By Michael Tan
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–“Namamahay” is the term we use when, while on travel — it can be Baguio or Bahrain — we are unable to sleep at night, or are dogged by a feeling of malaise and disease, including unproductive sitting in the morning. “Namamahay” is a graphic description of how the psyche, the spirit craves for home so that the Filipino, even as he boards the plane to leave the country, already wants to go back home.

Home is where the heart is, the cliché goes, and it doesn’t matter how humble the house might be. The last national census had a startling finding: the median floor area for Filipino households was 29.6 square meters. We’re not just talking about several informal settler families (read: squatters) cramped into a tiny shack; look through the classified ads and you’ll find condos with 16 square meters of space.

The Filipino adjusts to whatever’s available. I’ve seen air conditioners even in squatter areas, part of a massive recycling economy which allows Filipino households to constantly upgrade their homes. The poor have been particularly resourceful at tapping into the many junk shops for materials they can reuse, from plywood to discarded advertising tarpaulins, from sinks to commodes (kubeta).

The remittances from 8 million Filipinos working overseas have created a boom for housing construction and interior furnishings. It’s helped, too, that in recent years, low-cost housing fixtures have been made available from China, Thailand and Indonesia.

The Filipino home is like our telenovelas, with numerous installments, complete with stories of triumphs and victories, of blood, sweat and tears. I’ve found homes with half a wall, or holes in the walls meant to be windows, owners apologizing about a delay in money from Saudi (or, if I’m in some remote province, from Manila).

The Filipino home is Philippine society in miniature. No matter how tiny, the house has socially demarcated spaces and corresponding furnishings. Visitors from a lower class usually make it only to the gate or the garage. Honored guests are ushered into the living room (or for richer households, the den), which is kept neat and clean, the sofa and the TV still wrapped in plastic, sometimes with their price tags still attached. Our fear of empty space, and love of the borloloy (frills), is reflected in the living room, often a museum for all the photographs, abubut (knick-knacks) and souvenirs from weddings, baptisms and overseas trips.

Intimate friends make it all the way to the bedrooms, where we dump all our junk when unexpected visitors arrive. But amid the junk are the treasures as well, saved for the eyes of closest friends, like that 36-inch television set, and the Magic Mike karaoke set for friends to sing along.

There is one place in Filipino homes that is often neglected: the “comfort room.” Despite that unique Filipino-English word, we seem to associate the toilet with “profane” activities like bathing and evacuating (the Taglish slang) and therefore allow toilets to fall apart: cracked or missing tiles, leaky faucets, commodes that no longer flush, even heaters that have long burnt out.

Gardens are better cared for than the comfort room. Even urban poor shanties will have a few plants growing out of recycled infant formula cans, precariously hanging from window sills that threaten to come crashing down on hapless Bantay, the family dog, miserably tied on a short leash.

A paradox in the Philippines is that while we treasure our homes, our surroundings are often filthy. To some extent, it’s because of the way we define spaces: The home is private space, for which we take responsibility while everything else, even the street in front of the house, is public, which we perceive to be the government’s responsibility.

I do think it is possible to combine both individualism with a sense of community. Look at how the upper classes have built their own little worlds within their subdivisions or even condominium buildings, with their own shared spaces such as the playground, sports facilities and the clubhouse, with the community of residents sharing in the upkeep.

This can happen with the poor as well. Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist who wrote “The Mystery of Capital” some years back, has pointed out that the key to development is giving the poor legal rights, even ownership, of the land on which they live. This gives them collateral so they can borrow money from banks to build a small business, while caring for the land and house on it. People will build on, and care for something they own. Visit the areas in Tondo where people were organized by ZOTO (Zone One Tondo Organization) and are paying to own their land—the homes and streets are well kept in sharp contrast to the misery and squalor of neighboring unorganized slums.

Even when condemned to squat, or to pay outrageous rents on substandard housing, Filipinos find ways to make a home. Think of the possibilities if they see some hope of security of tenure, or of ownership. As people are assured of a private space, even a few square meters, they will expand their sense of home, of bahay, to shared public spaces and care for them accordingly. Uwian na, going home, then takes on a new meaning. •

Home truths about Pinoy housing

Long before condominiums made compact homes fashionable, majority of Filipinos have had to make do with limited living space. According to the 2000 national census, occupied housing units in the Philippines had a median floor area of 29.63 square meters. This means that more than half (or 59.75 percent) of the country’s occupied homes had a floor area below 29.63 square meters as of the year 2000.

The figures are broken down as follows:

• 23.45 percent of occupied housing units had a floor area of 10 to 19 sqm

• 18.78 percent had 20 to 29 sqm of space

• 17.52 percent had less than 10 sqm

• 16.56 percent had 30 to 49 sqm

• 3.21 percent had 90 to 119 sqm

Source: National Statistics Office, 2000 national census: http://www.census.gov.ph/ data/pressrelease/2002/pr02178tx.html