Where Did the Doorsteps Go?

Jonathan Sanchez, Sinagpore

I was driving near the hotel in Cebu, the Philippines, just this weekend – taking a quick getaway for Chinese New Year with my partner. As we trundled along the relatively rough roads towards our place of stay I was struck by the incredible wealth and richness of the crowded, intense town we were in.

To many these towns in Cebu are called ‘barrios’: places identified by their obvious corrugated tin roofs, driftwood walls and muddy courtyards. As ever, global brands peek in to a world that’s been so off their radars until very recently, with their clever co-branding initiatives. A Coke logo punctuates a grilled chicken shack; Nestle chocolate next to a local bakery; and the ubiquitous Unilever products adorning almost everything else.

It’s a mish mash collision of brand & brazen poverty that would make a marketing manager, safely tucked away in his or her air conditioned corner office cringe.  Children run around in nothing but Barbie T-Shirts playing with chickens and the solitary old fisherman sings away on an early projection karaoke system oblivious to the screech of 2 stroke scooters carrying an entire family home for a dinner.

At this point it might be worth a re-read, I opened by speaking about how taken aback I was with the richness and wealth and then proceeded to paint an evocative yet clear picture of what is considered by many as abject poverty. So what am I going on about?

What I saw, on every corner, every doorstep and every yard was ACTION. People speaking to people, people sitting back and chatting, sleeping, getting a haircut, minding each other’s children, arguing, doing laundry, washing out of a bucket – but ACTION. This wasn’t an A to B town, where all you see is a closed door and a commuter. This was a living breathing town of ACTION and it starts and ends on the doorstep.

We don’t have many doorsteps in the Far West anymore; we just call them lobbies. It’s where we place our wet umbrellas, usually in some readymade ‘umbrella condom’ (as heaven forbid we let the heaven’s tears touch the tiles). It’s a place to leave from but never really arrive. It’s a grey area in the social spectrum for us. The thought of having a conversation on the step seems to have evaporated from the way we live.

In a rush for the often mentioned (and personally loathed) ‘me time’ we’ve excluded any chance of ‘we time’. The glue that binds us together as a people will never be destroyed by dalliances such as Facebook and Twitter – more by our lack of shared time, with people we know – and those we don’t.

As someone who shares his life with someone from Asia, having this ‘doorstep time’ was very perplexing. If we were going on a family day trip why would we stop 10 minutes into the journey for snacks and a chat? And then why would we stop again to pick something up? In fact I soon realised I was a fool to ever believe that the best part of the journey is arriving – it’s now the comedic hell and humdrum of getting there.

This social interaction – peppering everything you do with moments to sit, talk, think, be together but not actually ACHIEVE much is part and parcel of the lives of many in Asia. Let me correct myself, what you actually achieve is immeasurable – you achieve bonds with people that matter (and some that may matter less) you interact with people and you learn and share experiences. This doorstep culture can’t be completed in 140 characters or less - it’s more like 140 minutes. These are the actions that bind cultures together, through thick or thin.

Speaking of thin, back to Cebu. These towns are thin on monetary wealth, opportunity and what we might call infrastructure. But they have something that can’t be bought, traded or imported – they have a collective culture of sharing time, space and thinking and humour with each other. This is something that’s fading in the West with our ACTION moments replaced with technology, growth and economy.

It’s easy to say ‘these places are so undeveloped, so poor, so dirty (we’ll talk about real dirt in a future piece)’ - they are not. They are glued together as a community culture –and the testament of the very strength of that bond is that these problems they face – a life and existence, by our standards, so much harder than ours, is their ability to rise about wanting, needed and craving – to understand what they have is what they have – and to not just make the most of it – but to excel at living with it right on their doorsteps, every day.

Comments

[Lili]

From a 'Comparative Development' perspective this 'communitarianism' is @ a stage of development prior to the impact of industrialization... this is the transition from peasant economy & the culture that accompanies (where more informal economies prevail) to the more wage driven formal lives. Maybe we could bring in micro industries here. Where more rural agricultural economies are to the fore the community is poorer therefore interface communication is crucial as is reliance on others for info (quite often less people are able to read & write, afford newspapers etc.) to enable 'many things' including a 'bit of money' to be earned/found. I have rushed this but all societies loose doorstep exchanges & it is industrialisation/modernity that is key...