GETTING INVOLVED
Daniel Marti
‘Prepare to be shocked.’ This is not the slogan for the latest Hollywood thriller, but the gentle warning given to the participants of the fifth Getting Involved Globally (GIG) trip prior to their arrival in the Philippines. And shocked they were.
GIG Five left Australia as a group of individuals with a broad range of experiences in aid work and enthusiasm for social justice. They returned somewhat sombered, grappling with the reality of the crippling poverty they encountered.
This was surprising, given the previous experiences of group members. GIG Five included people like Rosanne Simpkin, who had worked in PNG for two years and had recently been to Brazil as part of a mission course. Immediately prior to joining the fifth GIG trip, Rosanne was working with East Timorese children suffering extreme trauma and distress. Yet she was still overwhelmed by her experience with GIG.
‘The poverty that I saw in the Philippines was probably the worst I had ever seen and I thought I had seen some pretty bad things. You smelt it; you felt it; you were confronted by it every day. You saw things that you didn’t want to look at.’
Then there was Mick Kane, a primary school teacher who had earlier worked with drug addicts and terminally ill AIDS patients. He too was deeply moved, partly because of the blatant injustice that was intertwined with the poverty.
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Darryn Warren, another participant, noticed the Filipino people’s mistrust of the government at that time and the response of the military to unrest and dissension.
‘A common cause of these issues was the government and, in particular, President Estrada. Martial law was to have been lifted when the Marcos era ended, but many Filipinos believed that martial law was still in existence.’
Mick cited as an example of government injustice the plight of a group of impoverished farmers.
‘Their farming land had been taken away from them. They were planning to build a human barricade to stop the developers coming through [the next day] to build golf courses and mansions for the senators over there.’
Rosanne described a similar situation with the leprosarium in Tahla.
‘The government was cutting off their medication, which meant the leprosy would come back and spread, because it wanted [the people] off their land in order to build penthouses. Where could these people go? They couldn’t go to the dumpsite, because not even the dumpsite people would have them.’
The Payatas dumpsite is where tens of thousands of people eke out an existence on a mountain of refuse, which they ironically call the ‘Promised Land’. Avalanches of garbage kill hundreds of them at a time. Yet the children still laugh and play; young boys fly kites made from plastic bags and young girls comb the hair of their (legless) Barbie dolls scavenged from the tip.
Leonie Wood, a secondary school teacher on GIG Five, recalls the climb up this mountain.
‘The smell was horrendous. Halfway up the mountain we had to stop
and catch our breath, and control our urge to throw up.’
In the midst of this human devastation of the environment and other people,
one of the leaders of the expedition surprised Leonie by saying that she
sees God in every child’s smiling face.
This calm recognition of spirituality in the midst of poverty and injustice came as a further shock. As Darryn said, ‘What I learnt most about the people of the Philippines during my experiences was their strong belief in God, their spirituality and closeness amidst the hardships and corruption. This I felt was the real beauty of the Philippines.’
The participants felt a palpable sense of the sacred in the daily activities with their hosts. Rosanne likened some of her meals in the leper colony to experiences of eucharist. ‘[The people] gave you all they had. They cooked it and prepared it for you. They treated you like family even though you were a stranger. They sat down with you and shared with you as you ate.’
The aim of the GIG experience is not to shock people, but to bring about a change in them. The intent is that participants find a new way of seeing, acting and feeling. Mick believes the trip has enabled him to ‘feel’ other people more, which is the only thing his hosts sought from him.
‘We came into their village, we shared their rice, we sang, we danced.
For them, to know that someone else had come into their community and
saw what they were on about and felt angry about, gave them real sense
of worth. They didn’t expect anything of us as far as money being
sent across, but we were there and we understood their plight and just
entered into their lives.’
For some, however, the sheer magnitude of the problems they faced was
initially overwhelming.
‘For six months I couldn’t do a thing’, reveals Leonie. ‘Finally, my Year 10 class went and tutored in primary schools in the area and I started helping them. It was they who gave me the energy to start acting locally. Now my big passion is asylum seekers.’
Earlier this year Leonie contacted people at St Vincent’s social action group with the idea of establishing a local house for asylum seekers. They in turn obtained support in Melbourne from a number of local churches to set up one house and family in Ashburton, with another to be established in Glen Waverley, Victoria. For Leonie, this local response is attributable to her experience in the Philippines.
Since their return, Rosanne and Mick have spoken at numerous forums—schools, parishes and community events—about their experience. One of the insights that both were keen to share was that there are many kinds of poverty.
As Rosanne explains, ‘There is poverty in material things and there is poverty of the heart. Their poverty is not in their faith. Their poverty is in a lot of material things and medical things which should be the rights of all people.’
The experience continues to impact the lives of participants. Rosanne flew to East Timor in October to further her commitment to justice. For Mick, it is as simple as wearing an icon around his neck, which he purchased from a prison in the Philippines. It is a daily reminder of what he has seen. The icon is inscribed, ‘Peace based on justice’.
For information on GIG contact, Kevin Meese 03 9639 1344.
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