As mentioned earlier, when I finished as Director of the UNI and Archbishop Vincent Nichols took over from me, I had a seven-month sabbatical. I used two of those months trying to get a feel for liberation theology and inculturation at grass roots in some pastorally challenging places in the Philippines, India and Peru. Being keen that others should also benefit from my experience, I kept an extensive diary throughout. The three diary entries which follow are all from my Filipino experience which took up half of the two months.
Throughout this book I have constantly emphasised the Vatican II vision of the presence of God’s Kingdom in real life. My unforgettable, though brief, experience of the Church in Bishop Labayan’s diocese of Infanta opened my eyes to how challenging that vision is. It is not a model that could be duplicated in the UK, as it stood. However, it has never ceased to inspire and challenge me throughout my pastoral ministry.
My time spent with the Columban Sister, Breda Noonan, in Cagayan de Oro was equally inspiring but also deeply disturbing. Her simple but very demanding style of ‘living with the poor’ brought alive for me gospel challenges which I have failed miserably to embody in my own life. Fr Austin Smith has had a similar impact on me. As a theological writer and preacher, I have found it comes more naturally to share words than give them flesh in my daily life. Breda once sent me a Christmas card from the Philippines with the greeting ‘May the Peace of Christ disturb you this Christmas.’ It still disturbs me!
The experience at Kidopawan consolidated the impact of both the above experiences. The generosity of the little community blew my mind, especially when the families themselves had so little to live on. Reality is so hard for so many people, yet their ability to cope with that reality gives them a dignity which has left me deeply humbled.
Many of the articles in this collection have dealt with Church structures and the institution itself. Yet in the end, it is people who are the Church. I think that is one of the basic insights of the vision of Vatican II. The three grass-roots experiences which follow brought that home to me at a very profound level. They have truly ‘received’ the spirit of Vatican II, even though I suspect many of them may never have heard of the Council itself.
Filipino Diary Entry One
Bishop Labayan and the mission of the Church in Infanta
Bishop Labayan rang to say he would pick me up at 6.00 p.m. That is a pity as it means that most of the journey will be in the dark and I had been looking forward to seeing the countryside. Apparently, the road over is appallingly bad and goes through the mountains, where the guerrillas are.
Bishop Labayan arrived in due course with his housekeeper. They must have been doing their shopping as the back of the car, an estate model was packed with calor gas cylinders, boxes and plants of all sizes and descriptions. We drove for about two hours along a series of good and not so good roads. Then we stopped at a little wayside café. The Bishop produced three hamburgers and a packet of cold chips which he had brought with him. The café supplied us with beer and bananas. Then after we had driven a little further, the Bishop informed me that we were now starting the bad roads.
The next three hours featured the most incredible driving I’ve ever experienced, especially in an ordinary car. We literally drove over two ranges of mountains on a road which in England would be declared impassable. It was a matter of spotting the rock protuberances in the middle of the road, skirting round all the huge potholes, going slowly through the mini rivers – and all this in the dark, though there was a lovely moon that evening. Most of the time we seemed to be driving through jungle, though at times you could see a steep drop on one side or the other. Often along the way we would pass little clusters of straw or bamboo huts with a little fire or candle burning inside, occasionally groups of children playing in the road. We had to go over a few bridges, which in the dark seemed rather like driving onto the ramp in a garage, i.e. two planks that you had to centre on. Eventually we emerged out of the mountains onto the shore of the Pacific. It looked beautiful with the moon glinting on the water and palm and coconut trees going right down to the water with the occasional light of a fishing boat bobbing on the sea. There was still another three-quarters of an hour’s driving and the road was hardly any better!
Eventually we arrived at Infanta which seems a very tiny town with the Cathedral in the main square and the Bishop’s bamboo house beside it. After a little meal (including a piece of five-year-old cake!), I went with Fr Francis over to the Priests’ house and so to bed, ignoring a couple of giant cockroaches staring at me from a couple of corners in my room.
