Continuing to Process: February 10, 2009

One of the things that I talked with my Filipino friends at length about was the colonization of the Philippines by first the Spanish and then the Americans and Japanese. This was a contrast to Japan because Japan was the aggressor in its history -- occupying China, Korea and also the Philippines.

In my travels to Korea and the Philippines I could see the evidence of American influence in many ways. Korea is very clean and modern. The parts I saw of the country could have been right out of the states.

In the Philippines the influence is different. Filipinos are now speaking their own language, which is a mixture of other languages, and I found it to be very lyrical and pleasant to the ear. English is the language of oppression. Just as European colonists forced the natives of America to speak English and leave behind their Indian languages and dialects, so too did America force the Filipinos to learn English and not their own language. This was one way that the Philippines was molded as a colony of the United States. I had not realized the power of language so clearly until I spent time with my friends in the university town of Dumaguete on an island in the Philippines. It is of course pleasant for me, as a native English speaker, to have other people groups speak English. But I am learning slowly to look at history and geography. What countries would naturally have English as a first language, and what countries have English as a language at all because of colonization? This was a shock to me when I learned that English is the official language of India. Why? I asked. I was told that it was because Great Britain had colonized India. Of course, this makes sense.

I learned more on this trip to Japan and the Philippines about the consequences of colonization. The Republic of the Philippines is experiencing a "brain drain" where people are being encouraged to leave the islands as an answer to the economic crisis that the Republic is facing. I read an article that talked about a visit that the current President paid to a Middle East country. She suggested that this country needed more Filipino salesclerks. In discussions during the time I was in Dumaguete I was told that this is what is being touted as the solution to the crisis -- instead of developing industry and infrastructure within the Philippines, people are being encouraged to immigrate to other countries.

This brings me to a connection which I would like to make with another continent. The continent of Africa has been discussed at length in a book that I recently read, The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. The colonization of Africa by Great Britain, France, Portugal, the United States and other countries has decimated Africa as a continent leaving her dependent and lacking initiative to create a vision for improving the standard of living, health, education, etc., for the people of Africa. This connects with yet another book that I read titled Tomorrow will be better, written by a woman from Eastern Europe who discussed the concept and reality of occupation in vivid terms. She said that an occupying country seeks the natural resources of the occupied country, seizing those resources and taking them to the occupying country. The raw materials are turned into useable products and then returned to the occupied country to be purchased by the people whose lands were seized and raped by the occupiers. In the case of this woman her country was occupied again and again by different countries after World War II. She watched as resources were marched in and out of the country.

Much of what the above information boils down to is that dependency is created by the occupying power: In the Sudan, for instance, this would have been Great Britain; in the Philippines it is America; in the country in Eastern Europe it would have been Germany or Russia. The occupying power creates this dependency in order to maintain control over the occupants of the resource rich country that is being occupied.

In the Philippines the consequences of this dependency, even when occupation has ended, are felt in terms of a lack of opportunity for education, a lack of dental and health care, a lack of hope for any kind of a future -- whether a personal future or a future for the country.

In the case of Africa the book The End of Poverty discussed the fact that the way to help the continent of Africa regain what was lost before occupations by varying countries would be to pump enough money into the infrastructures (or creating infrastructures) to bring Africa up to a level where it is realistic for self-sustainance to become a lived reality.

Africa and the Philippines are both third world countries/continents. One of the many things that I learned in Dumaguete is that there are indeed levels of development. I struggle with understanding what is meant by "access to clean water." Japan has water that can be consumed from the tap. China does not. The Philippines does not. Africa presumably does not. But the water can be consumed either by boiling or by purchasing purified water. So I imagine that when a country's lack of development is specified in terms of a lack of access to clean water perhaps what is being conveyed is that there is not even sufficient fuel to boil water in order to render it safe to consume.

Clearly there are countries that are more developed than others in terms of access to education, health care, a voice at the international table, etc. I was told that there is a check list that gives a measure for what country is at what degree of development. So, even though Africa and the Philippines are both considered third world/developing countries and continents, clearly the Philippines is more developed in some ways.