On November 13, 1996, we arrived in Manila, which I had visited seven or eight years ago. The city hadn't changed much. In the streets of Manila, I saw the familiar jeepneys that hustled about picking up passengers wherever they waved their hands, and I saw the hawkers selling cigarettes and newspapers at every intersection. Local Tzu Chi people put us up at the Amita Foundation House, a three-story building located in Quezon City.

Local Tzu Chi people prepared an abundant vegetarian lunch for us, and afterwards they took us on a tour of the city. But this was not sightseeing. We visited a slum along a river downtown. Here, most people lived in simple, crude shacks built with planks against the walls of old warehouses. The inside area of each house was not over 30 square feet and people had to bow their heads when entering. Some of these shacks even had a second floor. A family of 5 would live in one of these tiny hovels. The poor Filipinos were friendly, and they waved to us when we took pictures of them. It looked like they were happy with what they had.

At Amita House, we met a grandmother who was very happy to see us. She gave Master Te Min a red envelope of money as a present. Master Te Min donated it to the Tzu Chi Manila branch office. The elderly woman's granddaughter, Chen Ruey-hsia, is now a doctor at Tzu Chi Hospital and always takes care of Master Cheng Yen's health.

Tzu Chi sowed good seeds in the Philippines six years ago when Master Cheng Yen was awarded the Magsaysay Award. She gave half of the award money to victims living beneath Mount Pinatubo and the other half to flood victims in East China. Some overseas Chinese joined the Tzu Chi Foundation then, and they organized a branch office in the Philippines two years ago. Since then, the Manila branch has been very active under the leadership of Sister Lin Xiao-cheng. The members do the same things that we do in Taiwan. One of the more remarkable things they do is hold free clinics.

The next morning, we got up at 3:20 and arrived at the Manila domestic airport at 4:40. About 83 persons, including Tzu Chi people, doctors, nurses and volunteers, boarded a Philippine Airlines flight for Dumaguete, Visaya Province, an island one hour and 10 minutes by air south of Manila.

The flight was full and two thirds of the seats were occupied by our medical team. When we arrived in Dumaguete at about 7:10, we were greeted by Mr. Tseng, the chairman of the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Dumaguete, and local Tzu Chi people. Two months before the free clinic, Tzu Chi people from Manila had gone there to do preparation work and to promote the event.

After checking into our hotel, we went to the Chinese Junior High School where the free clinic was to be held. The sunshine was surprisingly bright. What surprised us even more was the crowd lined up outside the school.

Many patients had lined up since the very early hours of the morning. It had taken some of them two or three hours to get to the school. When lining up for registration, they stood very close to each other so that no one could cut into the line. In the waiting area under the tents, patients waited anxiously or quietly with faces once dipped in morning dew and now burned by sunshine. A couple of mothers even rolled up their shirts to breast-feed their babies. When any one of us approached, patients would smile and explain what was wrong with them. They were allowed to enter the makeshift hospital when their numbers were called. Order inside was well maintained.

The corridor behind the main school building was used by the ophthalmologists. In the classrooms inside, there was a consultation room, a dental clinic, a pediatrics room, a pharmacy, a room for minor surgery, and two recovery rooms. During the three days of the free clinic, there were some extraordinary cases which I will never forget.

Among all the surgical cases, goiter tumors outnumbered all the others. Most of the patients were women. Dumaguete is a fishing port and meals often consist only of dried fish. This results in malnutrition that causes goiter in local women. Most of these women at the clinic had never seen a doctor because they couldn't afford it. We were told that an operation for goiter cost about 30,000 pesos, while the average monthly income per family was only 4,000 pesos. Therefore they could do nothing but let the tumors grow. A couple of patients had tumors that were too big (larger than their necks) to be operated on at the free clinic. Tzu Chi people arranged a free boat trip to Manila for free operations at Chinese General Hospital, where most of our doctors came from.

A young woman, about 20, came in the late afternoon of the first day with her 8-month-old daughter, who had been born with a small tumor on her nose. As she watched her baby being taken into the surgery room, the mother shivered and burst into tears. She had asked for help from several hospitals, but the surgery cost as much as 25,000 pesos, which she was really unable to pay. Dr. Lu, the chief of the medical group, did the operation and removed the tumor. When the little girl was sent to the recovery room, the mother held her little hand tightly and asked all the volunteers there if her daughter was all right. They all comforted her patiently. When she and her daughter left, she kept saying to the staff, "I'll miss you."