Saturday 27 September
From 5.00 a.m. I could hear the youngsters outside playing basketball and volleyball. I got up about 6.00 a.m. and enjoyed a nice cold shower. At breakfast I had a very interesting talk with a young priest, Fr Nono, who for the past six years has been in charge of training lay leaders in the province. That is one of their major priorities in the prelature. He works on two basic principles:
After breakfast I attended a double wedding during Mass – not too different from at home except that the families seem to be more involved during the actual wedding ceremony itself. The entry procession consisted of two boys and two girls carrying what seemed to be bouquets – they turned out to be the wedding rings all tied up in a decorative posy.
After Mass a rather stockily built young lad of about eighteen came up to me and said (as I thought), ‘Father, I’m Ephraim. I’ve come to bring you my gun.’ I was puzzled by that but he kept repeating it, so I went with him to the Priest’s house-cum-radio station. It turned out that he was saying ‘I’ve come to bring you to Maigang’, which is a little village about five miles away. It was explained to me that the community there was holding a three-day seminar so I was invited to go and see what was going on, staying overnight so that I could have a full day with them.
The journey itself was very interesting. First of all we got into what is called a ‘tricycle’ – that is a motorbike with a little covered sidecar attached. It looked as though it would be a matter of the driver and then the two of us in the sidecar. But not a bit of it. We were directed to one which already had four people in the sidecar (three adults and a girl) and two on the pillion behind the driver. I had to squeeze into the sidecar while Ephraim squashed onto the pillion. Then we started off on their usual bumpy dirt tracks. After a few miles we reached a wide, swiftly-flowing river. Then we got into a long narrow canoe-style boat with two side bars to balance it. An old man rowed us across. Then we walked on a tiny footpath for about twenty minutes, going in and out of the coconut trees with the rice fields running for a few hundred yards and then the mountains beginning. Eventually we reached a house with the sound of singing coming from it. This was our destination and it turned out that they had just started Mass. They knew we were coming through the local radio.
A young priest Fr Francis Clemente (ordained with one and a half years) was saying the Mass. He looks after a number of the surrounding ‘barrios’. In the country here, a ‘barrio’ means all the houses scattered over a particular area, a kind of spread out village. There were also two sisters at the Mass, Sister Clo (dressed in jeans and T-shirt) and Sister Flo (also in lay dress), a middle-aged woman who is Superior of their house in Manila and who had joined the seminar to get some ‘exposure’. The group was made up of about thirty adults, along with their babies and young children. I got quite used to the experience of one of the mothers beside me suddenly starting feeding her baby at her breast. They were a very poor, open, welcoming and extremely committed Christian group. Their poverty was evident in the food they ate. I was with them for three meals and each time it was rice and some kind of fish – and not big fish but dried up hard kind of sardines. Apparently, only rarely can they afford meat. It was always water to drink, except at breakfast when we had a kind of sweet coffee made from black rice. They have no gas, electricity or sewerage and the only way to get to them is the way we came – across the river by boat and then walk on little paths. Consequently they have no such things as cars or motorbikes. They don’t get beyond a transistor radio.
Yet, they are very well educated at their own level. The seminar itself was ample evidence of that. Apparently this group of families meets together on a weekly basis for prayer, bible study and to discuss their problems. They are helped in this by Nanding, a young man of twenty-six who was a remarkable person (he reminded me of my nephew Chris). He used to work with the Forestry Commission but was persuaded by Fr Nono to give up his work and become a Voluntary Community Organiser. That meant coming to live in this ‘barrio’ and devoting himself to helping them take more control of their lives by becoming a community caring for each other and refusing to be exploited by outside interests. He is not paid for this work but gets an allowance to cover living expenses. He has been there for a year and a half but will soon be moving to another ‘barrio’ where he will start all over again. I have rarely met a more committed, self-sacrificing young man who seemed to have no thought for his own comfort or advantage.
