Manila is listed by many travel guidebooks as among the top three of the "Dirtiest Cities in the World." An ignominious reputation, to be sure, but it didn't dispell any of my excitement as my flight dipped over the Luzon shoreline. Absurdly bookish during my childhood and adolescence, I'd pored over countless books about the conflicts of the Second World War and the significance of the Philippine Islands as a stronghold in the Japanese-held Pacific realm. Never once, in my unquenchable intake of the stories then, or during my education as a history major at UNC-Greensboro years later did I imagine I'd ever actually be there. To most travelers, Manila was the third-dirtiest city in the world. To me it was a storied land. My plane was landing in Oz.
Aesthetics is a funny subject, often difficult to articulate... oftentimes it's beyond specific description, only identifiable when it's fully realized. Walking along Manila Bay was one such moment. Through the eyes of reality, it was an atrocious walk. Descriptions of conditions were not exaggerated; the way was lined with the poorest of sights, families living on the rocky, trash-strewn shores, children splashing naked in putrid waters we at home wouldn't deign worthy of spitting in. And yet it was, to me, enormously significant, for while Manila Bay proper was never the subject of any noteworthy significance, it was always there, mentioned offhandedly with other very significant events. And so Manila Bay became offhandedly associated with Corregidor and MacArthur and Bataan and the events surrounding the Japanese siege in 1941-42 and the subsequent promised return of the Allied forces in 1944-45.
Thus to me, my mile-long walk was as aesthetically pleasing as anything possibly could be. The nerd within was well pleased.
Aside from those moments, my experience in Manila was rather mundane. And truthfully, I planned it that way. As I mentioned in my last column of the semester in the Carolinian, I often try to capture the essence of a city - as much as can be captured in a short ammount of time - by skipping out on the touristy stuff and observing everyday life. And for a week that's exactly what I did. I stayed in a run-down, flea-infested traveler's inn on Roxas Avenue, roaming the filthy streets for miles everyday.
Photography, I found to my surprise, was nearly impossible. What I was observing was everyday life; while foreign to me, and thus worthy of photographing, I felt strangely odd in doing so. Pictures should have subjects, noteworthy subjects, and somehow capturing the images before me seemed petty and foolish, like driving down Wendover Avenue in Greensboro to take a picture of the inside of Walmart. For the most part, Manila is committed to the memory of my mind where, I feel, it remains more properly remembered. A photograph can capture an image, but that is all. It cannot capture sound and smell - it cannot capture being, or essence. And Roxas Avenue had an essence all its own.
Much like human trafficking statistics or news of Darfur genocides, it is particularly hard to make a true connection with reality at home and that reality abroad. It may well be impossible... there's simply a disconnect between what's familiar and what's ground into cliche and familiar newspaper stories. Sure, goes the thought, I feel bad about because that's a really big number, a lot of poverty/death/pain, but since it doesn't directly affect me and I've never seen it firsthand, I can't connect with it. I don't think it is possible to understand it without actually experiencing it firsthand. Thus, my understanding of things was about to change.
Roxas Avenue, running north-south from the Paranaque district of southern Manila, up along Manila Bay and into the Ermita business district and beyond, was to be my first experience with true poverty. Of course I'd seen beggars and shacks and poor living conditions in Thailand and Vietnam and especially southern Burma, but nothing compared to this. The street was lined with the most destitute of society. Filthy children splashed murky puddles, their parents nearby, equally as dirty and threadbare, plying their trade - usually selling various objects from stalls. Along the crumbling sidewalks permanent homes were constructed of whatever objects could be found. A rancid canal ran for miles along the street, clogged with trash and human excrement, an absolutely vile fluid that served as a life source for the Roxas inhabitants. Children actually swam in it, adults fished from it, pulling small flopping creatures that somehow lived in it. The smell was so bad I could barely stand to walk along it.
It was a unique experience, I daresay, and may well take me some time to fully digest and particularize. I passed a week on Roxas, spending my days reading James Clavell's Shogun (a fantastic novel, by the way) and walking the streets inbetween meals at various restaraunts. My memory of Manila will not be of shopping at malls and visiting spas and staying in nice hotels. I will remember the real Manila. There's a pretty big difference.
Now, a week later, I'm four hundred miles away in Legazpi City, several miles from the most perfectly formed conical volcano in the world. Getting here was an adventure.
But that's another story.
No comments:
Post a Comment