“What are you doing in the Philippines?” a friend asked shortly before I flew to Manila in October of 2007.
“Oh! Helping to renovate a children’s home with a team of volunteers”, I responded. However, that was only half of the story for according to my fax file children’s work and prison visitation was an integral part of the project, a new field for myself.
I couldn’t imagine a big city jail where one third of the inmates embraced the Christian faith. I couldn’t hear the deafening response to the worship leader’s remark: God is Good. All this was in the future.
For the three week project I was domiciled in a Children’s Home, north-west of Manila. In my six years of overseas charitable work I had invariably slept in primitive conditions: the concrete floor of a storeroom; a camp bed initially covered with sour-smelling mouse droppings and urine stains; a shelf in a rotting derelict house in central American jungle, giant spiders overhead. Understandably, I was excited when shown to a clean room giving views of a banana grove. I didn’t know until later that ants would feast on my legs each night.
The children themselves dwelt in two different residences. On the second floor of the Home lived over thirty girls aged from six to fifteen. Some were orphans, others had fled abusive stepfathers, a minority were separated from their parents who were serving jail sentences.
As often as possible our group climbed the stairs to the children’s accommodation to play games, share devotions. One evening two kiddies thanked God for a visit to their parents in jail. A moving experience, indeed.
The similarly aged boys resided farther along the road, in a rented house. Here we spent four days renovating the ground floor for an additional intake of youngsters.
One of the dilemmas faced by the Overseer of the Home was that of catering for those who had attained adult status. Officially they couldn’t be kept in the Home. Yet releasing them onto the street without family, or friends, these vulnerable teenagers would drift into crime.
The problem was addressed by acquitting another property. In the second week our team painted ceilings and walls in the most stifling heat imaginable. In fact, all wooden surfaces were painted to frustrate the ever-present termites.
One of our band offered to purchase a bed for the new House master. We drove to the nearest city to obtain one. While my colleague negotiated a price with the salesman, the manager requested I sit beside her desk.
“Are you a tourist?” she asked.
I was heady with the aromatic smells of fresh timber yet related our story, our aims, and the personal cost. Using a calculator she changed sterling into pesos, then called a friend. The two women couldn’t believe that foreigners, such as ourselves, would pay an astronomical sum to help deprived Filipino children.
“You must have a big heart,” the manager said. Unknown to me she gave my colleague a healthy discount and free delivery of the chosen bed.
The Team toiled for six days each week. The first break was taken on a sun-kissed island in the South China Sea, amid lush equatorial scenery. Using money donated by well-wishers in England, on the second free day over eighty children were taken to a beach and Dolphinarium – a thrilling trip for those who had seen little outside of their locality.
One morning our troupe was invited to lunch with native people in tin shacks straddling a sharp hill ridge. The approach path was particularly interesting – a vegetarian’s paradise. The ground was thick with fully grown pineapples, sweet potato and cassava, backed by banana, papaya and breadfruit trees.
Plates piled with boiled rice; the midday meal was sumptuous; banana leaf plates piled with boiled rice; lengths of cassava; a calabash gourd called olo; crunchy fried barelete fish.
At a local jail, guards in pristine grey uniforms and automatic weapons inspected ID before allowing us into a women’s compound for a simple Christian service. The smoke from cooking fires hung in the burning air.
We found inmates washing their laundry in plastic bowls, the wet clothes being laid on a concrete apron to dry. Some stared from barred cells.
I waved.
They waved back, appreciative smiles on their faces.
Following the church service several women expressed an interest in the Christian faith. Two had been on remand for six years without being charged of any crime, I learned, visits from children twice yearly.
One humid morning a worried young mother presented herself at the Children’s Home. “My baby is sick,” she explained in Tagalog. “I don’t have money for medicine. Please take him.”
Later the Overseer bought the child’s medicine. I accompanied her to a local hospital where mother and baby were by now admitted.
“There are no nurses here,” I was informed. “Doctors dispense medicine and drugs but the family must care for the patients, feed them, cater for their toilet requirements, and so on”.
In England taking photographs of sick children would be an invasion of personal privacy, yet in the Philippines this was accepted as a gesture of goodwill. People were pleased to discuss their children’s ailments, chat about life.
After three weeks of charitable work, I questioned whether the Team’s efforts warranted travelling halfway around the world? In short, was the time well-spent?
I looked upon our project and ancillary work as a spiritual exercise in which achievement couldn’t be measured by business standards. For the nine prisoners at various jails who had put their faith in God our visit would be viewed favourably, as it would by the eighty children whom we took to the beach, not forgetting the manager of the furniture store and the mother who had accepted medicine for her sick child.
Beyond doubt, to bring a little happiness into scarred lives, children and adults, was a God-given opportunity; one for which I will ever be thankful.
And then off to Malawi...!
“Where are you going?” asked a friend as I boarded the Heathrow Express.