The community had decided for itself to hold this three-day seminar on health education and they had invited Sr Clo, who is a trained nurse now working full time in the barrios. By ‘Seminar’ they meant living together for three days, eating and praying together and following a very demanding work schedule. After lunch, for instance, when all the washing up had been done round the pump, they got together to work out their schedule for the first day and a half. It ran: session from 2.00 p.m. until 4.00 p.m.; then a ten minute break for a bit of some root vegetable which is like a kind of sweet potato. Then back to work again after supper until 9.30 p.m. when they were to have night prayers and then to bed. All this was decided by their talked out and shared discussion, as was the programme for next morning: 6.30 a.m. morning prayers; 7.00 a.m. breakfast; 8.00 a.m. Mass, 9.30 a.m. 1st session. And they had agreed that none of them would work on Monday so that they could continue the seminar all that day too!
The method of working was full participation throughout. For instance, after deciding on their schedule, they next discussed whether to work in groups or as a general body. They decided to go into groups to share their expectations of the seminar but then to come together to pool these and to stay together for the rest of the day. They were concentrating on health education because they had had a lot of trouble with sickness and in the whole area comprising 17,000 people there was only one doctor, three midwives and no nurses! They ended their session by reminding themselves that curing the sick and helping each other in illness was one of the hallmarks of a Christian community.
During the whole afternoon they analysed why the provisions for health were so bad for them and it became clear to them that of all the money spent by the Government on health, virtually none of it benefited the rural people, the poor, even though they formed the majority in the Philippines. Most of the doctors and nurses who were given training ended up going abroad. And most of the money spent on drugs and medicines went into the hands of the multinational drug companies, even though the components of most of the drugs came from the Philippines and were sold as cheap raw materials abroad only to be bought back at exorbitant costs.
All this was aimed at helping them to realise that even healthcare was influenced by political, social and economic factors. It made them more convinced that they were victims of unjust oppression because of a system which contradicted what the Gospel stood for: concern for others and special love of the poor. The more practical side of the seminar was to make them more self reliant in medical care through better understanding and improved hygiene (though they were all very clean and obviously very careful about hygiene). One thrust of the programme was a better understanding of herbal medicine, i.e. making maximum use of the medicinal qualities of local plants, since the whole area is very luxuriant with every kind of plant life.
When it got dark, a gas lantern was lit. After night prayers, a little group of them carried the lantern to escort me across the paddy fields. You walk on a little ridge about six inches wide with water-filled paddy fields on both sides. It was about a quarter of an hour’s walk to the house of Venan, whom they nicknamed ‘the Bishop’. He is a young man of thirty with three young children. His wife and the children were sleeping where the meeting was being held. His house was a wooden house built on stilts with a wooden staircase going up to the living level. When we stepped on this I noticed a pig asleep under the stairs with a batch of tiny piglets. The house itself was all wood and, inside, very sparsely furnished but scrupulously clean. Venan laid out a straw mat for me on the floor and fixed up a mosquito net for which I was most grateful, since I was expecting a night exposed to the mosquitoes. After a drink of homemade lemon juice, I went to bed and had a mediocre night on the floor – certainly no harder than the normal Filipino bed and more comfortable than the ultra hard bed in the Priests’ house in Infanta. Next morning I washed in the irrigation stream – very clean and cool.
I ‘presided’ at the Mass but in fact the Community did most of the ceremony. Through an interpreter (only a couple of the people could speak English) I preached a little homily on the Gospel of the Sunday which, providentially, was Dives and Lazarus (Lk 10:19-31). I had my photo taken with Venan and his family and he gave me a present of a lovely calendar in carved ebony (the wood is local).
I got back to the Priests’ house in Infanta (still escorted by Ephraim) to find the Radio Station in full swing. I forgot to mention that the Church in Infanta runs a local radio station, which is just as professional as Radio Merseyside or Radio City; though its premises are less imposing yet very well equipped. Fr Francis is in charge of it, though he has a good professional staff working with him. Linda, the Programme Manager, trained at Hatch End in the UK. They broadcast about eighteen hours a day, much of it music but also Bible classes. Every Sunday at 7.00 a.m. the Bishop’s Mass is broadcast. Once again it is very community-based.
When I got back from Maigang they were in the middle of the quarter-finals of a children’s singing competition. The recording studio (just a large room with a little stage) was jammed tight with children and two compères were organising the contestants. The show was live and the children singing were a scream, they were so serious and professional in their acts. Some must have been only about six or seven years old but they stood on the stage clutching the mike and sang and danced away to the audience. It would have made top-rating TV.
