The ‘Apartment’: Living among the dead

MANILA, Philippines – Cemeteries will come to life once again on November 1, but for people who live with the dead, All Souls’ Day is just another day.

An estimated 10,000 informal settlers reside at the Manila North Cemetery (MNC), where they are housed in “apartments” – tombs piled one on top of the other.

Priscilla Lopez has been an apartment dweller at the MNC for 50 years. “This is where I grew up, this is where I raised a family,” she said.

MNC has about 7,000 apartment-type tombs. “We don’t have to pay any rent to live here. Renting an apartment outside is costly,” said Priscilla.

It’s an altogether different feat to live with the dead, particularly in a country where belief in the supernatural remains strong.

“My grandchildren live with us,” said Priscilla. They are the fourth generation apartment dwellers in their family.

Public housing for Metro’s urban poor has long been a grave problem. The biggest issue in resettlement is, perhaps, the resulting unemployment for the relocated. Without any means of making a living in resettlement areas outside Metro Manila, they say they might as well be dead.

“Some of the residents here have been relocated before,” Priscilla disclosed. “But they came back here because this is where they work.”

In a place where even the dead can be evicted to unmarked mass graves or stacked in charnel houses, the cemetery’s apartment dwellers also live in constant fear. They are afraid of being evicted. Again.

In 2006, then Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim tried to evict them. Numerous attempts have been made to drive them out of MNC, to no avail. Many of the relocated residents returned to their graveyard apartments.

But on the other side of the compass, at the Manila South Cemetery, apartment dwellers were evicted about 3 years ago. In contrast to the North, there were only about 200 families living at the South, which also only has half the land area of MNC.

“It’s good they forced us to move out. I was able to buy a plot of land outside the cemetery,” said Rowena Bandera, who had spent over 30 years of her life sheltered with the dead. Now turning 40, she still earns a living with her sari-sari store just a couple of blocks away from the marble tomb of Philippine President Elpidio Quirino. She uses her earnings to pay for the amortization of her new home.

“The eviction taught us how to stand on our own. We are satisfied with what we have now,” said Rowena.

Meanwhile, Priscilla said they too might be forced to leave their apartment. “But it’s okay. We have been here long enough. I have a place to live. But some of us will surely oppose another relocation.”

Many others also want to leave the cemetery, to live somewhere else, but they have nowhere to go. Some apartment dwellers would rather spend their lifetime with the eternally reposed. For them, life is where dead men lie. – Rappler.com