So what the hell have I been doing here?

I suppose some of you might be wondering why I haven’t written anything yet about the work I’m doing here. The truth is that until recently I wasn’t exactly sure myself and was doing odds and ends of work that needed to be done. However, more recently I've been working on a project that I’ll share with you now.

I’m working with a group of people who belong to the Community Livelihood Advancement Network Multi-Purpose Co-operative (CLAN MPC). The co-op focuses on the advancement and empowerment of people with disabilities, and they operate a small recycling center in Cebu City in order to create some extra income.

Most of the members live in sub-standard housing with no title to their land. In fact, currently there is some controversy about government land reclamation resulting in large-scale evictions. So far this group is not directly effected but it may be a sign of what’s to come. Certainly the majority of the group are worried about evictions.

I’ve been conducting a study of their current housing conditions and I will make some recommendations for their future housing needs. My host organization here, another co-op called the National Savings and Homes Co-operative (NSHC), will work with them after I’ve left towards the development of their own co-op housing project.

I have been to many of their homes and talked with them about their situations. Most have expressed a feeling of shame about where and how they live, and nevertheless they have been incredibly gracious hosts, friendly and honest. It’s been a humbling experience for me.

There are Nenette and Arnold who were both infected with polio as infants, neither of whom can access their homes in their wheelchairs. Nenette lives with her aging mother, her sister and her sister's four children in two small rooms with an exposed indoor pit-latrine. Her father recently passed away and Nenette cried as she told me that they are constantly reminded of their grief as they continue their daily lives in the same small space in which he died.

Arnold lives part-time in the kitchen of the recycling center and part-time in his family home where he has to crawl around in his small, second-floor room. He gets into his miniature bathroom through a small Alice-in-Wonderland-like door. In order to get from the main road to the house he has to be carried through a long and twisting alley-like labyrinth.

There's Mary Jane who lives in a house that is precariously cantilevered over a river simultaneously used as water source, toilet and bath. To get there you walk through a small alley squeezed up against a concrete wall edging a university campus. While her husband is out finding construction work she is at home taking care of their four children, her father-in-law and her mentally ill sister-in-law. She also works some nights at a massage parlor to earn extra income for her sister-in-law's much needed medication.

I visited these houses in the intense heat of the day. I sat in their rooms and ate the snacks they prepared for me: bread, bud bud (sweet rice dessert) and coke. One woman gave me an enormous papaya. I asked questions like "what do you like and what do you not like about your home?" The most common answers were the same for both parts of the question: "we have no choice".

I learned that most of the questions I had prepared didn't yield the kind of conversation I had thought they would. Eventually the best interviews were the ones in which I asked fewer questions and let the conversation roll on its own. Sometimes it didn't roll at all and we just sat there quietly observing one another until I asked if it would be ok for me to take some photos.

I felt like an impostor, but they were happy to have an impostor like me in their homes. They're happy that someone out there is taking the time to listen and they hope that down the road their project will become a reality.

Some photos...