Fire in Manila

The following article is from MSN.com Philippines.  About a week ago, a fire burned the homes of 10,000 Filipinos in a squatter district in Manila.  A week later, we were the first visitors to come and visit.  Fires like this are not uncommon, and are speculated to be started on purpose so that the land owners can bulldoze the land without people in them.  It's much worse press flattening land with no one living in it than with thousands of poor people on it. It's a sad situation, and we plan on helping through local churches.  Go to www.kidsim.org to give.

10,000 lose homes in Philippines slum blaze

Around 10,000 people lost their homes and a child was killed Tuesday after fire razed one of the Philippines' largest slums, authorities said, in the latest disaster highlighting Manila's widespread poverty and urban blight.

The blaze ripped through the sprawling Bahay Toro slum, leaping from house to house and burning ferociously for three hours before firemen could get it under control, residents said.

The cause of the blaze was unknown, fire inspector Catherine Albino said, adding the flames destroyed about 500 shacks each housing extended families.

A five-year-old boy was killed, six other people were injured and about 2,000 families were left homeless, Albino told AFP.

Some of those families Tuesday pitched makeshift tents near the devastated slum as charities distributed rice and noodles.

Sitting under a tarpaulin with her three unemployed adult children and four young grandchildren Morena Leoncito, 58, said she was worried about food and shelter for her family over coming days.

"We lost everything except the clothes on our backs. Our first priority had to be the children," the widow told AFP.

Her family did not want to join several thousand survivors crammed into a covered basketball court several blocks away.

The city mayor visited the fire victims earlier Tuesday, Leoncito said, pledging to repair the slum but making no firm commitments on providing building materials.

Slum fires are a frequent hazard in the Philippine capital of 12 million people, highlighting Manila's sprawling poverty and the cramped, dangerous conditions in which poor families often live.

Another blaze two kilometres (a mile) away from Bahay Toro a week earlier razed 600 shanties and left 20,000 people homeless, Albino said.

On January 29, fire struck another densely packed slum in Manila district of Navotas, killing 12 people and destroying some 100 shanties, the authorities have said.

Tuesday's inferno razed the 30 square-metre (320 square-foot) hovel Marilou Erabon, 53, shared with her jobless husband, four children and six grandchildren, destroying the family merchandise of plastic basins and clothing hangers.

"Somebody gave us food but we have no appetite, thinking about the house we lost," Erabon told AFP.

"If somebody gives us roofing sheets we might be able to put up something," she added.

Like their neighbours the Leoncitos, the Erabons moved into the creekside Bahay Toro slum in the 1970s as economic migrants from the provinces, surviving the deadly floods from Tropical Storm Ketsana that killed 400-plus people across Manila in 2009.

The World Bank has said that 40 percent of the population of the Philippine capital are informal settlers living in shanty towns. Many depend on contract work and are unemployed for several months of the year.

One in four Filipinos live on a dollar a day or less, according to the latest government poverty data released earlier this month.

Little Things

We are still on our month of rest and transition, so we still haven't gotten fully into our roles.  As of now, we are still living in the ministry center because the townhouse we are to move into is being a bit remodeled.  The kitchen in the townhouse was very small.  However, built into just about every semi-modern Filipino house is a small room where a maid (called a helper here) would live.  The helper's room in our townhouse is right off the kitchen.  We don't plan on having a live-in helper, so we had them knock out the dividing wall between the kitchen and the helper's room.  Now our kitchen will be almost twice as big and will actually be big enough to have a refrigerator in (it wasn't before!).

More on helpers:  It's very common around here to have a helper come work for you for anywhere between an hour and the whole day.  Before coming, as we went over a budget for Jess and I with Jeff, he mentioned us getting a helper.  As an American thinking about being a full time missionary, the thought was completely out of the question.  After all, it's demeaning right?  Well, it was explained to us as this: some people make their sole source of living by being helpers.  In fact, around here, it's almost looked down upon for a foreign missionary to NOT have a helper.  It provides a job for someone to feed their family, and the wife of the house (Jess in this case) will be able to free herself up for a couple hours to tend to other things like tutoring or working with kids.  So, with that in mind, we've decided to have a helper for a couple hours maybe three days a week.  We'll report on how that is later.

For now, we're just taking care of little things like visas.  The process of getting a visa here is a bit of a pain.  We have to send our birth certificates, marriage license, college degrees, etc. to the Philippine consulate in New York City for them to be authenticated.  Then we pay a lot of money to get a visa that might be one or two years, depending on how nice they are feeling that day.  Let's hope and pray that ours are approved for 2 years, saving us the cost and time of applying again soon.

Also, we got a car!  God provided us with a 2004 Toyota Revo.  It's great because it seats 12 people, it's a car that will last us a long time, and our all around handyman, Benjie, is especially skilled at fixing Revos.  Within Kids Internatinal Ministries staff, we own 5 Revos, so he's getting quite good at repairs.  I'll attach a picture of our Revo below.  Until next time, God bless!

Malaybalay

We spent this past week in Malaybalay on the island of Mindanao.  As part of Russell's responsibilities here, he will be traveling to the island once every month or two to help with short term teams that go there to work.  As such, he needs to know the operation and meet the key players there.  Though it rained for most of our stay, it was a good week to meet and hang out with other KIM missionaries and see the kids at the home.  Here is a little photo tour of our week:

 This is the Children's Home.  It's been a constant work in progress for the last couple of years, and has recently gotten painted.  It's looking great!

Along with the Children's Home, the property in Malaybalay is host to Mt. Moriah camp.  It is a summer camp for kids.  We are working on a soccer field and it will eventually have an indoor basketball court too, making it a great place for sports clinics and camps.  We stayed in the bottom portion where that wooden door is.

This is the front yard of two of our KIM missionary friends, Mark and Ellie Hymes.  They run a reading program in Malaybalay with the hopes of developing friendships that will lead to discipleship.

Jess and Micaiah posing at the front of the drive into our Campgrounds.  On the right is a banana orchard (how cool is that?) and behind are some beautiful mountains.

We took our first ride in a multicab- basically a miniature minivan/truck with an open bed that carts people from point A to point B.  

One day, after spending the morning in a cafe (using the internet), we came back to a trickster's prank in our freezer.  Notice the little curvy thingy.  Now look at the next picture.

This poor little guy was frozen in our freezer!  You should have heard Jess scream when she opened the door, it was great.  And no, the trickster wasn't Russell.  We let him thaw on a ledge outside our door.  The ants carried him away a few hours later.

We also got to spend some time with the Moody family.  Jeremy and Sarah Moody run the Children's Home in Malaybalay.  Here are two of their kids playing with Micaiah.  They absolutely loved her!

And, as a finale, a little lizard friend we saw scaling a wall in a restaurant we ate at.  I thought it was a cool picture.