Later in the afternoon Fr Nono took me on the pillion of his motorbike (an essential for all the priests) down to the beach and I had my first swim in the Pacific. It was quite calm and the water was beautiful – warm by our standards so you could stay in as long as you wanted. It was a nice scene with coconut trees all along the edge of the beach and then the mountains rising up about two miles away. Fr Nono had brought a couple of bottles of beer – which we drank in the water. Then we went further along the beach to a little hut where Bishop Labayan was running a day of recollection for about forty lay leaders.
When I got back I sat in the studio while Linda and Fr ‘Boots’ ran their Bible School on the air. Actually it goes on later in the week but they were recording in advance. It has been going on for a number of years now. Lots of little groups meet all over the Diocese (Prelature) to study the coming Sunday’s Gospel and to discuss its implications for their personal and social lives. They get a diploma for following the whole year’s course. The group leaders are given additional training. Linda showed me a copy of the history of their radio station (it was virtually a history of Infanta Prelature). It was most interesting and never before have I realised so clearly the importance of the Church’s taking the media seriously, especially at local level. Fortunately there were a few copies available so I managed to buy one for myself.
At about 10 p.m. I went to the town square in front of the Cathedral where a big basketball match was beginning. It was the Radio Station (and other Church leaders – including Fr Francis) versus the local bank – complete with floodlights, a commentary over the loudspeakers and most of the town out to watch. There are no televisions in Infanta so there are many more community activities and involvement.
Monday 29 September
Next morning at 7.00 a.m. I left with Bishop Labayan and three other passengers for the return trip to Manila – the bumpy mountain road again, but in daylight this time. I had a most interesting talk with the Bishop en route. His pastoral policy is very carefully integrated and is based around the notion of local communities developing their own life with the assistance of voluntary and some full-time trained lay leaders. There are 170,000 people in his diocese and a total of sixteen priests (including himself). It is clear why lay leaders and radio apostolate are so important. He is also very strong on the importance of social analysis – looking closely at the real situation in the locality and the underlying reason why things are as they are. The Marxist analysis can be helpful in this, although his commitment is to a socially conscious Christianity, not to Marxism. That is why he puts so much emphasis on the centrality of prayer. As a symbol of this he has invited the Carmelite sisters to found a monastery in Infanta but he has insisted that all the sisters who will make up the new foundation must live with the ordinary poor people in the area for three months. This will enable them to understand the situation to which they are dedicating their apostolate of prayer and it will also help the local people to feel that the Carmelites truly belong to their community. Bishop Labayan himself is a Carmelite.
He talked about the need for people to have a very positive vision, based in Christian faith and prayer but also making sense in their everyday lives. He explained to me that he always talked to ordinary men and women (most of them parents) not in terms of the Kingdom of God but in terms of ‘the Father’s dream.’ He would ask them what dreams they have and he says they invariably answer that they dream about a happy future for their children, living in love, peace and prosperity. Then he asks them whether they think that God, their Father, has any dreams. Rather hesitantly they say, ‘He probably has’. When asked what the Father’s dream might be about, they reply: ‘about his children, which means us and all men and women’. Then he asks them to look at the situation in which they are living and asks is this the Father’s dream for them. ‘No’, they answer. So what does the Father expect of them – to make his dream come true? This gives their social and political involvement a deeply spiritual basis since it is Jesus himself who assures us that the Father’s dream is our good and happiness.
Besides this most interesting conversation, the drive back was also enjoyable because of the beautiful scenery over the mountains. First of all, mainly banana trees with some lovely flowering shrubs at low level – then giving way to more banana trees. We stopped to visit the elderly mother of one of the priests. She gave us lanzotes to eat, a delicious fruit. It looks like a small yellow plum but you squeeze it open and eat the inside (except for the pips) which is very juicy and tastes rather like a very sweet grape.
