Manila Journal

The Plastic Giving Tree

This one deserves and entry all its own: a prison is encouraging its inmates to make crafts out of recyclables. This is a PET bottle, probably Mountain Dew soda or something, that has been molded into a bamboo tree! It is just beautiful. The picture is taken at the Dept of Environment and Natural Resources during an interview with the dynamic head of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, Attny Andin. I ask him about the recycling industry in the Philippines and how he can quantify its growth. "I know that the theft of recyclables is on the increase!" Well that's a sure sign. A big thumbs up for the inmates at the Manila Lily Jail, female dorm.

Visit to Payatas Controlled Landfill

On Saturday, David and I went to the Payatas controlled landfill. Unlike Smokey, Payatas is very much an active dump and receives 1,200T of trash per day, exclusively from Quezon City. In the past, trash was just dumped here with no waste management and over the past 30 years a mountain of 5 million T of trash has grown on this private property. Since 2004 and under the new law RA 9003, the site is being managed by the City and by private contractors.

We were received by engineer Louie and a driver took us up the old dump site. You can see the trash behind the driver in this first picture. From this "mountain" you can view the new dump site right accross. Bulldozers on the right are shaping the mountain. Trucks to the left are returning from the dump. And on top of the mountain, about 300 scavengers are there to sort through trash as it arrives. Most of the 2,500 scanvengers who work at Payatas live in the surrounding area called "The Promised Land," because land was promised to about 10,000 squatters that continue to live illegally.

At Payatas, they derive energy from methane gases with a small engine that can generate about 100kw/day. If they receive the anticipated carbon credits from Kyoto's clean development mechanism, they should be able to pay for new technology that would generate 1 to 4 mega watts per day.

Payatas just won an award for using Vetiver grass on the old dump site first to hold the mountain together and help stablize the mass (Vetiver roots go down about 2-3m), but also because the grass absorbs leachate and heavy metals. Here you can see the informal sector growing behind the Vetiver grass.

There is a small composting facility but it is not used regularly. Most of the people living around Payatas use organic waste to feed their pigs. Here you can see them processing branches from the Typhoon that hit Manila last Thursday.

On the site there is friendly signage, branded t-shirts, flowers planted in driveways... there is an effort to welcome visitors, give tours, present information in a way that makes the whole thing seem more honorable, in a way, more organized and presentable.

Although children are not allowed inside the dumpsite as scavengers and sorters, the area around the landfill is a big community of MRFs and homes. It's a usual day with someone getting a hair cut, a truck being packed with PET bottles, girls playing hop scotch...

My first Typhoon: Milenyo

Last Thursday between 12-2pm, a Typhoon whipped through Manila at the speed of 280kph. Carlos and I go for a drive around 2pm.... trees are down everywhere. We must have counted ar least 50 trees down in our neighborhood alone. In the middle of all this Carlos and I find the most anazing Italian restaurant, Cafe Milano, that is running on its own generator and makes the most amazing pasta... so chilled white while we watch the rain pour and pour, c'est pas mal la vie quand meme.

We drove to Makati a bit later to pick up Tessa, Carlos' wife, and saw hundreds more. Billboards were also the biggest victims. Those ugly and unruly structures were down everywhere, and most notably the Pancake House billboard on EDSA had cushed a yellow bus.

Thursday night, we had a small party at the house: wine, neighbors and candle light. By Friday I had had enough of living with no power and no water so I became part of the Malate refugees and went to Anita's house in Makati. In fact she is the only person I know with power and water, so there were many of us taking turns at showers and internet.

It's Monday and everything seems back to normal....except for all the massive trees in the streets. It's suddenly a jungle in Manila. Take a look at this tree and the size of its trunk.

Baguio scene comes to the Penguin, Manila

I've heard so much about Baguio, Sagada and the mountainous regions to the North. Rice terraces, misty mornings, the tribes....chilled, laid back, arty scene... I've been wanting to go, but the 10h bus ride makes me think twice (might opt for the 1h flight to white sands and palm trees).

Well last night, Baguio came to Manila. A bunch of artists hosted a show at the Penguin in Malate. The papier mache sculpture of Jose Rizal is by Kawayan de Guia. He has donated a small work to go in my Suitcase show, very cool.

Drum circles, margaritas, and even something called a beetle nut: lime, a nut and a leaf. Stick it in your cheek, spit out the red juice, and you get a small rush. Apparently the rice workers use this and it's popular from India to Japan, they tell me. That's me with the nut in my cheek...

I had Hughes and Nathalie's Etat d'une Reflexion on me, so we used the excellent projector to show some of the Suitcase show are here at the Penguin.

As Carlos said: "For you they are hippies, but for us they are tribal." Yeah, I'll take a drum circle and beetle juice any day.

Quiapo Church - prayer and sin

Carlos gave a tour at Quiapos today with a crew of Lomo photographers. You can get everything in Quiapo -- 1$ DVDs, Jade bracelets, votives....and even secret potions.

Here's Carlos showcasing a bottle of mojo used to help capture the one you pine after. It's the love potion for your secret love that is completely oblivious to your advances.

The women selling Sampagita flowers that smell just amazing. It's also the national flower. Apparently once the Philippines was bought by the US, it was "americanized" and therefore needed a National Anthem, National Flower, National Fruit, National Hero.... I bought Sampagita massage oil as well, good stuff.

Here I am rubbing the foot of the Black Nazarene.... apparently brings good luck.

And not to be missed (yes, I admit this is turning into an obession) the small stream covered with plastic trash.

Smokey Mountain - environmental remediation

David is leading the environmental remediation component and invited the University of the Philippines to come with us to Smokey this morning. It was the first time David was visiting the area and my first time on the mountain. U.P. will be helping us with leachate testing. Leachate is the result of rain percolating through waste and reacting with the products of decomposition, chemicals and other materials in the waste and is basically slimy nasty stuff. Part of our strategy is to put a giant raincoat over the mountain to help collect the rain and treat it, rather than allow it to just ooze out of the mountain.

Here you can see the mountain, the community that is built around the mountain and also the mountain from up close -- it looks pretty and green but in fact is a pile of trash that has been sitting around for fifty years and stopped being used as an active dump for 10 years.

Here you can see where the rain water ends up... it oozes off the side of the mountain, pours into the two rivers on either side of Smokey, sits in concrete areas where children splash and play, and waters vegetable gardens growing on the sides of the trash mountain. Just because it's green, it doesn't make it good.

This is a community where every four year old child knows that collecting plastic bottles can bring an income (this picture is taken on the main road driving pas Smokey and that goes South directly to my place on Manila Bay. We couldn't find a taxi so David convinced a fish truck to give us a ride).

It's also a land where banana trees are a sign of good fortune. One of our environmental leaders in the community asked me to take this picture. We are smack on top of the mountain of trash. It seems that good spirits called white dwendes live under certain trees.

Rainy Karaoke Night

Tonight Anthony Chu invited us to a Chinese restaurant managed by a childhood friend. We had the private back room on the second floor. They looooove Karaoke and here is Prof Alvin with Anthony's beautiful daughter... Of course David and the German student Lars are checking out the "ladies" across the street. It was raining so hard I could not make it from the restaurant to the sidewalk to the street as it was flooded with water. As the boys scampered off to their cars (I had been secretly hoping they would carry me or something), I finally hailed a bicycle with a side car that was able to drive onto the sidewalk to fetch me directly at the restaurant door. I'm feeling rather satisfied with myself in this picture. Minutes later, I fall flat in the muck trying to climb the stairs up to my apartment.