Restoration

Our old churches, we are told, are made of adobe, mud and crushed coral, held together by, among other things, egg white.

 That must have been a lot of egg white, and a mountain of egg yolk. According to our culinary history, the excess yolk was used to make custards and decadent ensaimada slathered with butter and queso de bola. The friars of our colonial era enjoyed sinful goodies.

Now some of our oldest churches are ruined. Can we make them look the way they did again, pre-7.2 magnitude earthquake, using the traditional construction methods and materials?

Experts have said restoration is enormously expensive. And even if all lawmakers pooled what’s left of their pork barrel for the year, with P-Noy contributing part of his own pork, it’s doubtful that we could do a good job of restoration.

Several years ago, the exterior of one of the country’s oldest churches was given a good scrub and a fresh coat of paint, and horrors, the color chosen was a garish pinkish peach. Maybe someone was going for Mediterranean colors. Fortunately, the tropical heat, rain and urban pollution eventually improved the aesthetics, giving the paint a naturally distressed finish.

Even wealthy countries think twice about restoring what has been destroyed. New Zealand’s Christchurch was hit by a magnitude 7.1 quake on Sept. 4, 2010, followed by a 6.3 magnitude quake in February 2011, and another one of the same magnitude four months later, with thousands of aftershocks in between. Much of the downtown area was flattened and 185 people died – a grievous toll in a country with a population of only a few million.

Among the structures destroyed was the 19th century neo-Gothic Anglican cathedral. When I visited Christchurch last year, the Kiwis were still debating whether to recreate the ruined church or replace it with something entirely new.

Last August, the church got an unusual replacement: a cathedral with polycarbonate roofing, concrete base, and walls fashioned out of waterproof, fire-retardant cardboard. The church, which will have stained glass adornment, was designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban to last 50 years, but the Anglicans are hoping to have a new permanent structure in place within 10 years. The A-frame cardboard cathedral has become an attraction in itself.

In the Philippines, the cardboard cathedral may withstand earthquakes, but it will likely be blown away by the numerous typhoons that hit the country.

The story of the Christchurch Cathedral illustrates how challenging it can be to salvage a ruined national treasure. In Bohol and Cebu, we’ve lost not just one but several.

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Let’s hope experts will be called in for the churches’ reconstruction. Our record in this department is not encouraging. 

The government, with resources greater than the Philippine Catholic Church, can’t get restoration plans off the ground. In Intramuros, the building that used to house the Intendencia (Office of Civil Administration) and Customs (Aduana) was supposed to be restored and serve as the new home of the National Archives. The building is now rotting away, a forgotten part of our heritage. At least the Mediterranean-inspired church got a fresh coat of paint.

In Manila’s Chinatown, and especially along the banks of the Pasig, there are several old buildings that deserve to be restored. New Zealand Ambassador Reuben Levermore took a guided tour of the area recently. He said he enjoyed the group tour, which included lunch in a crowded Chinese restaurant whose food and noise he could remember but not the name.

Such tours can be more fun, and we can see more tourism in Chinatown – reputedly Asia’s largest outside China and its territories – if those old buildings are restored. Escolta, once the country’s Ayala Avenue, can be revived.

In fact the entire city of Manila can use a facelift. It’s a historic city that shouldn’t be buried in urban blight. Divisoria can be developed into a tourist destination – that’s what other countries do with their main bargain centers. But it’s doubtful that Manila politicians will have any interest in this.

The other day I drove through neighborhoods where I grew up in the city, from Sta. Cruz to Tondo, and was dismayed by the decay.

Those districts have been working class neighborhoods for a long time, but in my childhood there were pockets of attractive greenery and cheer. On the street where I lived many homes had front yard gardens, or at least potted plants on windowsills or flanking their doorway.

Outside our home, under an old banaba tree – one of the few tropical trees showing four seasons – we buried Hotdog our beloved 15-year-old dachshund. If only to see the tree and Hotdog’s grave again, I drove through the street for the first time in ages, and almost did not recognize the neighborhood.

Both sides of the street, narrower than I remembered, are now lined with ugly warehouses and factories, with the alleys teeming with shanties. It looked like a scene from Les Miserables, but it was not confined to that neighborhood. It was the landscape all the way to Divisoria and the areas around Chinatown.

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A foreigner who toured our country extensively emailed me his photos of the interior of the Loboc church, the second oldest in Bohol, before it was ruined by the quake.

Seeing those photos can be heartbreaking for the faithful. Friends call me a heretic and have assured me that I am going straight to hell, with forgiveness not an option, but I find entering centuries-old churches always a delightful experience, especially when there are few people around. The heavy walls and high ceilings are like open arms, calming and comforting, keeping away the day’s problems. Candles being lit as offerings have a hypnotic effect. Amid hushed voices and echoing footsteps, you can feel your worries slipping away.

In such churches you sense one of the most powerful messages of Christianity – a reassurance that there will always be a welcoming sanctuary instead of fire and brimstone for troubled, broken souls.

Now several of those sanctuaries are ruined. And for Bohol and Cebu, it looks like the loss is irretrievable.