On our way back from Infanta we called to see the priest at Real, a little village about ten miles from Infanta. Apparently, the First Lady, Imelda Marcos, plans to turn it into a major international port and to build a highway through the mountains (the ‘Marcos Highway’) to link it to Manila. It would then be Manila’s direct link with the Pacific. Such a plan would drastically alter the whole area and would destroy forever its natural beauty. The priest wasn’t in but I saw the tiny little wooden hut in which he lives. One room serves a dual purpose as his oratory (with the Blessed Sacrament reserved) and his bedroom. The Bishop told me that he encourages all the priests to have an oratory like that in their house. It helps them to keep prayer very central in their lives. The Church itself was a very poor structure – a roof without any walls. However, there are signs of a new building around it.
Tuesday 30 September
I’ve just been reading a most helpful little article ‘The Price He paid’ by an Indian Jesuit, Samuel Rayan (reprinted in Loyola Papers No. 5, pp. 56-60). He is asking why Jesus died as he did and rejects the theories based on God’s justice demanding satisfaction for man’s sin (‘No wonder such a God died in due time and was disowned by men’). But he still links the death of Jesus with the Father’s will:
The wholeness and well-being of human persons in community is the centre of God’s concern as revealed in the Bible and in Jesus Christ. But there are anti-human forces on earth, which are also, on that account, anti-God. (Note – this reminds me of Tony Lambino’s often repeated remark: Communism is against God’s will not because it is atheistic but because ultimately it is anti-human and therefore implicitly denies the image of God in us). The effort to be human and the attempt to help others be human are seen to clash with these forces. Loyalty to humanity and God will involve a conflict and may entail the necessity of a struggle to death (Thought – we tend to wear the Cross as a Christian ornament or badge. Perhaps we should wear it as a pledge that we are prepared to engage in the struggle right to death if necessary!). Violence and tragedy are part of our concrete historical situation. They are a historical necessity, not a divine one. They are part of God’s plan only to the extent that they are unavoidable in the struggle for human wholeness which is what God wants and wills. They are taken over by the Son of God in his assumption of the human condition as part of the struggle for our humanity.
It seems clear that the death of Jesus was a historical necessity called for by the new and non-conformist path he chose to tread in obedience to the Father’s plan to redeem mankind from every brokenness, humiliation and captivity. Part of Jesus’ greatness consists in the fact that he stood for the greatness of people before God and within God’s love, and readily paid the price for the stand he took. And the price was his life, so young and full of promise. Those who made little of people and of their dignity, freedom and possibilities, and much, perhaps, of riches and power and ‘religion’, took him and tortured and killed him when they found that he could not be manipulated or cajoled or threatened into conformity to their standards and values.
The struggle still continues. Jesus is still on the battlefield … He upholds the worth of persons above banks, production systems, parliaments and the politics of the clever few … The price is being paid today with the tortured students and hanged priests in Brazil … Jesus lives with and in these people. He is still in our midst as a subversive force and a disturber of the sheriff’s peace … any Church which follows him without glancing furtively to Right or Left will participate with all its power in his mission of bringing the gospel to the poor and liberation to the imprisoned. The more she is thus involved in his mission, the deeper will she get caught up in his destiny and become a Church under the Cross. She will not worship the Cross as such but hold it up as a sign of elected poverty and protest, and as a sign of the affirmation of human persons and our world, whom God loves. The Church of Jesus will be misunderstood, oppressed and persecuted … Suffering is a ‘note’ or mark, of the Church (Mk 10:30) but it is suffering for the Kingdom, in Jesus’ name, and for the people for whom he lived and gave his life.
This passage from Rayan beautifully sums up the impact that this Philippine experience has been making on me. Somehow the important issue is not the technical discussion of the validity of Liberation Theology as a theological methodology. It is the much debated issue of the intimate connection between our Faith and our social and political involvement in the process of full human growth and development. Somehow it makes Incarnation Theology much more realistic since it situates it in the setting of human sin and selfishness. A theology of human development which ignores the reality of sin is completely idealistic and non-historical. And the Christian faith is nothing if it is not historical.
