Overwhelmed. Helpless. Hopeful. Shocked... this was the start of our debriefing. We, my CYF sector (Child, Family, Youth), just finished our "Street Immersion" experience. Street Immersion is an opportunity for Peace Corps CYF trainees to observe and interact with street families, street children, and prostitutes. We spent the past week in Cebu City, the 2nd largest city in the Philippines.
I'm still trying to understand the experience. At the end of our debriefing, one of my counterparts said, "sometimes it doesn't matter how much we debrief, some things will never be okay." Agreed.
From my journal:
4 October- tonight my heart feels suffocated. In my small group, we arrived at an area well known for it's inhabitant street-families. It's an old highway of sorts, feeling dark and deserted. Down the center is a median with trees and some grass. Attached to the trees are small rug-like pieces of material forming mini-hammocks. In each hammock is an infant, sleeping. The adults seem to be dispersed- across the street tending to a cart of goods to sell, out on the streets looking for "customers", or, for many women, in the nearby field on flattened cardboard boxes selling their bodies at a very low cost (in this area 50 pesos a customer is typical- $1.00 US). We learn that the majority of "customers" are Filipino men- taxi drivers, construction workers, police officers. In addition, there's no shortage of "white men" that have re-located to the Philippines based on the ease of buying such service.
At the end of this street, we come upon a husband and wife sitting on their cardboard underneath their hammock-ed baby. The couple is friendly. They're interested in us and are glad to share a little about themselves. At first I'm encouraged to see an in-tact family unit. When we walk away, I learn the husband is also his wife's pimp.
We move from this "family area" to a more bustling section of the city. We're lead by two staff members of the "Good Shepherd House"- an outreach organization providing meals, shelter, and resources to women that will visit the center. The staff members have strong relationships with the women we speak to. We meet a group of 10 women waiting on "their corner" for potential customers. One woman shares her story of needing to continue her work until her husband can get a full-time job. Another woman picks on a 17-year old girl in the group for passing on a possible 3,000 pesos last night because she wasn't willing to perform oral sex on a wealthy American man.
A new girl to the group speaks with one of the staff members about not feeling well. The staff member shares information with her about the center and the assistance she can be provided. While this conversation is happening, a group of young Filipino men moves closer and closer to our circle of conversation. They are waiting for the women. One man looms particularly close, eyes fixed on the new girl. He's indicated to the other women he would like her tonight. We find out later, once she's refused to join us in traveling to the center, she is 15 years old.
Our final stop was inside a "dance club". Here, women dance one at a time on a make-shift stage, scantily clad of course. Men sit, drink, and pay the bar for the woman of their choice. The woman will bring the man behind the stage to the rooms where the women live. In the bar we entered, all of the "dancers" are adults. We learned that oftentimes young girls are trafficked from poor, rural places and made to dance (and prostitute).
I spent a lot of time talking with, Mercy; a young woman that said to me early in the night, "See these women? I was doing the same thing last year." She found the shelter, participated in it's programs, and left the street. She now does outreach work and just earned her high school diploma. She was energetic and happy; a spark of hope every time I was filled with doubt and disbelief.
5 October- We join a "Mobile Education" program today. By an old, rickety, rattling, donated bus, we travel from one squatter village to the next picking up 5 and 6 year old children that will spend a day with us for pre-school type activities. We help cut their nails, wash their hands, complete assignments learning different colors, serve lunch (rice with a small amount of vegetable stew), and play... the kids desperately need this time to run in an open, safe area, and they take full advantage. For two hours they are non-stop- running, throwing balls, playing chase. They fall into heaps on the bus ride home sleeping on one another. It's encouraging to see the parents, mothers and/or fathers, waiting for the children as they are returned home by bus.
6 October- Today we visit different areas that host "supervised play" (pre-school) directly in the squatter villages. In order to get to our final site, we walk through a dump site. Trash of all sorts is piled high, creating a maze of paths we tip-toe through. We pass the community members working in the dump to salvage any material they may be able to sell; they sort things such as scrap metals, bottles, plastics. It strikes me that child labor laws, much like other laws (traffic, prostitution...), are mere suggestions. The majority of workers in the trash heaps are teenagers- working to earn money for the family rather than participating in education.
We continue through the trash maze and carefully step from one stepping stone to another to avoid plunging into the stagnant, trash-filled stream that separates the dump from the squatter village. The village is made of clapboard structures serving as homes to the "squatters". These buildings remind me of the chicken coop my sisters and I played in- simple make-shift wooden structures with tin roofs. They're attached one to another and some have a second level which gives the feeling the whole community could topple on itself with one strong wind.
The pre-school room is in the bottom of one of the two storied buildings. The room is no more than 9'x9'. Anywhere from 5 to 30 children will show up for the days' activities. There is a small chalkboard in the room, and I chuckle when I see the volunteer's hand has the classic marking of a teacher- a chalked side-of-the-hand from erasing the board.
As we sit in the tiny room with no electricity, the heat is inescapable. A gentle breeze blowing through open walls provides some relief, however, along with the breeze comes the stench of rotten trash and stale water. It's nauseating. The students seem unaffected by the conditions and continue their work practicing writing the number 5.
As we're leaving the village, we pass a mother carrying wet clothes, and she herself is soaked. Following a distance behind her is a young boy, also wet from head to toe. They are returning home after washing laundry and bathing. They completed these tasks in the same stream we so desperately worked to keep out of earlier.
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