Life Amongst the Dead - The Cemetery Homes of Manila
- Davina Kaur
- Oct 12, 2020
- 3 min read
It was looking through a children's book that I discovered that because of a housing shortage that some people of Manila are living in tombs.
First I was shocked, and then amazed, and then horrified. When you first hear about people living in tombs, you think "wow! That's so cool!" Even the picture in the children's book depicts a happy family hanging up clothes and playing inside the tomb. But when you think deeper, so many people are out of housing and forced to live in tombs because they have nowhere else to go. That is horrifying.
Manila is one of the world’s most densely populated cities, as migrants from the countryside have poured in seeking better opportunities. On arrival, the majority find little work and nowhere to live except self-built communities.
Take Manila North Cemetery, opened in 1904, one of the oldest and largest in the Philippines. It is elaborate mausoleums and humble rows of stacked tombs, home to the dead and the living. It is inhabited by some of Manila's poorest people. Many live in the crypts and mausoleums of wealthy families, who pay them a stipend to clean and watch over them.
Others try to pave their way by chiseling the names of the dead into the headstones.
Electricity in these converted homes is jury-rigged, and most residents do not have running water. There are public wells where people line up with carts loaded with empty water bottles, waiting to fill them up. Amid all of this, there can be as many as 80 funerals a day.
The dead are a constant presence here, in one way or another.
“When there are moments that I hear noises or voices, I just keep quiet, and I know it is the voices of the dead,” Mrs. Javier said. Her husband, Felix, said ghosts were “just something you see in the movies.”
The cemetery's many children are raised and play happily among the tombs, unconcerned about ghosts.
There are makeshift stores, selling snacks and basic necessities like soap, candles for those who want to pay their respects to the grave if a loved one.
Some stalls even sell karaoke machines, which are popular in the evening.
In mausoleums, and in makeshift structures built over tombs, families go about their days. They chat, play cards and watch soap operas on TVs mounted near headstones or ornamental crosses.
If the conditions are not grisly enough, then the frequent violent anti-drug raids by the Philippine National Police would make it grislier still. Some graves hold the corpses of the victims of the PNP’s extra-judicial killings.
The PNP says crime and drug use are prevalent in cemeteries. “Many slum-dwellers are unemployed, some of them will resort to criminal activities so that they can support their families,” says superintendent Erwin Margarejo of the Manila Police District.
These raids cause the deaths of many occupants in the cemetery; killed in the evening or early morning hours when it is quiet and dark.
Lack of money in the community means they the people cannot afford to investigate the police shootings. And with no official record of populations living in the big cemeteries, the residents remain targets for extra judicial operations.
So the people of Manila, one of the poorest communities, are forced to live and raise their children amongst the dead. With no home, no job or even a chance of getting onto the job market. Their lives being threatened due to other poor communities turning to crime in order to survive.
Whilst some residents feel safer in the cemetery rather than the slums, it is a difficult existence.
I end on a quote from Carolyn, a resident of one of the Manila North Cemetery.
“In the monsoon, when it rains hard, I feel a spirit or see a vision sometimes. But I don’t believe in ghosts. I fear the living. People kill. Why should you fear the dead? Dito tayo lahat patungo.” This is where we are all headed.
Whether or not this is where we are all headed, you can't help but wish that the ones in power, with the ability to make this right, would treat the living, as well as they treat the dead.
Comments