Filipino Diary Entry Two
Sister Breda Noonan in Cagayan de Oro, Mindanao
Next I went with Sr Breda to her ‘convent’. She has chosen to live among the urban slum squatters in the shanty town, Macabalan, on the edge of the harbour. At first sight the area looks appalling – very makeshift houses, some from odd bits of wood or cardboard, no streets, most of the houses are on stilts and many of them have foul looking water underneath. These swampy parts are gradually being filled, which does improve the situation somewhat since they are building open drains at the same time; but unfortunately some of the improvement is directed towards clearing the site for dock development and many of the people are simply being evicted.
Breda’s ‘convent’ (she is the only sister there) is shared with a group of young leaders (early twenties) who are dedicated to trying to help the people in this ‘barrio’ to develop as a human and Christian community. They are wonderfully dedicated youngsters, four boys and one girl with a few others helping them on a more temporary basis. They have all had a short initial training but most of their learning is done on the job. One of the girls generally sleeps in the convent too – the boys do sometimes when it fits in with what they are doing. They are all from the barrio itself.
The ‘convent’ is just like any of the houses in the barrio. From the outside it looks very poor and as though a breath of wind would blow it down. Inside, however, it is surprisingly roomy. You enter by going up a kind of ladder staircase on the outside. That brings you into a kind of porch. To the left you go up a step in the biggest room which is completely bare except for some mats and some curtains which can divide it off into sections. This is used for sleeping at night (on the floor of course) but is also used for meetings in the day. The wooden floor is well polished so it is a case of shoes off when you enter. In front of you in the porch is a door into another room, very small with a tiny desk, chair and bookcase. In the far corner of this room is a little staircase going down to a lower level dining room cum kitchen which is a very plain, simple and bare basics room. A little door lets you into an outside toilet.
We sat and talked for a while. Then Breda took me for a tour around the ‘Barrio’. We called into a few houses on our way round. Breda is obviously well accepted among them all. They all made us very welcome. Some of the houses are actually on the edge of the sea, the people being fisher folk. They told us that fishing is very poor at the moment. All they have to eat is rice and salt. Though the people were very, very poor, all the houses we visited were extremely clean and most of the people were tidily dressed. One or two of the houses, though very poor and drab on the outside, were very good inside and amazingly well-furnished with an originality all of their own. Some of the men were working at ‘Inport’ which seems to be the dock unloading firm. They work in gangs and are only paid for the work done. Hence if there are no ships in, they go without pay. Their rate is P1.120 per hour (which is about 7p an hour!) Moreover, five per cent of their wages are deducted for union dues, even though the union is government controlled and in no way represents the men’s interests. Strikes are forbidden by law. I got much of this information from a group of men and women who met that evening in a tiny one-room house by the shore. Breda acted as interpreter. The women were far more vocal than the men; Breda said that the women are always the strong ones in these areas. They have to make the going when there is no pay coming in.
Their answer to one of Breda’s questions really amazed me. She asked them what were their dreams for the future. I expected them to say that they would like to be away from the terrible place in which they were living. Not a bit of it. They all had the same dream – to be able to live where they were in security and with a steady wage coming in. Apparently, many of them who have built their little shacks there in the past few years are under threat of eviction as the government plans to develop the area as a site for some large factories – Japanese owned. If that happens their homes will just be pulled down and they will be left completely homeless. In fact, the next day I visited another part of the barrio where this eviction was actually in operation. Some of the families had banded together and were refusing to leave unless they were offered alternative accommodation.
This is one of the major tragedies in the Philippines. On the surface development is taking place at a very quick rate. But when you understand what is happening, you discover that the poor who form the vast bulk of the population do not benefit from this development. In fact, it only succeeds in making their situation even more desperate. This is true both in the cities and in the rural areas. It is a crying shame since the Philippines is a very rich country agriculturally and in natural resources. The area around Cagaya de Oro was prolific in all kinds of fruits and vegetables and yet here were people subsisting on rice and salt.
