On Holy Ground
By Father Shay Cullen
Actor Martin Sheen and a Columban priest visit people who live on a garbage dump in the Philippines.
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Actor Martin Sheen and Columban Father Shay Cullen visited the Payatas garbage dump in Manila. An estimate 80,000 people live on or near the dump located in s suburb of the Philippine Capital. |
The U.S. actor Martin Sheen, sometimes derisively described as an “activist Hollywood actor,” has been arrested 56 times, always for a just cause protesting injustice and exploitation and advocating for the rights of the poor. In 2006, he was in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, as a member of a fact-finding mission looking into the conditions of squatters—the homeless and the poorest of the poor—living on a huge Manila garbage dump called Payatas.
He wasn’t there as an actor or someone seeking attention; he was just someone who cares.
Martin is a friend of mine, a honest and plain-spoken man, devout in his Catholic faith, who grew up in hard times. I first met Martin when he came to visit our PREDA Foundation children’s home in Olongapo City after he had seen a video on the work of PREDA, our organization dedicated to defending the rights of children in the Philippines.
His concern and commitment to help others was clear, lie was dressed simply and came unannounced, without media. There was no fake charity in his visit, unlike some politicians here who visit hospitals and orphanages only to promote a plastic image of heroic virtue.
Martin’s visit was one of a man of compassion, the film star image left far behind, drawing attention to human suffering and with the hope of changing it. We met and talked and went to see the Payatas garbage dump.
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Columban lay missionary Columba Chang (left) spoke with an elderly Payatas resident. |
The people there certainly did not recognize him; their lives chained to the trash of a thousand trucks give them no time or money for movies. There on this mountain of decaying waste they wade ankle-deep in the filth and refuse of the garbage heap to which they have been condemned by the hardened hearts of official and corporate corruption.
Here the poorest of the poor exist on the outer fringes of society struggling to live on human waste and decay Dressed in layers of torn and tattered rags, the silent figures moved through the rising smoky haze like ghosts in a graveyard.
They plodded across the mounds of rotting garbage, dragging sacks of dirty bottles, scraps of metal, filthy bits of plastic. An old woman with decayed teeth ate something from the garbage. A little 5-year- old with running sores pulled wet slimy bags from a dirt-filled hole.
A stench of putrid flesh mingled with the pungent smell of decaying food and human excrement filled the air: the rotting carcass of a dog here, a sack of contaminated food there stung our nostrils.
Small children with dirt-smeared faces worked as hard as the adults, scratching the trash with hooks, grabbing anything that would bring them a few coins, a mouthful of food.
UNDERSTANDING & SOLIDARITY. Martin made it clear to all that the most-valuable asset he has, his artistic fame and name, was at the service of the poor.
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Columban Father Colm McKeating (Second from left) spoke with others amid the shanties built upon the dumpsite. |
Many of the poor are empowered and articulate and don’t need a spokesperson.
But then there are the thousands who are not and are left by the wayside calling helplessly in the wind. Who will speak for them?
These are the wretched of the sludge and slime, the pickers of filth and waste, the tillers of trash, the diggers of dung. Their poverty and level of fragile existence cripples them even from realizing the enormity of the injustice they have to endure.
They are deprived of every thing decent and human, even the right to be angry at the world, at government and at God. They endure all; they suffer all; and they are silent about all.
They do smile a lot, even on that smoky mountain of human misery Their good humor and ready smiles are most troubling to those who don’t understand survival in the most inhuman of conditions.
Theirs is an unquestioning submission to reality Life is so fragile, so short, and so viciously brutal.
Martin walked silently through this garbage pit of hopelessness. His inner anger was controlled but not well-concealed; his face, in unguarded moments, showed pain.
There was no revulsion at the nauseating stench that clung to our hair and clothes. The dirt and smell covered the wretched like a veil, making them untouchables to most of humanity. But touch them he did. Martin had no limp, embarrassed handshake; no distant nod of the head; no plastic smile.
Instead, he showed under standing and solidarity: he hugged an old woman, he shared words of encouragement, and he was with them for a while.
As we stood there in the muck, he asked me to express his apologies for intruding on their lives. He felt that he was in a holy place and was unworthy, yet privileged, to be there.
If God reveals himself to humankind through the poor, then God is toiling on Payatas.
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COLUMBAN MISSION
WWW.COLUMBAN.ORG
March-April 2007
