Dream

We moved into our dream house two years ago. I literally saw this house grow from lot to home. Every week, I came to the construction site to meet with architects, designers, all kinds of contractors just to make sure our home would be as close to perfection as possible. Never mind if discussions of p-traps, wiring, electrical loads and other technical topics caused my eyelids to droop. This was our home. I had to do it.

We moved in just when the typhoons introduced us to gasp-inducing leaks that gave way to indoor flooding – the price you pay for an open, tropical home. It was back to the drawing board for inconspicuous gutters that would help solve the problem. Oh, but we would be so happy here, I told myself, even as I hurdled one problem after another. To reclaim my faltering optimism, I would sit by our big windows and imagine days and nights of airconless pleasure. Everything would be great.

A week into our stay, my body announced it was once again home and haven to a little angel. Soon the respiratory illnesses began. Probably from the off-gassing of new materials, exhaustion and adjustment to new spaces, I told myself – that and the demands of pregnancy. But during my nocturnal visits to the loo, I noticed something different about the air. There was a visible, alien haze hovering about. Sometimes it smelled faintly of garbage. Too often, it reeked of rubber or some noxious, airborne cocktail you know you shouldn’t be inhaling. Then there were the daily deposits of soot in our lanai and pool that hinted at regular basura cookouts. "It’s Payatas," a neighbor said matter-of-factly. "It sometimes blows our way." I clung to the word "sometimes" but my insides groaned with the weight of his words.

We had moved from the high-rise heart of Pasig to suburban Quezon City to give our children better breathing air. Now we were inhaling toxic fumes from that terrible, cancer-causing cultural habit of garbage and mulch burning better known as pagsisiga. (This on top of our daily overdose of vehicular emissions.) We’re not talking little mounds of garbage either. We’re looking at too many tons of unsegregated trash which means toxic, combustible substances contributing to the lethal poison in the air. Then the inevitable Payatas tragedy occurred and the dumpsite was temporarily shut down. The haze disappeared, though not completely, but enough for us to enjoy long walks around the neighborhood, inhaling what sometimes felt like good, life-giving air.

Until a few months ago. We had several weeks of sheer hell. It was almost as if our mouths were wired open and stapled against burning asbestos walls. That’s how it felt to breathe here. And the sight of it! Brownish-gray, thick fog that you felt on your skin and in the deepest part of your lungs. It wasn’t long before my son (who developed asthma last July) and I came down with lingering coughs and serious asthma attacks. My husband, who rarely gets sick, also developed a cough that would not go away. For a while there, we looked like a trio of addicts, hovering above our little nebulizer.

The deliberate burning of garbage in Payatas seems to have abated (for now at least, thanks to the intervention of Mayor Sonny Belmonte), but the feathers of soot that continue to swim in our pool and sketch on the upholstery tell a different tale. If they’re not sneaking little burn parties here and there, then the spontaneous combustion of toxic substances must be reaching murderous levels. Breathe deeply and you know you inhale contaminated air. Look at the view and the thick, discolored air mocks. (Even the title of this column sends a spear of irony through my marginalized lungs.)

I long for nights of airconless sleep, but since that last Payatas attack, we have had to shut our windows and turn our airconditioners and ionizers on, to shield ourselves from further assault. We continue to fight by trying to build our strength against these life-threatening, disease-causing pollutants, but every day our bodies carry the burden. Every day I mourn the loss of life’s basic necessities. Every day I lament the government’s unforgivable indifference.

The papers recently carried a story on how Payatas women carry alarming amounts of dioxin in their breastmilk. Imagine that. The women of Payatas are no longer healthy havens for their offspring to thrive in. If they have it in their milk, it is already killing them. What of their children who were nurtured in their toxic bodies and later nourished with their dioxin-laced milk? I shudder at the implications. I wonder if anyone in government even paused to ponder that. Clean air and water make healthy, clear-thinking, productive Filipinos. How can we push the problem aside for later?

I refuse to wallow in hopelessness. I still dream of a better life for my children; of clean air, potable water, responsible fellow citizens who do their share by segregating their garbage, composting their biodegradables, teaching their help about the dangers of "pagsisiga" (which is illegal but who’s checking?) I dream of a government that understands the gravity and urgency of the garbage problem; that sees and cares that it is literally killing the Filipino family.

Dream home? Yes. I still insist. Every day I take my children into the garden to tiptoe among butterflies who seem to be in denial about the lethal air they breathe. In my heart I thank them for staying and will my plants to be their healing refuge. My children and I take turns touching the flowers, hugging our trees, their leaves, playing in the grass, loving the earth with our feet, while I pray feverishly that whatever efforts we have put into being part of the solution soon bear fruit. Once in a while I look at the sky and fix my gaze on a patch of reassuring blue – a hint of pleasant dream at last, in the midst of a rapidly enveloping nightmare.

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