WHEN BEING INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, VOLUNTEERS WILL ALWAYS FIND THEIR EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUNDS WOULD CLASH WITH THOSE OF THE PEOPLE'S ESPECIALLY FROM THE URBAN POOR.
Somehow, having a broader view of development and having seen different types of societies, volunteers would like to approximate if not pattern that development with the societies about to be changed, altered or improved. The development is not economic alone. It is both historical and social as well. Otherwise, the people will find themselves purely as wheels working only for income and profit most of the time.
In the 80's up to the 90's I was involved with the women of Magsaysay Village, under the Makamasa organization. Makamasa used to hold literacy classes for the women there, teaching them how to read and write. But the contents of the book, Halina Magbasa Kabaro contained empowering questions for the readers to fathom their relationships and their status in life -- as a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister. The classes were successful. We were financed by the Laubach Literacy International then with Lynn Curtis, the vice president coming over now and then to photograph what we were doing and where. He posted the pictures for viewing of international audiences who would possibly be sponsors of our projects then.
I saw how the place changed from a scenery of huts on stilts over murky waters to a kind of residential subdivision, complete with concrete roads and houses that could shelter two and three families no matter how small the area. The lives of the people changed in terms of shelter but their economic livelihood stayed the same. Governance did not change much as could be gleaned from the way the community looks. Hordes of children play on the streets and many "tambays" could be found at corners having a drink in the daytime.
I did not think much of how the development in Magsaysay Village would go then as we were immersed in dismantling the martial law dictatorship centered in Malacanang. Volunteering in MV was a way of connecting with the marginalized sectors of society so that we could strengthen our stand against the elite dictatorship.
However, this time, in Smokey Mountain, I find myself in a dilemma.
I saw Smokey Mountain at the time when it was a huge mountain of garbage, where trucks would unload piles and piles of wastes of MetroManila, and scavengers rushing, competing with each other for searching "gold" in them. The stench did not matter; it was the opportunity to better one's life with free goods to be had, no matter if they were waste materials -- from plastic, to newspapers, wood, glass, styrofoam, foil, and whatever object could be found in that mountain.
I also saw it also rise from that pile of garbage to now a 29 building residential area, with four to five floors per building housing the former residents of Smokey Mountain and new settlers as well. The whole area was levelled down to give way to the buildings except for a small mountain, a seeming symbol of what it was before.
That small mountain is now green all over, but on closer look, one will find plastic strips jutting out, leftovers of what it used to be -- a garbage dump of consumerist MetroManila.
Now I have asked the community organizers there if they could request the local officials to donate that mountain so that they could convert it into a kind of rice terraces -- or an herbal nursery retaining its greenery and the memory of what the place was as before. My inspiration for this is Solvang in California which was transformed by the Danish people who settled in America to look like their home countries' farms.
Here is a description of Solvang.
"Solvang (English pronunciation: /ˈsɒlvæŋ/, Danish pronunciation: [ˈsoːlʋɑŋˀ]) (Danish for "sunny fields"[2]) is a city in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. It is one of the communities that make up the Santa Ynez Valley. The population was 5,245 at the 2010 census, down from 5,332 at the 2000 census. Once just a village, Solvang was incorporated as a city on May 1, 1985.[3]
Solvang was founded in 1911 on almost 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) of the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant, by a group of Danes who traveled west to establish a Danish colony far from the midwestern winters. The city is home to a number of bakeries, restaurants, and merchants offering a taste of Denmark in California. The architecture of many of the facades and buildings reflects traditional Danish style. There is a copy of the famous Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, as well as one featuring the bust of famed Danish fable writer Hans Christian Andersen. A replica of Copenhagen's Round Tower or Rundetårn in the scale 1:3 was finished in 1991 and can be seen in the city centre."
Unfortunately, the community deems it more viable to level it down and make more housing tenements for the poor.
This is where my dilemma comes in. Should I insist that preservation of that mountain can produce a healthy outlook and make the people feel proud of their past which they have overcome? Or should I just flow with the tide and let them decide on what is best for their area?
I think there is a limit to that race for economic prosperity in our country. We must still have the heart for what has shaped us as a people, and that is not necessarily money. We need to inculcate among the people the need for looking back as important as looking forward. Life should not be just a pragmatic look at how to stuff our stomachs with food -- by the way, a pig was donated for the celebration of Christmas, and one woman said that her husband and child cannot stand animals -- chickens and pigs, being slaughtered. Somehow, we need to make the people understand that history is an important subject of our existence. Without any view of history, without any historical consciousness, we will just be robots, moving about and not knowing our own identity as a people.
Our identity is based on our past. And looking at that mountain is looking at how the people's strength as a collective made them go forward to have a more decent housing structure, so much better than before.
(Although that is still debatable according to a community leader. The walls of the buildings in SM have been covered with roofing materials to hide the cracks. They were also not consulted by the NHA when those buildings were made. Hence, we can see here that topdown idea of development, marginalizing the very people from what should be called their own kind of change. Worse yet, the mortgage fees they are paying to own their units are too high for them to pay. A great number have sold out their rights to the place because they could no longer pay the fees.)
I hope that more people from the fields of sociology and history would come and discuss this among the people -- that need for a more solid foundation of our existence based on a noble sense of history and social justice.
