FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

In December of 2006, I had to take a Basic First Aid and Life Support course conducted by the Philippine National Red Cross. This involved going to the Red Cross’ main office near the Port area of Manila, from 8am to 3pm for a whole week.

That one line, “going to the Red Cross’ main office near the Port area of Manila” is a lot easier to say now than it was to do. First off, I have a very bad sense of direction. Places I’m familiar with, like Ortigas or certain parts of Makati and Cubao, and anything along the MRT, I can hack: but when it comes to, well, anywhere else, I’m in trouble.

If I concentrate very hard, and make it a point to memorize landmarks and note street signs every minute, I can get to where I need to go; however, I’m just as likely to be distracted by, say, a stray cat or something shiny. (One day I may see a shiny stray cat, and will never make it back home. But I digress.)

I needed to figure out how to commute to the Red Cross office. The night before my first day, I Wikipedia’d and Googled maps and all three lines of the MRT, and planned my route. I needed to get down at the Central station of the LRT, take a jeep that says Port area, while looking out for the BIR’s main office, which is across from the Red Cross.

And I made it to the Red Cross. I hit a few snags along the way, and somehow ended up taking the back road, but I made it. So I spent that day learning how to properly bandage head wounds and ogling the cute foreign Red Cross volunteers, like one tall Indonesian-looking dude with a couple of white girls. By three p.m. it was time to go home. I stepped outside the Red Cross building and froze. I had discovered a fatal flaw in my plan.

I had forgotten to plan a route home.

I don’t know why I did it, but I hopped on the first jeep I saw, with a vague idea of how to get to the nearest LRT station. Now, Manila is not a place I’m familiar with at all. I liked what I saw of it, on the LRT ride: the old buildings with figures in bas relief, or covered in an art nouveau mosaic: architectural elements that you just don’t see any more. There were the wide roads, the parks and monuments, the sense of history that pervades the place, absent in my Ortigas and Makati haunts.

But this ride was different. The jeep was taking me into the squalid, seedy underbelly of Manila. We passed squatter areas, where children bared their asses at passing vehicles; where everything was wet, filthy, teeming with humanity and, of all things, joy. Filipinos, even in the worst of situations and areas, still manage to be a raucous and lively bunch, yelling it up and laughing, still finding time to flash passing jeeps. We passed derelict buildings, old, so old, but still dignified under their mantle of decay. These buildings had seen better days, yes, but the important thing is that they had seen them. All the while I stared bug-eyed from the jeep, trying to drink it all in; the sights, sounds, smells of an area so unlike those I had known.

By the end of that jeep ride I was violently in love with Manila. I somehow ended up at a church, and from there took another jeep to Recto, where at last I found myself at the LRT, and some time after that, home. My love affair lasted a week; a week of jumping on the first jeep I saw, bringing me to God knows where until I had had my fill. Then I would finally ask the jeepney driver, whom I had taken to sitting next to, to let me down at the nearest LRT station or another stop that would lead me there.

I completed my course, got my Red Cross certificate. I haven’t been back since. But I know Manila will be there for me. One day, maybe on a cool December day, I’ll go back, hop on, get lost¬–and fall in love all over again.