Breda had electricity in her little house (though no running water) so that evening we had a couple of slide shows. One was about the Chico dam, a government project which would involve the virtual extinction of one of the old Filipino tribes and their famous rice terraces. Bishop Claver is a member of this tribe and wrote a famous plea to President Marcos entitled ‘A letter from my Father’s House’. The tribe are refusing to leave their lands and at present things are at a stalemate even though recently the military shot their leader in cold blood. The other slide show was entitled ‘Who owns the land?’ and was produced by Billy, one of the young leaders who works with Breda. I was amazed at its high quality and immediately ordered a set, even though it is not yet available commercially. In both these shows the commentary is in English. I must confess that I had never before realised the great potential of slide-cassette presentations.
Next morning Domingo, one of Breda’s young leaders, came to collect me and we went on an hour’s ride to Tagoloan to meet leaders of the strike at the Vicmar logging factory. We first went to the house of Tony, a Community Organiser in the area. There I met Meindert Kik, a Dutchman in his early thirties, who was working among the young adults in the area. On the surface he was teaching them basic radio technology but at a deeper level he seemed more concerned with helping them appreciate a structural analysis of this situation. I noticed that one of the young people there was carrying a rifle so I presumed I was in guerrilla territory.
When we eventually got to the Vicmar logging factory, I discovered that there was an important meeting in session between the strike leaders and the management. The local Minister for Labour was acting as the “impartial” negotiator. Domingo and I stayed outside the factory gates wondering what we should do. Suddenly the two strike leaders (whom I had met two days previously at the Archbishop’s House) appeared and they hauled me along to their meeting.
I was seated in the inner negotiating circle and immediately the Minister for Labour started questioning me. Who told me that the meeting was taking place? I played innocent. Where was I staying? Why had I come to the meeting? After a lot of ‘playing innocent’ answers from me the meeting continued, partly in English and partly in their local language, Visayan. It was most fascinating to watch the process. It was obvious that the Minister of Labour was on the side of management, yet he made a great pretence of impartial negotiation. However, the strike leaders easily saw through him. He kept saying that a basic principle was ‘No work, no pay’ (I was dying to say that the opposite was equally true ‘No pay, no work’). The basic cause of the strike was that the workers (six hundred of them) had not been paid for more than six weeks (they should be paid every fortnight). The management were claiming problems of cash flow and the need for time to get things ratified with Manila. However, the strikers stayed firm on their position. They gave the management three days to produce their pay, otherwise the strike would continue. I was lost in admiration for the strike leaders since they were in open opposition to the law and by their action they were laying themselves open to the possibility of later arrest. We had to leave after about two and a half hours but I had the impression that the strikers would not give up on their claims.
We got back and had lunch with Breda and her young leaders. Then we had a walk around another part of the ‘barrio’ with a few visits to various families, followed by an informal Mass with her group and a few neighbours. After that Breda and I went back to the Columban Fathers’ house and joined them for supper. One of them told us of a horrific incident of bombing in the area recently. In most of these incidents it seems a debatable point whether the grenades are thrown by the local Moslem guerrillas or by the military (in order to keep up a public image of disorder and so justify the continuation of Martial Law).
I went to sleep on my soft (for a change!) bed in my air-conditioned room. However, I was rudely awakened during the night by my door being opened and a torch being shone in my room. I woke up and asked who was there, presuming it is one of the Columban priests. However, the light disappeared so I got up to see what was happening. There was no sign of anyone around so I felt a bit suspicious and woke up the Superior, Fr Charlie Maher. He soon discovered that one of the windows had been opened and it must have been a burglar in the house. Thank God I must have disturbed him before he took anything. Charlie told me the comforting tale that in a similar incident in a nearby house, the burglar shot the person who disturbed him! I’m glad I didn’t know that beforehand!
Filipino Diary Entry Three
Kidapawan and Luz Village
We drove for about three miles and then Gles, three of the women and I got out and began the most extraordinary walk I’ve ever been involved in. As soon as we left the road we were on to narrow reddish-clay footpaths through the fields. That would not have been too bad except for the fact that we had only been walking for about five minutes when the heavens opened and it just poured rain. The deluge continued for the next three hours of our walk, along with periods of very heavy thunder and lightning. It wasn’t long before the paths turned into thick, thick mud. The others were in their bare feet but I was still in my shoes and socks and it was very difficult walking. Soon we came to a river which we had to wade through, so I was forced to take off my shoes and continue in my bare feet. I must say it was easier than sliding around in my shoes. So the next two and a half hours was barefoot walking through forests, up and down hills, across rice fields, in and out of rivers, and across bridges which were just a single tree trunk. After a little while I actually began to enjoy it in a strange kind of way. The women had umbrellas, I had an anorak and Gles made his own umbrella out of the huge leaf of a banana tree. Needless to say I managed to slip in the mud twice and got my jeans filthy; then I half fell into one of the rivers!
