Chapter XXXII: Letter XXX: Philippine Sanitation—decoration Day

ILOILO, _May 29, 1905_.

I know you will be glad to hear that we are having a lull in the great heat, as the rain is beginning, or, at any rate, the Monsoon is blowing through rain, steadily from the S.-W., and the thermometer has gone down from 95° to 90°, which makes a vast difference to us, though it must still sound like great heat to you.

I have just had a letter from a Manila friend, who is spending the hot season at Benguet, whither the “Gubernatorial party” and the Commissioners have also fled; and where, according to the Manila papers, I see they are having gay times ... lots of Bridge. She says:—“We are very chilly people up here, fires every evening, and hot-water bottles at night! This is a lovely country, all pine-woods and tree-ferns—a curious mixture. We ride about here a very great deal, play cards, walk, and generally have a thoroughly quiet, lovely time. I am going to a euchre party this afternoon at a house near by; there are to be very nice prizes, I hear. This climate is like England. You and Mr Dauncey would like it when he can get leave. There is a sanatorium, hospital place here, where you can go for one dollar, gold, a day per head. There is also this house, but you could not live at that here, at least I think not. I think this climate would do most people as much good as going home. It is a beautiful place, and they shortly expect a railway to run within 15 miles of it, which will make it cheaper to get here, and quicker; at present it takes three days from Manila.”

That all sounds very tantalising to us sweltering down here, but I _think_ we shall wait till that mythical railway is ready, for we have several times discussed the pros and cons of a health trip to Benguet, but when C—— went into the matter, he found that the expenses from here and back would be more than to go to England! And then, if we did go to this paradise of pine-trees and hot-water bottles, we should only be that much to the good, for we should be still living on the awful Philippine food, and the question is, should we get rid of that cuirass of prickly heat? Also, would the water there still give _sarna_—which I think they call in India “dhobey-itch”? And these things being so, is it not better to go home? And being at home, would it not be the utmost folly ever to venture within a hundred miles of a Philippine island again as long as life lasts? I feel inclined to answer my own questions by saying—American fashion—“That’s so!”

I missed my little love-birds so much that C—— got me some other pets, which we hope will flourish better—three baby mongeese. They are the dearest little things, so soft and gentle, and look like very fluffy weasels, with large dark beady eyes and long, busy, smelling-about noses. The people here call them _Gato del Monte_, which is, being translated, mountain-cat, though the animal we call by that name is a very different creature. They are found all over the islands, I believe, and there are many in Guimaras, whence these were brought by a countryman who was going round the offices trying to sell them, with the little things nestled in his coat. So C—— bought them for me for a couple of _pesos_. They are very young and very tame, in fact more than tame, for they run after me all over the house, and as soon as I sit down, climb up and sit on my shoulders, or curl up on my lap, and I daresay the warmth of their woolly little bodies would be grateful and comforting amongst the pines and tree-ferns at Benguet! C—— has made them a beautiful large cage out of a packing-case and some wire-netting, where they spend their time asleep in a box full of cotton wool, or else clamouring to be let out, with a curious guggling, rippling cry, a sort of cross between a nightingale’s “jug-jug” and a cab-whistle.

Half the ground-floor of this house was let a little time ago to a rabbit warren of low-class Filipinos, who keep all sorts of animals in the rooms, and throw all their refuse out into the narrow alley between this and the next house. Unfortunately, this is all on the side where our bedrooms are. After a time we got accustomed to the mysterious noises to a certain extent, though the bleating of goats remained tiresome, and the person with consumption who coughed all night still disturbed us. The natives here die like flies of consumption, and the dreadful cough, hollow cheeks, and glittering eyes are a very common feature in the landscape.

Well, we weathered through the noises, though we were often inclined to shift our quarters to the other side of the house, to the rooms which that persistent American wished to inhabit. Fancy breakfasting with them! I have not got over that yet! But on that side, unfortunately, the construction of the house is such that there is no through draught, without which one cannot sleep. Finally, however, the smell of the refuse gave C—— an attack of tonsilitis, with a touch of fever, and as I myself had also had some sore throats, we made the move across, and found it was not so bad after all, for the S.-W. Monsoon blowing straight in kept the air quite bearable.

The smells on the other side got worse and worse, and we put bowls of disinfectant about, and complained to the landlord of the house. He said he had no power, meaning that he was really afraid to offend and lose his tenants, but he “would speak to the people,” advising us, at the same time, to go to the Sanitary Inspector of the town, who would set things right. Now, the municipality consists of natives, and the Sanitary Inspector is a Filipino with a Filipino’s notions of sanitation, so he can’t see what we have to complain about, and we went on sending in complaints and protests, which met with vague replies at first, and latterly with none at all. So at last C—— told the landlord that if he did not have the alley cleared, we would leave the house, whereupon _jornales_ (labourers) were promptly hired, and unimaginable arrears of horrors dug out and removed—oh, the smell! And as to future transgressions of the laws of cleanliness and decency, C—— has adopted his own method for that, which consists in the simple plan of leaning out of the window when the people below do anything he does not like, and calling them “_Babuis_” (pigs), or “_sin verguenza_” (without shame) in a very loud voice, which they don’t like at all; and this method has more effect than anything else, for he says: “You can always ‘get at’ a Filipino by making him ashamed of himself.”

