The Hidden Cost of Cruising

By Kelly Hayes-Raitt | February 8th, 2008 | 4 Comments »

My second day in Manila, I tour squalid sections of a flimsy warren that could be called “rooms” only by the very generous. Ducking in from the sidewalk, into a gloomy passageway barely big enough for my medium five-foot-six frame, I stumble over a broken board bridging a stream of wash water flowing from a young girl’s public shower into the street.

The girl grins, startled, unaware of how to act in front of a stranger, in spite of the fact that a group of mah-jong playing neighbors sit within sight of her soapy, T-shirt-clad body. Privacy is so non-existent, she allows me to take her photo, and laughs when I show her her image in the digital camera.

This shantytown adjacent to Manila’s North Harbor houses thousands of families of working seafarers and dockworkers living in the slummiest conditions I’ve ever seen. Multi-generational families of a dozen people live in rooms smaller than most Americans’ bathrooms, their “kitchens” a board with a hotplate and washbasin, their “bathroom” a blanketed-off corner with a bucket. People sleep in lofts above the claustrophobic rooms. Windows are absent luxuries. The smell of humanity is embedded in the splintering wood.

Belongings spill into the communal walkway, slowing my passage and forcing me to meet these proud people’s smiles. I try to hide my revulsion and pity behind my camera lens, shaking hands with the little children and waving at the women who surely know, must know, there’s a better life.

Dockworkers on split 12-hour shifts and seafarers on yearly contracts ease the overcrowding.

But not the poverty.

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