LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

By Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, CM

The most vulnerable sector during floods and rising water levels are people living under the bridge. They are part of more than a million informal settlers of Metro Manila. No one sees them; they live underground. After a heavy downpour, it is automatic that the water under the bridge rises. And people living in the “tarima” (in between spaces under massive cemented bridges) are the most affected. On big typhoons when the dams release water without informing the people, these human beings under the bridge can be easily trapped or washed away together with the wastes of society.

When it was raining hard last night, I was thinking about them whom we have personally known during the pandemic and whom #VincentHelps keep on helping weekly until now. One wonders how they managed, where they went to protect themselves, where they sheltered the children, etc. But when we visited them today, they looked so relaxed saying “alam na namin ‘yan, Father. Matagal na kami dito. Natoto na kami.” (We already know what to do. We have already learned. We have been here for a long time.)

That is what social scientists call “local knowledge” – knowledge that a community has developed over time born out of the circumstances the people have to deal with. If you have been there for years and you still do not know what to do, you have not learned.

This morning there was a man who almost got trapped inside his “tarima” when the water was rising in the river below. Maybe he overslept. He almost could not get out to move to higher grounds. “Tanga kasi. Tulog kasi ng tulog,” his co-bridge dwellers say. He should have known better, they thought.

People have an inherent instinct for survival even when the government has failed them now and again. They know what to do. “Marunong ka dapat dumiskarte,” they say. People who study it call it “resilience”. Resilience can only emerge from local knowledge.

But resilience and "diskarte" have their limits. The Filipino is called to be a resilient people. Of course, what else can they do?When a government does not have a housing program so as to just leave families (adults and children, a lot of children) to live under the bridge the whole of their lives, this society has abused people’s resilience.

When a government can keep a big sector of its population cold and sleepless, afraid and vulnerable every time it rains, such government does not care for its people. It only cares for itself, for its own survival in power. The people, whom it promised to serve with all the resources at its disposal, are left to survive (or die) on their own.

We should call for accountability! Enough Is enough.



Daniel Franklin E. Pilario, CM
St. Vincent School of Theology
Adamson University
danielfranklinpilario@yahoo.com
11.12.2020