Headstones Tour 2009 Part 2 Manila Philippines

We arrived in Manila, and were excited to tour the Philippine and Filipino memorials, monuments and Philippine and Filipino headstones. Manila, only about 750 miles by air away from Taipei is much warmer and also more humid. The Philippine Islands are comprised of over 7,000 islands and are home to several ethnic groups. The original inhabitants settled via land bridges from Asia over 30,000 years ago. It is one of the largest English speaking countries in the world though most people also speak a regional dialect and the national language Tagalog. There are over 90 million people in the Philippines and over 1.6 million in Manila.

Since Ferdinand Magellan discovered the area in 1521, the Spanish governed the Islands for over 300 years after which the country declared independence and adapted to a democratic form of government and the American education and legal systems. Most Philippinos are Catholic but Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are also well represented.

Here in Manila the Philippine peso is worth about 2 cents in American money so we are unexpectedly rich with pesos after we change our Taiwan dollars valued at about 3 cents. Wallets don’t work well on this trip since you can’t fit enough money to actually pay for your hotel and meals without an extra wad of bills stashed in your front pocket. Just when you think you have the exchange rate down you move a decimal one place too far to one side or another and oops you look like a typical math dropout from America. The easy way is to just use your credit card at higher end establishments and hope they don’t steal your number.

With so many religious people there are several large cemeteries around Manila. The Philippine and Filipino memorials, monuments and Philippine cultural and Filipino headstones were magnificent and we were excited to learn about the traditions behind the tombstones and headstones. We started our tour at one of the largest where we visited with the manager and were taken on an escorted tour. The cemetery has several sections and in each one the memorials are quite different. There is a large section of private family mausoleums. Some of the buildings are open with just a roof and a central sarcophagus (above ground crypt) but there are many different styles mostly made of concrete and some are also faced with 3/4” granite or marble.

Other sections use only above ground crypts or flat markers and there are many public columbaria walls.

Preneed sales are quite common in the urban areas of the Philippines. Most people we talked to, from all walks of life, have a Funeral Plan. They pay a monthly amount over a long period of time and are assured a plot in the cemetery and other funeral accoutrements. I talked to several who automatically accepted the fact that preplanning was necessary.

Some graves get special care, fertilizer and hand trimming to set them apart from the surrounding ones.

We were also able to visit the resident stone carver in the cemetery workshop. Most name panels in the mausoleums are either marble or granite and though the granite ones are cut by sandblast much of the marble lettering is done by hand using a hammer and chisel.

There is a lot of space between graves and it seemed that there were a large number of grounds persons hand watering, pruning bushes and trees, hand mowing grass and sweeping and cleaning the cemetery. The cemetery was very well taken care of and considering its large size I was really impressed.

We then travelled to Heritage Park Cemetery, a relatively new development in the suburbs of Manila. This cemetery is also very clean and well maintained but is more modern than any we have seen so far. New private family mausoleums, and large above ground crypts are scattered about the developed sections. We saw upright, slant face markers and some monuments also.

Most of the mausoleums were concrete structures that were faced with _” thick slabs of granite and marble. As with the other mausoleums we have seen in older cemeteries this method of construction has a limited life span and eventually joints leak and there are issues with integrity and durability. We liked the unique designs and it seems as if the Philippine customers like more contemporary styled memorialization than we have found elsewhere.

As you can see cultural heritage is a byproduct of the close family life in the Philippine Islands. It shows in the wide range of memorialization we found in the Manila City Cemetery which we visited next. From the elaborately maintained to the rapidly disintegrating memorials here we can get closer to understanding the economic diversity of Manila.

The memorialization here in this cemetery was quite eclectic and each grave site was unique. It seemed that there may have been some kind of regulations in place but it was hard to determine just what they were. Again, we found many families living in mausoleums and supposedly maintaining the cemetery, however we concluded that the level of maintenance was in direct proportion to the amount of money each owner paid to the workers.

We then travelled to the Old Chinese Cemetery where we had to pay a small entrance fee to get past the uniformed guards at the only entrance/exit the cemetery had. We concluded that the entrance fee must be used to provide guards for 24 hour security and some level of overall care to the cemetery.

Every manner of architecture is fair game here. There is everything from huge family mausoleums to open air private above ground crypts, mostly well maintained and many with fresh flowers and evidence of frequent visitation.

As we leave Manila for Saigon, Vietnam I see a Jeepney go by and I was struck by its signs, the Sacred Heart of Jesus next to the Chicago Bulls logo and MY favorite, Harley Davidson. Maybe we weren’t half a world away after all?