Five seconds of grace: Waiting for a Papal motorcade

My back was hurting. We made the walk from the point where Edsa met Taft, to Roxas Boulevard. We found a spot where the crowd was thinner, stretched by the length of the road.

There were three layers of fencing, two of them human. There was the uniformed police, who stood the entire time, an actual makeshift fence of pipe rails, and the white-shirted human chain volunteers. No one was allowed to cross the raised island, the barrier holding up the dirt soil and the skinny palm trees that line the road.

My back hurt as we waited, so I stretched as we talked. It wasn’t bad; the air was cool, everybody was behaving themselves, and it looked like we were going to actually see the Pope as he passed. He was flying in from Sri Lanka, and it was going to be his first time in Manila.

Vendors walked up and down, selling things like cold bottled water, dirty ice cream, special buko pie. A few people with the foresight had brought their bicycles, and had an enviable time biking up and down a clear boulevard. People were mostly chattering to pass the time. He must be pretty tired, someone said. He has a really full schedule. There’s going to be five million people on Sunday…

The hours didn’t pass by quickly, but they were not unpleasant. Closer to the time we turned on the radio to keep up with what was going on, and it was almost comical. Relying on the radio felt like a bit of a novelty (all cellular signals were jammed for security purposes), probably because it actually worked. We got all the updates: President Aquino now at Villamor, Cardinal Tagle there to receive the Pope, little Swiss Guards to welcome Pope are really cute.

“The plane’s here,” whoever was holding the radio at the time said.  “He’s still inside the plane. He’s not coming out of the plane.”

Our preparation got more exciting. The human chain volunteers practiced a chanting routine with clapping hands. We climbed up the island with every device with a camera known to man on hand.

(One of the human chain organizers took charge, looked us all in the eye, and said very firmly that there was to be no pushing, no shoving, and absolutely nobody jumping down from the island. And pretty much everyone answered in unison, “Opo” and obeyed.)

“The Pope is standing up, Cardinal Tagle is sitting down,” said the radio holder, somewhere on my right.

“What does that even mean?” To my left, a small family tried to tie up the drooping palm leaves that obscured their camera view. The little girl continued to practice her cheer in a high, clear voice: “Papa Franci-isco! Papa Franci-isco!”

“I dunno.” We would all see him, the radio assured, because the Popemobile would only be going at about thirty per hour.

We stood there for a while, but we were ready. Or we thought we were. Two vans zoomed passed at impossible speed (“That’s definitely not thirty") and a short while after we saw the great headlight in the distance.

“He’s here!”

To everyone’s credit, nobody lost their heads. We cheered, we waved, we snapped photos. He smiled and waved, and it sounded like such a basic celebrity move, but you won’t understand until you’re part of the crowd that has been waiting. It was awe, it was euphoria.

As for me, I looked up from my phone just to look at Pope Francis. I didn’t get any pictures. It was over in all of five seconds. But from my perch on the island I saw him clearly, a tall rounded figure in white, smiling warmly. Sometimes, presence is everything.

It was strong enough to make everyone forget everything they had practiced, actually; there was a belated attempt at the clapping routine but by then he was gone. Everyone laughed. Why were we so happy?

The walk back turned out to be a long one. The organization of the crowd control at the motorcade was great up until the point where the Pope was safely tucked away at the Nuncio. We had no signal to find the car, and no way to find it where we had been dropped off; cars were allowed into blockaded streets rather early, as though all the people we simply expected to evaporate afterward. It was poor after-planning, in what was otherwise a well-thought out welcome. I wish I’d had a GoPro strapped to my head.

My back still hurt, and there was the added bonus of the soles of my sandals disintegrating as we walked home along Edsa. They were old and comfortable, which is why I’d worn them, but I guess they were too old. We took about an hour to reach Alphaland, where we had dinner, and reflected on how fortunately the day turned out.

If I think about it, it’s pretty crazy. We took hours out of our lives and trekked through the thick of things for a sight chance of seeing the Pope for all of a moment, and walked home through the unpleasant miasma of pollution that is a reality. And that was the easiest of the events to attend; by now we know how the Sunday went, the concluding Mass at Luneta that six million people turned up to in the non-stop rain. I waited a couple of hours with back pain I have all the time anyway, and I was close enough to see Pope Francis smile. It was crazy. It was worth it.