front rows get to understand their lessons. If you’re in the back, you will be left behind. That’s what we notice. That’s why children lose enthusiasm for going to school,” said Salanga, 29, who finished English Studies at UP Diliman.

Tutoring pupils at the center has become a mission for Salanga and Espineli who have shunned better opportunities normally available to young people of their age and accomplishment.

Espineli, who majored in Social Science at UP Manila, started work at EKK three days after she graduated in April 2003.

Family obligations made Espineli, the third in a family of four children, take a three-year respite from EKK to take a teaching job in Thailand. She taught at an exclusive, all-girls school in southern Thailand and later became assistant director of the Thaksin University’s Institute for Foreign Languages.

“I had to go there to support my youngest sibling’s [nursing] studies. He graduated in March, that’s why I’m back. My obligation is over,” she said.

Salanga, who was looking for a part-time job to support her graduate studies, joined EKK the year that Espineli left. She said it was the kind of challenge she had long been looking for to escape a “boring” job at the family printing business in Caloocan.

“For an English Studies graduate like me, there are many opportunities. It’s easy for me to go but I do not feel like it. I feel like there’s no need for me to leave. And what’s good here is we get to express our creativity,” said Salanga.

They receive compensation that they regard as better than what other schools would pay, but they consider the experience of becoming more than a tutor to their students a far greater reward.

“We are able to provide individual attention and the child sees that the teacher is concerned. Once you get their trust, they will already share with you what’s happening in their homes, they will open up. They treat you as a friend,” said Espineli.

The center, which follows the regular school calendar, annually admits 25 of the poorest performers—or those with a grade average of 79 percent and below—in the last two grade levels whom they prepare to enter high school.

A token fee of P1 is charged for each session. The idea is for the students and the parents to have a “sense of ownership” of the program, said Espineli.

The job of selecting those that need help falls to the Baseco parents who identify barely passing elementary school pupils in the community and enroll them at EKK. Salanga and Espineli said they sometimes have to knock on doors to encourage participation.

The tutors hold three-hour sessions for each grade level, dividing the time among English, particularly reading and grammar, basic Math and Science. Fridays are reserved for art and music lessons which many of the kids enjoy the best.

And throughout the sessions, the pupils are taught to observe good manners.

Once, a student who came in 15 minutes late for a Friday afternoon session had to apologize to the group, to which a classmate replied in English: “Next time, come early.”

Encounters with Baseco kids have opened the tutors’ eyes to “realities” that are peculiar to the place.

In the port village, a former shantytown that had been dismantled many times before by fires and demolitions, sixth-graders often include students old enough for high school.

Finding the answer to 5 minus 4 is a stretch for fifth-graders, and graduating students struggle to read “run” or “fun.”

“You wonder whether there was a student who could read well,” said Salanga, adding that sessions at times had to go back to primary-level lessons.

Many also go to school with empty stomachs.

“You’d see that immediately in the child. You’d think he’s just not that smart but you realize that hunger is the reason why he performs poorly in school. It’s either they went to school without eating, or they were beaten by their parents,” said Salanga.

To enhance comprehension, the teachers would use the pupils’ experience to simplify the lesson.

“In addition or subtraction, we ask them how much will be left if you take P2 from P5. And most of them immediately understand because at times their parents make them hawk [items] in Divisoria,” Salanga said.

But what would prove to be useful in class was also a factor for pupils missing the sessions. The teachers note poor attendance in the months leading up to Christmas, traditionally the peak selling season for Divisoria.

“Sometimes, parents would rather that their kids sell plastic bags in Divisoria, at P5 for 100 pieces, than go to the center. Or they are made to sell vegetables, or take care of their siblings,” said Espineli.

To persuade the students to return, the tutors have to visit their homes and talk to the parents.

Despite the challenges, the young teachers are buoyed by the EKK’s successes.

Vanessa Vega, who was in the first batch of students at the center, graduated First Honorable Mention in 2004, after lagging behind in her class for a long time with 70-percent grades.

Roughly 90 percent of EKK “graduates” have also proceeded to high school, helping to cut the high elementary-to-high-school dropout rate among Baseco students.

The extracurricular activities at the EKK have helped to pull up Rodel Candano’s average by a point -- from 79 percent to 80 percent -- in the last school year.

“Here we get to draw, we sing and dance and go on field trips. We went to the Planetarium where I saw stars and Parks and Wildlife where we got to play in the open ground,” said Candano.


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