25/01/2012

A true necropolis.







Welcome back.

I cannot believe I am so behind with this blog but it has been pretty hectic. I am going to try for a few more photo uploads whilst the cinnection holds here. The next few days in Manila were spent hanging out with my good friend Claus and a gang of his Danish mates, sorting people out (Claus was sort of organising the whole gig) and a little sightseeing. I shall fire up some photos here and fill out an accompanying text when I have time.

I realise this is getting a little confused now but I am trying to write text, upload images etc., please bear with me. The day after the trip to Corregidor, I went for a walk round the Chinese cemetery which was literally yards from where I was staying. Well, at least the neighbours were quiet.

I was not sure quite what to expect but it certainly was not what I found. Firstly, the sheer scale of the place is staggering. It is 54 hectares in the metropolitan area of a city where land is scarce and very expensive and they build up rather than out. There is a road system with proper road names (wish they did that in the land of the living in this country, navigating would be so much easier) and some of the mausoleums are mind-boggling in their scale and grandeur. If you are confused by the picture of the toilet, some of the places of rest have them in case the dear departed should be caught short on the way to the afterlife. Imagine spending all of eternity needing a pee. I kid you not.

Whilst cemeteries are, by their very nature, sad places, there is one particularly sad place here which is the back wall. A couple of the images will give you an idea. They are the graves of infants and stillborns and the wall is huge. They have constructed another "infant cemetery" on another of the back walls, so the image is only a proportion of the total. I have no idea what the nfant mortality rate is here but the row upon row of small memorials was heartbreaking, especially as some were marked only by a brief finger-written inscription on the concrete where the poor infant was interred, as you can see in one of the images.

I only met a very few people here and there were all sorts of graves from the hugely, and almost obscenely, ostentatious to small, overgrown plots, falling into the ground. I did not see much in the way of spare space, although I did see a funeral going in there the next day.

OK, the connection seems good today, so I shall try to add a few more photos here. Apparently several of the internet masts were blown down in the typhoon here about a month ago, so connections are a bit poor.

Hopefully, this page is now complete, so I shall publish it and try for another one.

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