By Antonio Graceffo

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

Second of four parts. Read Part 1.

The EMS guys and all the bigwigs with titles went home, and I shared the radio room/bedroom with two firemen who couldn’t speak English. Because I was the oldest, they let me sleep on the trolley cart. It was so unbelievably uncomfortable, I felt bad for the patients. Part of the issue was that the mattress was covered by a wooden spineboard. Back at school, our instructor Sir Aidan had been a staunch opponent of these injurious boards. All spineboard advocates should try sleeping on one, once before recommending them for use on others.

The TV apparently didn’t work, but the computer did, and we watched Rambo IV. The firemen were curious and tried to ask me about the war in Burma. Unfortunately their English and general knowledge were so limited that it was impossible to explain it to them.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Sly throws the missionary against the wall and screams, “Who are you? Who are any of you?” It was the pain I often felt hearing the suggestions of foreign visitors who thought they understood the conflict or understood the needs of the people. It was quite presumptuous for outsiders to think they were going to sweep in and save everyone in Burma.

While my two companions would fall asleep as soon as they hit the bed, I was mostly awake all night. The radio kept blaring and I wondered if we were missing emergency calls while the guys slept. One call came in, in Filipino, but I understood they were talking about some kind of emergency in Manila North. So I woke one of the firemen.

“False alarm,” he said and went back to sleep.

As a pleasant addition to my own private hell, I had contracted diarrhea a few days earlier and needed to go to the toilet once per hour. The room was so small and my liquid poop so stinky I really felt guilty and considered doing it out in the street. Toilet paper is not so common in public restrooms in the Philippines, so I always carry a roll in my bag. Unfortunately, because of all the crime in Tondo, the chief had locked my bag in the ambulance. So every time I needed the toilet, I had to ask someone to open the ambulance for me and wait till I finished in the bathroom and then lock the ambulance again. It was humiliating.

Finally I put about half a roll in my cargo pocket, which I realized I should have done from the start. This worked a lot better. It got me through the night, but there was still nothing I could do about the smell. The hot, humid Manila air and lack of air-conditioning or fans didn’t help.

During the night I suffered severe cramps and would get up, stepping over the sleeping firemen and pollute the toilet. There was only a very small quantity of water in a jerry-can to flush with, and I prayed it would last till morning.

When I woke up the next morning, I went out to get my toothbrush from the ambulance, but the ambulance was gone. At first I thought it possible that it had been stolen.

The firemen were as curious as I was.

“Where is the ambulance?” they asked me, as if I had misplaced it. I was hoping they wouldn’t search my things looking for it. Actually my things were on the ambulance, so we would have to find it first. Anyway I felt guilty. First I had stunk up their sleep, now I had lost the ambulance.

Finally, a text came in telling us the ambulance had been taken for maintenance, which was laughable, since we were supposed to be guarding it. I guess we didn’t do that good of job.

I found my bags under the trolley cart. I really did appreciate that someone had the forethought to leave them there for me. Now at least I could brush my teeth. At around ten o’clock the director came in and told me to go home. Without an ambulance, it didn’t matter if we got a call or not; we couldn’t respond.

We made an agreement that I would go to duty at 4:00 p.m. every other day and go home at 11 a.m. the next morning. That way I could still do Internet and gym every day and get 19 hours of OJT. I had 31 hours in the bucket. I needed 219 more for my license.

While I suffered from boredom, fatigue, stinkiness, and stomach cramps at my OJT, on a financial level, I was also suffering from acute broketude.

When I started for home that morning, I had less than US$5 in my wallet. After paying for my commute, I only had US$2 left and decided to skip breakfast. That money would be needed for the Internet to check on the status of any number of checks and or donations I was expecting.

I had no idea how I was going to return to work the next day, as I couldn’t afford the commute.

Magazines that I write for think nothing of paying me months late. The Philippine News Agency (PNA) had owed me money for about year and I was having trouble collecting. At one point, they threatened to have me arrested and deported for working without a permit, so I had to let the money go. I received some donations in the form of checks, denoted in British pounds, which had to be deposited in a bank. I might as well have had Confederate money. It would be months before that money had flown from Britain, to my apartment in Bangkok, to my family in the US where it would be deposited. Then the long wait for clearance would begin. The difference of one or two days was huge to me. Two days without food can seem like ten days or a hundred.

I was really at the end of my rope, and knew I couldn’t keep living like this. I wanted to get back to Burma border and help out with the war, but with no reliable support or infrastructure I didn’t see how I could.

An old friend of mine, Pierre, was now Director of Studies at a school in Taiwan. He offered me a teaching job to help me get back on my feet. The offer sounded tempting.

I felt completely exhausted and defeated. Before leaving the EMS station, I had allowed the firefighters to buy me coffee. They had NO income at all, but I let them spend what few coins they had to buy me coffee. After a 20-hour shift and no breakfast, I NEEDED that coffee, but I should have said no.

Back in Cubao, my “home,” the room I had been living in for the last four months was a cement cell, slightly larger than my horribly uncomfortable wooden bunk bed. There were no windows, no TV, and no air-conditioning. To make matters worse, every time I tried to sit up in my bed, I would bang my head on the upper bunk. I was constantly collecting splinters from the unfinished wood of the homemade bed frame. With nothing else to do, I lay on my thin mattress, dripping sweat, and thought about my situation. I was also taking stock of my teammates, who were basically nice guys, but as bad as I had it at the moment, I didn’t want to trade places with any of them.