July 4, 2012
About two minutes after meeting my host mother, Ate Malou, for the first time, my roommate Danielle and I were whisked off in her arms and shown off to all her friends as her two new sisters. Shortly after meeting the women at Samaritana, Ate Malou led on our journey home. Two jeepney rides and over forty-five minutes later, Danielle and I found ourselves at the end of a long alley lined with cement houses. Ate Malou led us into the third house on her street, with her husband Kuya Albert at her side and her one-year-old son Bidam on her hip. My initial reaction upon entering the house was actually a pleasant surprise. I had visited some slums before, but this house seemed to have a solid foundation, running water, and electricity, which completely destroyed my romanticized idea about living in a mud shack on the side of a highway. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of bugs and mice and ants and it’s only one small room with a kitchen and bathroom attached – but my initial reaction was ‘Hey, I think I could do this for a month.’ A bucket shower and a delicious eggplant and egg dinner later, I laid down and attempted to sleep when it hit me: I’m going to be sleeping on a concrete floor that cockroaches and mosquitoes also call home with only a thin wall separating me from about a dozen roosters that go all night long for the next month. What did I get myself into?
We came home from working at Samaritana the next day and were greeted by a ton of the neighborhood kids. Bidam is the hit of the community – he is kind of chubby and likes to dance– which means that many of the children hang out in our very small living room. Being the tallest person in the neighborhood (at only 5’9!) and the only white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl the kids may have ever seen in real life, I warrant all of their stares all of the time. At first the kids were nervous, but after some kind smiles and my attempts at speaking Tagalog, they began to open up and hang around Danielle and me more. Two of the girls, Justine and Bebong, always sit and play with Danielle and me, all of us enjoying each other despite the fact that we don’t have a common language.
Hanging out with the children and families over the past week honestly erased all the worries I had about living in a slum community. The love people have for each other is unlike anything I have ever experienced in the States. Ate Malou always makes extra food to serve to the children who may have not eaten that day. My older neighbors (and even the stud of the neighborhood, ten-year-old John Ray) take care of Bidam like he is their own. They do laundry together, sing together, eat together, dance, play, laugh, shoulder each other’s burdens, rejoice, cry, and truly live life together. Who would have thought that I would have found the very embodiment of an Acts 2 community living and thriving here in the slums of Metro Manila?
Perhaps Jesus really knew what He was talking about when He said ‘sell all your possessions and give to the poor.’ He wasn’t saying it for the poor’s sake, but so that us rich young rulers could experience His joy and love incarnated in people America has deemed ‘the least of these.’ Without the hindrance of a closet full of clothes, a car, a credit card, a laptop/cell phone/iPod/iPad/iWhatever, I realize that all I have left to give is my time and myself.
Emily Neinast
