My ankles bend awkwardly, attempting to balance my body as I run over uneven concrete, dodging motorcycles, Jeepneys and improvised basketball courts. I’m on my usual morning run, but nothing about this is normal.
I’m staying in a very local neighbourhood in Manila. It’s a rabbit warren of alleyways, skewed roads, street stalls and improvised basketball courts. Skinny, shirtless teens scurry under rusty basketball hoops, fixed to any structure they can find. A lazy, stray cat stretches, sniffing the ground for food as the mixed smell of spice, BBQ, humidity and fabric softener blends in the dense air. Clean clothes hang, quietly dripping from crooked railings as men sit on small plastic stools staring out to the street as if waiting for some action to unfold.
The decaying metal shells of old Jeeps sit slouched and sunken in the streets, overcome by plants and the puddles of monsoon rain that collects in pools on their dented roofs.
Despite the chaos, locals take to the street with hand-made straw brooms, carefully sweeping the ground. The staccato sound of straw scraping concrete becomes almost rhythmic before everyone pauses to let through a passing car as it convulses, awkwardly squeezing down the small alleyway.
Then there’s the karaoke that doesn’t seem to ever end. Ballads full of too much reverb, and off-key melodies are sung with passion and ring out across the subdivision. If there’s one thing Filipinos love, it’s their karaoke.
I’m only 5 minutes into my run, and I’m already drenched in sweat. The humidity and strength of the equatorial sun are too intense. Much different to my brisk run at home in Melbourne winter along carefully manicured, dull streets void of colour or character.
This place seems to ooze a sense of community. Between every laneway, every small house, people come together. Kids play out in the streets and neighbours gather around small communal TVs, strung up in huts with open spaces to sit and watch.
There’s a certain fluidity to the way people live here. They don’t hide away behind closed doors in symmetrical houses where every structure is identical as if stuck in a convulsive, mundane repetition… A familiar skipping record void of creativity, authenticity and passion.
Yet, what initially seems like chaos here, is actually highly-organised. These communities are on a mesh of juxtapositions and contradictions.
It’s planned improvisation that creates communities here.
People working towards a common goal yet taking each step as it comes and adapting along the way with a smile.
Locals here possess inherent happiness in what some would consider sheer poverty. Life is hard but, the Filipinos aren’t complaining. They’re getting on with it and doing whatever they need to live.
Wide-eyed yet sleepy cashiers line retail outlets in malls as they try to maintain a good customer experience after getting up at the crack of dawn to commute for hours in trikes and Jeepneys, grinding through the diesel fumed streets, pulsing with Manila peak hour traffic.
Life is what it is. Not complicated, not over-stated or repressive. It’s a world away from Western greed and desire and, as these places always do, it opens closed minds and makes you realise that your way of living is only one among many. Who’s to say which way is better than another?
We live in a beautiful mystery that is our global collective consciousness, spread out across continents, wealth, poverty, happiness, sadness and vibrant cultures and that, in itself, is fascinating.