Back in the corridor behind the classroom building, an older woman, aged 55, led her husband for treatment of the cataracts that blinded him. Although the husband was the patient, the wife had neural tumors growing all over her face, hands and feet like strings of grapes. Master Te Min gave the "Grape Granny" a box of pineapple cake from Taiwan. The old woman fed her husband first. When asked how he liked his wife, the husband said, "She gave birth to our eight children. Her heart is very kind. No matter how she looks, I'll love her forever!" Only when the old woman's teardrops fell could we tell where he eyes were. The husband had an operation on one of his eyes. When the couple came again the next day, Dr. Ko, the ophthalmologist, took the gauze from his right eye and explained to them how to care for the eye at home. The "Grape Granny" led her husband from the makeshift hospital and took him home. I blessed them both for their unswerving love.

Master Te Min mentioned the "Grape Granny" to all the female members at a dinner party with local Tzu Chi people. "You're all most blessed. Don't complain to your parents that you were born ugly." I thought the old woman was beautiful. She had a beautiful heart.

One twelve-year-old boy appeared in the pediatric room . He had dry, dark skin. The skin was badly cracked because he had been born without sweat glands. Many people there called him "fish boy." Whenever his skin itched, he would scratch it until it bled. Even his eye sockets seemed to be turned inside out. We could see red flesh that throbbed when he blinked. The doctor there, of course, could do nothing for him. The boy was sent to Manila for further examination.

How lucky we are to have sweat glands! At the dinner party, Master Te Min also said, "We all should thank our parents, as we were born with sweat glands. When you sweat, you should keep working. It's a blessing that you can sweat." The next morning, Brother Lee from Manila told us, "Last night I covered myself completely with the comforter because I wanted to experience the wonder of sweating." As a matter of fact, we all sweat a lot during the three days of the free clinic, but nobody minded and everyone worked very happily.

There was a two-year-old girl whose large intestine hung outside her belly. Because she had been born with no nerves in her anus, a hole had been made in her belly to expose about 15 cm [6 in] of the large intestine in order to allow her to excrete wastes. The bright red, greasy, sausage-like intestine wriggled at times, and it seemed to be infected. Poor little girl! I could read the helplessness in her face. She was also sent to Manila for a free operation. I prayed that she would be normal someday.

In the afternoon of the first day, some of us went to the local provincial hospital to see a little girl who had contracted acute bronchitis. That morning, I had put her into the ambulance for transfer from the school to the hospital. She was receiving medicine through an IV and her mother was at her side. We also went to the ICU to see two patients who had been transferred from the clinic.

In the afternoon of the second day, we visited a slum in Dumaguete. It was located along a small river which, to my surprise, was cleaner than any river in Taiwan. Some women were doing laundry along the riverside. Coconut trees stood on both sides, making a beautiful sight. Like the shacks that I had seen in Manila, most of these were built with planks and some were covered with coconut leaves and vinyl sheets. A couple of the hovels were so small that we had to bow when entering. Like the people in the slum in Manila, these also seemed contented and happy. We gave candy to every boy and girl we met.

On the second day, a local TV station visited Master Te Min. They knew that we had come from Taiwan to help the medical mission from Manila. The news of the free clinic was broadcast on TV that night. On the third day, patients crowded into the school and a couple of armed soldiers were called to maintain order. As it was the last day of the free clinic, the doctors could do only minor surgical procedures. Many patients who missed the chance to have an operation kept asking when the mission would come again. They were so disappointed that they even wept when we told them the clinic was closed. We all felt sorry for them. There are too many suffering people in the Philippines. The next free clinic will be held at the end of January 1997 in Samboanga.

At the free clinic, the people I respected most were the doctors and nurses, who took such good, loving care of the patients. The doctors' delicate skill made every operation successful. Sometimes they themselves had to lift patients onto stretchers and carry them to the recovery room. Some of them even took turns looking after the patients during the night while the rest of us were resting at the hotel. The experienced nurses were the doctors' best assistants. Dr. Huang Shih-ming from Tzu Chi Hospital mentioned that whenever he decided that he needed another knife, the nurse standing beside him had already held it out. The facilities there were simple, but the doctors' technique and the nurses' concentration were even more professional than in Taiwan. The number of patients who received treatments at the free clinic totaled 3,780, far more than were helped at the free clinic in Isabela last August.

We left Dumaguete on the morning of November 17. One young woman who had had an operation for a breast tumor hurried to the airport to see the doctors off. With tears in her eyes, she expressed her deep gratitude for what the doctors had done for her. I thought that in Dumaguete Tzu Chi had sowed good seeds that would someday bear good fruit.

We spent the afternoon in Manila visiting another slum. We had a farewell party at Amita House that night. I spoke to the participants. "Thanks to Master Cheng Yen for creating the Tzu Chi World, which has enabled us to get to know each other and to work together to help the poor in Dumaguete. You've done a lot and given so much to the people there."