Manila

Manila is a big city and where I am spending my time in the poorest areas of the city. It has many poor areas. There are eleven to twelve million people in the metro Manila area, and I have seen estimates that between one third and forty percent of the people are squatters living in temporary shacks. I have been running about half an hour each day, but I decide to limit myself to a couple hundred pushups each day because the air quality is so bad. Payatas is a great place to develop asthma.

But the kids I teach here are wonderful. Several of the kids I have tutored in the past are now great friends. They come in the evening to go over math and science, and we just have a great time talking. Myca, Queenie, Noeme, Loujessa, Kathy, and Jenn are going to be very successful. They have come from very poor homes, but they have learned how to be responsible in ways Americans kids could hardly imagine. One evening they show how their parents make a living weaving place mats from cloth that has been discarded at the land fill. I discover how hard the work is trying to cut the fabric and weaving it together. Noeme and Lou jessa started in Grade One doing this work, and they fly through the work.

Although I can't imagine completing a matt in one day, they tell me that some mothers have competition to see how fast they can complete a matt. Half an hour is like a record time.. With hard work a person can complete ten mats in a day. But this makes only one hundred pesos which is about two dollars.

With two dollars a day as an income, the twenty five pesos used in transportation costs by jeepney are huge expenses. And costs of paper and uniforms makes high school expenses prohibitive for many who are poor. The students I see have learned how to economize, and school for them is an opportunity they take seriously.

For students in college a semester's tuition is only about one hundred and fifteen dollars, but this is an enormous cost for a kid from Payatas or Valenzuela. I have begun working with people from Mission Ministries Phillippines on a scholarship program where a student's tuition is paid if they tutor younger students. I will describe this more in a later blog.