By Antonio Graceffo

The continuing saga of a Brooklyn monk come to Manila to study EMT. Stumbled onto this randomly? Read this article first.

First of four parts

“How do you shower on a twenty-four-hour shift?” I asked, noticing that there was no plumbing in the radio shack, where I was told we would be sleeping.

“We can use the hose from the fire truck,” answered the chief.

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure if EMS was really the best career for me.

On Sunday afternoon I started duty in a rough, Manila neighborhood called Tondo with the Chinese volunteer ambulance company. It’s the same story all over Asia: the Chinese pool their money to pay for the best schools and community resources of any group in the country. The ambulance and rescue team had three fire trucks, two of which were pumpers. The bigger one had a capacity of 3.5 gazillion liters of water. I may be off on that number, but it was more water than I would care to drink. Water-carrying capacity is really important in the Philippines because of a severe lack of hydrants. The guys told me that the trucks had to be specially designed for the Philippines because the streets are so narrow in the neighborhoods. American trucks wouldn’t fit.

When I told my classmates I had been assigned to Tondo, they all said, “Oh, good, you can learn a lot about stabbings and gunshot wounds.”

Tondo was a pretty frightening place, but I was taking my life in my hands during the commute. I had to take the elevated train (LRT ) to Recto, a den of thieves, prostitutes, and fake diplomas. There, I had to take a taxi, but taxis are afraid to stop at Recto. Standing in the road, in my blue uniform, the only white guy waving at passing cars, I felt like a target. A couple of taxis slowed down. One or two even stopped, allowing me to shout my destination through a two-inch space in a partially rolled-down window. When they heard Tondo, they just laughed and took off.

“Take me with you!” I shouted as I watched the taxi disappear. The street people had been casing me. Like the Sand People, they were easily frightened, but they would be back, and in greater numbers.

On my first day of duty, I was lucky enough to find a taxi after only twenty minutes. I got in, locked the door, got away from the windows, and slipped a scalpel out of my medical bag in case the driver tried to rob me. From Recto, we turned into a worse neighborhood, then a worst one, then a squatter area, and finally a really, really bad squatter area in which people were roasting dead animals on trash fires in the street. Eventually we acrrived at the EMS base, in a neighborhood which was no worse than where I live in Cubao. By American standards, it was pretty awful, but not too terrible by local standards.

My classmate Sam was the son of a Chinese family whom everyone in our class referred to as “muchos” or rich people. They owned a number of businesses as well as the EMS service and the fire trucks.

The rescue service volunteers consisted of one trained EMT and several Fist Responders on the medical side. On the fire side, there were at least eight or more firemen. The Chief took me to visit Sam’s house. It was huge, possessing every amenity known to man. Back at EMT school, we were all fond of Sam. He was brilliant and had already logged countless hours as an ambulance volunteer, although he was only sixteen years old. We were all impressed when he became the youngest graduate of our program ever.

The whole rescue crew also loved Sam, to a point that it bordered on cultish adoration. “That is Sam’s bicycle,” said the ambulance chief, giving me a tour. “He rides it to the station. Those are Sam’s dogs, but they are sleeping. That is the table where Sam sometimes eats . . .” It went on and on. I was waiting for him to say, “This is the air that Sam breathes.”

Unlike at city rescue, the people were welcoming and very pro LSTI, the EMT school I had graduated from. Unfortunately they didn’t really have a base. There was a small office where the radio equipment was kept. There was a bathroom, but no running water. Even the toilet had no plumbing. So you had to pour water down it.

The tiny office was only a radio room. This was not where we waited to be called. The actual crew area was on the sidewalk. They had pulled the seats out of an old car and laid them out on the sidewalk, like a display living room at a furniture store. We sat there under an awning, all day, waiting. The men talked mostly of their love of karaoke, prostitutes, and beer. Although they were volunteers who didn’t receive a salary, none of them had jobs, except for a young good-looking firefighter named Bob who sometimes worked as a driver for a TV station and occasionally had parts in TV shows or movies. He was also called for some modeling work. I wondered what was preventing him from following this line as a full-time career.

“Do you want to go with us to fill the tanker?” asked the chief.

“Sure, why not?” I answered. About twenty of us clambered onto the truck. We drove two blocks to a fire hydrant, and while the tanker filled, we stood around talking.

The ambulance and trucks were donated by Rotary. The problem is that everyone likes to make a high-profile donation of equipment, but no one donates a maintenance plan. Consequently, the crew only had one running ambulance. There were about eight crew members scrambling into the back on every call, leaving little or no room for a patient.

After we returned from filling the tanker, we all got in the ambulance, and they drove me over to a municipal parking lot where I could see the other ambulance. The electric system had blown five years ago, but until today, they didn’t have money to repair it.

Sam and his dad stopped by the EMS base. They apologized for missing me earlier, but they had been at the mall buying a perversely expensive cell phone for Sam.

Sam’s father was brilliant, and I hoped that I would get a chance to talk to him more. He was clever, intelligent, and was one of very few Filipino men I had met who actually looked young for his age. True to Asian culture, every adult I had met that day had some incredibly impressive title—president or director of this or that. They were so proud of themselves. But when Sam’s father arrived, they all bowed. Men talk a good game in Asia, but the bottom line is money. Whoever has it jumps to the front of the line. Seeing people fall all over themselves to worship Sam made me have even more respect for the boy. He was like the big man on campus. Everyone loved him, and they talk about him all the time. Despite his age, he seemed to handle the fame and attention very well without becoming a jerk. I couldn’t help feeling he was being groomed to take over his father’s position as benevolent man of the people.

After Sam and his dad left, there was talk of turning in for the night.

Bare necessities
“How do you shower on a twenty-four hour shift?” I asked.

“We can use the hose from the fire truck,” answered the chief.

What he really meant was that they could theoretically, and maybe they had even used the hose from the tanker to shower, but it wasn’t like it was the standard procedure. The real answer was, nothing got washed.

I had to brush my teeth in the street with my bottle of drinking water like a homeless person.

“Did you bring mosquito repellent?” they asked me.

“No,” I answered, annoyed that in the city there was any indication that I should carry repellent with me.

“Why not?” they insisted as if I was really remiss in my planning.

“Because I didn’t know we were going camping.”

When night came, they put two mattresses on the floor of the radio room for the crew. It was like the expression “going to the mattresses” in The Godfather. In Mafia parlance that means going to war. Here it just meant trying to sleep.

“You can bring your own mattress, pillow, and blanket next time,” they told me.

I was already having doubts about how long I would last on this crew.