“I’m heading for Malawi to work for a British charity, the Soapbox Communications Trust, routine maintenance at local schools” I explained.
Two hours later I joined my colleagues at the Airport, and set off for southern Africa.
Next day, on arrival at Lilongwe, our Leader directed us to a minibus smelling strongly of diesel fuel. When loaded we rattled along the road to Salima, a small town near Lake Malawi.
“People walking beside the road outnumber the vehicles” remarked my new friend Ricky.
“And we’re seeing a cross section of African life too,” I added. “Did you see women carrying bowls of cassava on their heads, cooking fires outside of the mud huts?”
“Yes, and mothers washing their laundry in the rivers.”
Ninety minutes later our minibus weaved the dusty streets of Salima where I was surprised by the number of coffin shops displaying their wares. A high death rate, I learned, was due to cancer, tuberculosis, high blood pressure, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS.
Despite cockroaches scrabbling around, my roommate and I had a good night’s sleep at a local boarding house. After breakfast we were transported to a school in a poor district on the outskirts of the town, an area of predominately adobe shacks, sun-dried maize stubble and hundreds of barefooted children.
“Okay” said our Leader, “scrape loose plaster off the exterior walls of this classroom block while I go into town to buy paint.” He requested my help in loading the minibus. In an arcade, near the retailers, I noticed an electric Singer sewing machine adapted to work by treadle and a string belt. Nearby, a man reeking of stale sweat filled a flat iron with hot charcoal.
For the following four days we made-good crumbing plasterwork, painted the exterior classroom walls in magnolia and black. No ladders were available so we improvised by taping our rollers to the end of bamboo poles.
After lunch our team entertained enthusiastic school children with arts and crafts but goats, and a herd of ankole cattle pounding through the grounds thankfully interrupted our exhausting game of football.
In the second week the team worked in a town centre school. Rank with neglect, one classroom was rent from floor to ceiling by a ten inch wide crack, brickwork and plaster crumbling.
“We don’t have the resources to work on the structure itself, so we’ll just decorate the interior,” our Leader stated after a discussion with our local contact.
At first neighbourhood children watching the work progress were sullen, big rounded eyes looked on suspiciously, but on day two they yelled their greetings and waved with both hands as our minibus neared.
One lunchtime I offered a child with a distended stomach and hollow eyes half of my sweet-smelling honey filled bread roll. Others knocked it to the ground and dived on it as through it were a gold nugget. On another occasion I was horrified to see a youngster eagerly eating a degraded plastic bag.
Working long hours, the team enjoyed well-earned rests at weekends. One Saturday a walking safari was booked at Liwonde National Park. Here we breathed aromatic air, listened to a host of trilling song birds, walked freely among wild animals such as warthog, waterbuck, impala, kuku, yellow baboon and vervet monkey. When a herd of trumpeting elephants headed our way we sheltered behind a termite mound, holding our breath.
Finally, week three was spent at a village school in the bush.
The village itself was quite primitive, most of the dwellings being built of adobe blocks, roofed with grass. Chickens and goats roamed freely, and transport was either bullock cart or bicycle.
An aged Headman welcomed the team, his speech in the Chichewa language being translated by our liaison officer.
Apparently the government of Malawi built the school in 1998 but delegated the villagers to maintain it. This poor community of subsistence maize farmers had insufficient resources to feed their families, let alone maintain a school. That was where our team came into the picture.
As dust-devils swirled outside, and the sun beat down mercilessly, we cemented broken floors, restored disintegrating plaster, then painted the interior in white and black, and two artistic members even decorated the walls with colourful murals.
One morning, out of the blue, our Leader requested I mend broken or rickety desks. I looked around. “Where are the tools?”
He glanced over his shoulder, tapped his head. “There’s a saw and a hammer, and a bag of two inch nails. That apart you’ll have to improvise.”
Meanwhile, with funds from the UK, a bricklayer and two labourers were hired to construct a long-drop toilet.
When our task was completed the villagers invited the team to a thanksgiving ceremony. In the shade of a mango tree the Headman and local education officials made grateful speeches.
Our Leader responded by thanking the villagers for he privilege of working in their small community.
Then the bass drum started beating and a traditional African dance, the Mganda, was performed by a group of seven desperately thin youths. This event was followed by a shuffling procession of brightly dressed village women singing and dancing, babies strapped to their backs.
“Just like a television documentary, isn’t it?” said Ricky, a whiff of smouldering cooking fires on the desiccated air. “No one will believe it when I get home.”
Despite the irritation of working against the clock with insufficient tools and resources, I was sorry to leave Malawi. The local people were very friendly, never grumbled of being citizens of the fourth poorest nation on earth, always made time to stop and chat.
At the end of our three week stay my colleagues and I felt that our efforts, as feeble as they were, had made a difference. We hoped the people in the Salima area shared that opinion.
