YSG met a student who's doing her undergrad on slaughterhouse, and she invited him to follow her to her fieldwork. that night, at 2am, we took a taxi to this dark corner of the market, busy in the day, quiet in the night..until, u get down of the taxi and smell the distinct stench. yes..a familiar stench. during my childhood my family lived in a government's quarter by a stream where the slaughterhouse/pig farms were upriver. only when we walked to the stream we could smell that stench..
anywayz, it was quite a sight. 25 men at work. all killing pigs. knocking their heads with big hammers until the pig stopped grunting and struggling, then cut them apart. More gruesome photos and videos i've got, but that's all i'll put here.
some photos of the market, having dinner with my housemate - ysg, mary (the owner) and jenny (she's 8 months pregnant, due anytime next week), and the sunrise scene from my window which i see every morning while eating my breakfast.
This morning we interviewed a lady who works in an NGO that organizes the urban poor people, and also the street vendors. She shared her struggles in the NGO, and also some difficulties faced working with the government and the vendors.
yesterday, i got Mary to do a reflective interview with me, who's also the research assistant for ysg's project.. she's an activist, also a theatre practitioner. everytime, it touches me when i meet people who are so concerned with humanity, pure hearted people who just want to make the lives of OTHER people better.
"it is difficult to gain their trust at first, who are we to come and want to do research on their lives? why should they reveal part of their lives to us, in the name of research?" "many of them have very simple dreams, they don't hope for anything more but to be able toe at 3 times a day, and their biggest pride is to be able to send their children to school" - Mary.
with the lady we interviewed this morning, we found out that some vendor, who's also the head of some vendors' association, been collecting money from other vendors, claiming that protection can be given. street vendors here face possibility of their stalls being demolished anytime, reason because of the anti-peddling law, and vendors aren't supposed to vend by the streets because they are public spaces.
suddenly it dawned on me, vendor or no vendor, there will always be a minority (or even majority) of people trying to take advantage of the others. the lady uses the word 'unity' a lot, referring to the collaboration between associations, etc. my thought was, if the driving force to 'unite', is mainly material - to get more $, for better house and better job (which definitely IS essential for a living), maybe the result will usually be less up to the expectation. YSG told me that he met few vendors who's faith plays an important role in their lives, which probably is the key reason that keep them going. Many vendors are Muslim Philippinos fled from Mindanao, their stories are truly heart-wrenching...
the name of the project we're working on:
"Being a Street Vendor: A critical ethnographic study of Sidewalk Capitalism in Baguio City."
