Metro Manila Cemeteries
I started this post thinking about All Soul's day and then started thinking about cemeteries around the Philippines in general.
There are huge swathes of land in the city where dead people are buried in concrete boxes and stacked like shoeboxes. There are people who build houses with airconditioning for their deceased. There are places like the American Memorial that are barely visited, and there is South Cemetery that is home to abandoned children and the demented.
Outside the city, they have giant statues of Jesus and Mary, little mausoleums that look like tiny bus stops, steep hills with coffins buried in layers.
Every year people visit these graveyards. It's a big holiday and a lot of people get a day to go home to their provinces, and visit their family and dead. It's the biggest holiday we have before Christmas. It's a curious tradition, the way we mourn our dead and I think that it shows a lot of the character of the Philippines. It's chaotic and also beautiful during the Undas, when the graves are candelit, and the mood less solemn than you'd expect for what seems like a day of mourning. People pray, yes, but they also gamble, drink, and play.
Traffic out of the city can get pretty bad too. Bus terminals get clogged.
There are huge swathes of land in the city where dead people are buried in concrete boxes and stacked like shoeboxes. There are people who build houses with airconditioning for their deceased. There are places like the American Memorial that are barely visited, and there is South Cemetery that is home to abandoned children and the demented.
Outside the city, they have giant statues of Jesus and Mary, little mausoleums that look like tiny bus stops, steep hills with coffins buried in layers.
Every year people visit these graveyards. It's a big holiday and a lot of people get a day to go home to their provinces, and visit their family and dead. It's the biggest holiday we have before Christmas. It's a curious tradition, the way we mourn our dead and I think that it shows a lot of the character of the Philippines. It's chaotic and also beautiful during the Undas, when the graves are candelit, and the mood less solemn than you'd expect for what seems like a day of mourning. People pray, yes, but they also gamble, drink, and play.
Traffic out of the city can get pretty bad too. Bus terminals get clogged.