_To face page 242._]

We are lucky to be no worse off, however, for it is a marvel to me how this town is not swept clean of inhabitants by some awful plague, when one thinks that it is absolutely without drainage or sanitation of any sort, and when one sees and smells the awful and ghastly rubbish heaps which fester right amongst the houses in the town. The only saving of the place is the Monsoons, and it is no wonder everyone feels so ill and languid, even the natives, as soon as the wind drops. There is a costly School of Tropical Medicine in Manila, and many learned articles appear in the papers from time to time about germs and bacilli, and so on, assuring us that, when the Filipinos know more mathematics and Latin, they will know how to live more healthily; but sound common-sense would seem to lie in the direction of a strong and efficient sanitary control of white experts and a few schoolma’ams replaced by some paved and drained streets.

Oh, the streets! They are a disgrace to civilisation, for I have never, no, not in Morocco, not in little towns in the Canaries, known such neglect, such dirt, such squalor, and such smells!

Grass grows at the sides of the streets, and in wet weather many stagnant pools appear on pieces of waste ground and between the houses, looking very pretty indeed amongst the brilliant greenery when the sun comes out again, with beautiful reflections mirrored in their shallow depths, and making little gems of scenes like bits out of a fairy pantomime. All the same, one could quite willingly sacrifice their beauty in the cause of health, and for the sake of matter-of-fact drainage!

Mosquitoes breed in the swampy places in which the native houses generally stand, and at night the inhabitants frequently light fires under their flimsy dwellings to dry the ground and destroy the insects. At first sight these fires look very strange and alarming; we often pass them as we drive in the evenings, and it is yet another of the local miracles to see the dry thatch huts not taking fire from a pile of leaves and grass burning underneath.

In connection with the swamps too, or I suppose so, the Filipinos have another curious custom, which is, as soon as anyone is taken ill, to shut the house up tightly, with the screens let down and fastened over the openings that serve as doors and windows, and whenever you pass a house all dark and hermetically sealed with tiny slits of light here and there, you know some unfortunate soul is ill inside, and in all probability dying, for the Filipinos have no physique, and if they get seriously ill, they snuff out like a taper. When a poor person is dying—really at the point of death—he or she is taken out of bed and carried to the priest to be assoiled, which generally has the effect of killing the invalid outright. Only two evenings ago we met one of these melancholy little groups going along the Jaro road, two of the men carrying a long bamboo pole on their shoulders, with a canvas hammock slung to it, and I think the poor woman, whose head was lolling out, was dead already.

An American hospital, to which we have all contributed by request, is being provided for the town, and when we drive out, we often pass down the road where this remarkable building is rising slowly from a pile of beams and planks, all stacked ready, and cut to certain lengths. I say it is remarkable because the hospital has apparently been designed in America by someone who has never heard of the Philippines, for the main supports (the _arigis_), instead of being made of great trees of hardwoods, are quite slender posts of Oregon pine; and the cross-beams and, in fact, all the timber work, are of the same wood, which is about as much good as so many pieces of cardboard against insects, typhoons, earthquakes, and so forth. I daresay these plagues do not prevail in the country where this fantastic building was evolved.

Coffins containing Bones of American Soldiers stacked in Malate Cemetery, Manila.

_To face page 244._]

But if the substructure of the hospital was the laughing stock of the town, and the subject of many rather acid jests on the part of those who had contributed to such a monument of folly, you can imagine what was thought and said when the wards were seen in the making, and observed to consist of screens of _nipa_ and _bejuco_ matting! All so hasty, so shoddy, such a piece of blatant jobbery—but to hear its advocates talk you would think the finest hospital in Eu-_rope_ was being rendered silly and out of date!

To-morrow is Decoration Day, the anniversary of the close of the war of the North and South, when the graves of the soldiers who fell in that struggle are decorated in the United States.

Out here the day has also been established as a public holiday; observed with bands and processions; and they have so ordered the ceremony that the graves of those who fell out here in the war with Spain and the Insurrection are supposed to be decorated, Americans and Filipinos alike. But the two events become hopelessly confused in the native mind; and it is no wonder that the Filipinos have some dim idea that they are rejoicing over the fall of those of the Americans whom they managed to kill in the Insurrection. There are not many American soldiers’ graves out here to decorate, however, as the dead American warriors are being dug up everywhere and sent back to their homes—such a queer idea! Fancy if we dug up all the men who fell in our innumerable wars and sent them to their relations at home! There is nothing left but bones, of course, but each man is identified by a bottle containing his name, etc., which was buried with him. At least, they are identified to a certain extent; but a man who had the job of bringing a lot of these defunct warriors down the Pasig for shipment told C—— that the only thing to be done as a rule was to put a name on a coffin and then lay inside as many bones as you could find to make a complete skeleton. It sounds rather horrible, but I must say one can’t have much sympathy with such unheroic and superstitious sentimentality, which seems to me no better than the customs of the Chinese.