Multi-generational Living.. an understatement!

 

A cemetery with 6,000 occupants is large,  but imagine, those are just the LIVING.   The North Manila Cemetary (Cementerio del Norte) is 140 acre massive cemetery home to generationsand generations of both the living and the long dead.  Many of the living had been here since there birth, up to 70 plus years ago and know no other life.  Due extreme poverty over 14% of all Phililpinos live in make-shift type shelters.  Many find their mausoleum homes in the cemetery safe and much better built that many shanty like residences found under bridges, alleys and along highways.  Visitors to the cemetery share will find children playing, laundry drying on lines strung between crosses, karaoke machines, instant noodles brewing, mausoleum cafes, gravesites doubling as beds and running TV sets.  Many earn as little as $400 US dollars a year and must provide for their entire families. Some families try to earn extra funds selling food to mourners.  It seems through photographs that they make the best of their lives. Some find comfort living near their deceased relatives.  City authorities threaten to evict the residents (sounds like the USA), but dwellers using deeds from their families whom graves they maintain, allows them to live and work at the cemetery.
Manila has a housing shortage and is not adequately addressing the housing needs of the urban poor.  People living in urban shanties are often forced to pay higher rates of electricity due to mafia syndicates that take over the area.  The poor have little rights and are easily evicted from their homes, their homes are often threatened by floods and the governments answer is often to send them away from their extended family to periphery provinces that are also not adequate.  Currently the government is working on ways to help over 1/2 million people living in make shift shelters in Manila alone to safer destinations, but those living in the graveyard feel this is a the strongest and safest home often they have at this time.  Sad, interesting yet never without hope.