Eventually we arrived at a little wooden house in a clearing in the woods. It was one of those houses built on stilts with the animals living underneath. However the cooking and the eating were also done underneath in a kind of open space under the house. As I was covered with mud, I had to strip off and have a wash from a tap in the rain tub in the open air. It was getting dark by then but of course they had no electricity so they brought out their own homemade oil-lamps – a little can with a wick sticking out. I think they must have laid on a special meal for me (even though I think my arrival was completely unexpected to them). They produced rice and tinned salmon and some cooked vegetable. After supper some of the neighbours came in (the rain had stopped by this time) and we drank ‘tuba’ which is juice tapped from the coconut trees and is a kind of wine. Apparently it ferments at a phenomenal rate. They get a good volume of it every day from their trees. Gles acted as interpreter for me, though Bonaventura, the father of the family where I was staying, was able to speak a little English.
These ‘barrios’ form their own Christian communities and each has its own chapel. They only have Mass a few times a year but every Sunday they gather and have a paraliturgical service which is very similar to the Mass, but without the Consecration. The one from the community who is elected deacon keeps the Blessed Sacrament in his home so that they are able to have Holy Communion at their service each Sunday. Of course, their existence as a basic Christian community goes beyond the level of prayer. They support each other health-wise and farming-wise. The barrio which I was staying in was called Luz village. Apparently, some big family in Manila had tried to drive them off their land in order to turn it into a big rubber plantation but the people had banded together and refused to leave. The police came in to support the Manila family and some of the villagers were killed. However, they refused to give in and they are still fighting their case in the courts. So a basic Christian community is an integrated community.
When it was time for bed we all climbed the outside staircase and it became obvious to me that Bonaventura and his wife had given up the one bed in the house for me. Actually, upstairs there was virtually no furniture – just a table in one room, a couple of benches and one solid wooden bed. I was given the latter with Gles sleeping on the floor beside me.
Tuesday 7 October
Next morning we were given a very substantial breakfast, rice, chicken, salmon and some more ‘tuba’. Both last night and this morning we were also given a big glass of hot sweet milk. It was very nourishing. After breakfast I was informed that the local community was holding a special Bible Service to give me some idea of how they ran things. We walked over to the little chapel which they themselves had built. Before we left Bonaventura’s house the deacon had come to join us and also the leader of the liturgy. So a little group of about eight of us set off for the chapel. I thought that would be our total number but not a bit of it. En route we called at their little school and all the children joined the procession. Then we passed a little store and everyone there joined us. I felt a bit like the Pied Piper! Eventually we gathered a group of about a hundred – men, women and children. Three of the men officiated at the altar and led the prayers; two of the women did the readings and the homily was shared among all who wanted to join in.
We got a Jeepney back to new Rizal when we eventually reached the highway. There Fr Edwin gave me a breakdown of how they organised things in the different ‘barrios’ to form their basic communities. Then I was put on a Jeepney bound for Kidapawan. Hardly had we started when the heavens opened up again. All the way along the route children were coming home from school and they were just soaked to the skin. I couldn’t help thinking what a hard life these people live. For instance, the Luz villagers have to walk for three hours before they even reach a road. The older children have a two hour walk to high school every day – and during the monsoon period that walk is through muddy fields and often in pouring rain. Yet they are wonderful people and really have time for each other.
After supper I called over to Bishop Escaler to say ‘goodbye’. He is a most wonderful man, a Jesuit, very courageous, clear-minded and a deeply spiritual person. Then to bed and I had a really good sleep even though I had been told that the house was infested by very large rats.