I sent this email to my parents and my family about an hour after a day long visit to Smokey Mountain.
In this email, in no way am I trying to downplay the serious problem that the residents of smokey mountain face. (disease, hunger, shelter, education etc...). They just taught me something today that i should be a lot more thankful for!
I am sitting in my room right now honestly just thinking to myself how lucky i am to have such a wonderful family. Today was probably the most humbling experience of my entire life. An american friend of mine who i work with asked me to come along with him this weekend to go check out smokey mountain (tondo) where he has been volunteering and raising money for the last three years. smokey mountain ( i know john took his immediate family their twenty years ago) is literally a garbage dump (the dirtiest garbage dump i have ever seen ) that thousands of filipinos call home. Bamboos shanty's lined door to door covered in mud, dirt, feces and garbage. Thousands of filipinos living on top of each other fighting each day to survive. Ten year old kids scrambling towards full dump trucks fighting to get the bottles and cans that fall off the truck.(this is their only source of income).I would love to try and describe the sights, sounds , smells and immense poverty that is situated their in more detail but i would never be able to do it justice I went to smokey mountain with expectations of sadness. Unhappy people, living unhappy lives. How could they be happy they have nothing! No Food, possessions, money. I was expecting to find people wallowing in the sadness that they ultimately deserve to wallow in.
But this is not the case in smokey mountain.... i was met with only generosity, smiles, laughs, handshakes, hugs!!! Kids, men, women, husbands, wives met me with questions, positivity , endless laughter and smiles that would warm your heart. I walked around bewildered wondering how people in these conditions could be so happy and positive. I participated in a soccer game where kids put rocks in plastic bags and kicked them around, forts built out of our waste housed little girls throwing parties(to which i was lucky enough to be the guest of honour). These people have nothing! I felt like crying but their was nothing to cry about. If i would have walked in a park in the picturesque comox valley would the people their have been any happier. I honestly do not know.
i could not figure out how the people that lived on smokey mountain could be so happy. So i started to ask. The only resounding answer i got was family.
Family they all told me! I began to realize just how lucky i was. Not because i have more money than all these people combined, not because i have an opportunity that they will never have. but because, like them i have a wonderful family that loves me unconditionally. We spoke of each others families, told stories, laughed about our hectic brothers, crazy cousins and funny aunts and uncles. They never wanted me to feel sorry for them. They never wanted a hand out , all they wanted was a relationship. An encounter where they could share stories of their fortunes, good times and triumphs which in the end was their families. And they wanted to hear about mine. grandmothers introduced me to their grandchildren, proud as can be. Older brothers watched as their younger brother made shot after shot on their broken basketball hoop mentioning to me that they taught him everything. I just began to realize how lucky we all are. To be able to have a family where hornby trips, camp david, nancy's place, basketball games, soccer games, wine and beer on any deck, swimming and rafting adventures, sing a longs, trips to richmond, shopping trips, cousins voyaging to boracay, and countless moments of laughter fill all of our memories.
my buddy richy (who i think hughie has adopted as his fifth son) told me in the vancouver airport before i departed for the philippines that he had never met a happier family in his entire life. i feel blessed that i am able to call myself part of that family and to be able to spend time with each and everyone of you guys.
i guess all i really wanted to say is that i love you guys and we all should feel so lucky to have each other!!!!!!!!!!
scotty
