It is now nearly a year since I came back from the Philippines.
I lived there for almost two years. There I learned a lot about what
we call the “Third World”, but even more about us and our so often
naive ideas about what we should do there.

My mother refuses to get into the rundown van. It is not because of the jalopy, nor is it because of the precipitous roads, the potholes or the steep slopes that meander dangerously close to the track - it is because of the doleful or accusatory looks she is getting from the children who have gathered to wish her goodbye.

This happened in a little place not far from the Philippine capital Manila - a place that is both tranquil and horrific. Doña Remedios Trinidad has 20,000 inhabitants, many of whom live on less than $2 a day. Here Robert Tiangco has rented a former farm estate for one symbolic dollar and converted it. For more than ten years the “Damascus” organization has been rehabilitating and looking after street kids and drug addicts. There are many reasons why people can fall into the drug trap in South-East Asia. First and foremost is the fact that drugs ease the hunger as well as offering flight from everyday reality. “Damascus” offers a different refuge, no matter how bleak the surroundings may seem. Robert Tiangco and his helpers attempt to help at least a small number of people who have decided to free themselves from their addiction.

Recently the trust opened its doors for children who would otherwise lack the most basic necessities - food, medical care and education. During outings in the immediate vicinity Robert and his colleagues noticed the astonishing number of hungry and hollow-cheeked children working with their parents in the surrounding fields. Totally lacking in education these children were unable to give even their family name or their age.

On the edge of Doña Remedios Trinidad, where the air is muggiest and the water is dirtiest, settlements of squalid shacks have been established which sink into the mud when it rains and where it stinks of decay when the sun shines. There is no running water and worse: there is no “running” life. The adults vegetate in their shacks, mostly under the influence of alcohol. The children running round half or even completely naked lack everything, but above all else they lack attention and affection. There are enough schools - even for the poorest of the poor. But what use are these schools when the children leave them again after a couple of weeks? Because they do not understand what they are supposed to be doing there, because their parents do not care or even find it a nuisance, or because they simply cannot follow the teachers.

The Damascus Learning Center is a sort of pre-school which was set up in July 2007. The trust decided to support the weakest of the children and to let them have lessons and food five days a week. These were mainly children who do not go to school yet, in other words four- to six-year-olds. But the workers are doing things we usually do to amuse twoor three-year-olds: simple sentences, names, object, but above all it involved getting them to notice each other. These children overwhelm their counterpart with everything they have: they tear at him with their tiny hands, with their looks, with their few words; intense, serious and laughing all at the same time. Every second you can tell how much they would like to be children but are not allowed to be. Many of the children have to walk miles to get to the school. Most of them come with their mothers and their brothers and sisters, because without the aid of Damascus these too would only get one meal a day. Here the children are supplied with food, uniforms, school supplies and books. Basic medical care is provided for both, the children and their mothers. In addition the parents are informed of opportunities to earn money so that the family can be helped with at least a little extra income.

Even after just a few weeks a weight gain and an improvement of their general condition could be observed. Eager for knowledge and without worries they romp around the yard these days. Damascus also looks after the families in this region, gives them concrete assistance and imparts to them what is most important: the belief in a future where not everything must be as it now is.

Damascus looks somewhat more closely and seeks ways to help, above all, the children in the bamboo shacks in the long term. Injustice and poverty make people angry and ashamed. Above all because they are a vicious circle that is so difficult to break out of. On the edge Doña Remedios Trinidad Robert Tiangco and his helpers have succeeded in doing so. There education is now something worthwhile and the future is something concrete.

On that occasion my mother had been invited to the first formal graduation ceremony after the first school year. The “diploma” that the children received there has no formal value; after all, it is only a case of a private pre-school program. And yet the children in their little academic mortarboards, their graduation pictures and their certificates were prouder than I ever was during my whole time in school. And most importantly: so were their parents.

More information at:

www.damascus.org.ph