Lost Children and Their Refuge

They are random strangers plying the streets of (some) highly urbanized Filipino cities. No, they aren’t the archetypal daily commuters. They are young, out-of-school, thick with grime, thin as whisper, starving, sickly-looking, often sporting plus-sized hand-me-down shirts, and sometimes wide-eyed. They work, play, and live in bustling public spaces.

They survive at the mercy of others, begging for money at busy crossroads, scavenging for crumbs or leftovers thrown in a restaurant basket of trash -- or survive at the expense of others, pickpocketing the hapless, unknowing victim inside a jeepney. They choose to forget their gut is empty, lifted by a hallucinatory fantasy after sniffing desperately late afternoon a tad of rugby (contact cement) inside a plastic bag. For the vigilant, it is hard to trust a presumed member of a menacing gang proliferating in the streets.

If they had miraculously eaten, they would play around where iron bars were available, the railings, or with treasured broken toys, even if it meant a faint, blurry, and lost childhood to many seeing them.

While some of these children would just suddenly show up in front of your camera, wanting for a shot, most of them would shun the camera. They are scared of it. A picture of them would mean identification by the police. ‘Don’t! Stop it! Don’t report me to the police,’ pleaded one covering his face with his upturned shirt.

Their rest seems like a farce to those who have their comfortable, private shelters. These children sleep where pedestrians walk by, and where the noise of honking and speeding cars is loudest. Any place -- cold or stiflingly hot, quiet or blaring -- is called their humble abode.

They are the street children spilling out into the main thoroughfares and the nooks and crannies of messy cities. Ironically, they tag along deemed progress, resurfacing anytime. Which is to say developments do not always breed any good. They also show the dark side of it -- massive poverty, ignorance to basic needs, poor services, corruption, and short-sighted urban planning, if there is.

Images: Talisay City, Cebu, Philippines

Dancing to the Beat: Sinulog Festival 2015

Navigating the colossal revelry springing into its own beat on the banderitas-smothered streets, I could invariably love everything about it without any complaint. Despite the threatening overcast sky that haphazardly soon dropped buckets of rain, the difficulty of getting the best vantage point for somebody who wanted to be so-called photographer and thus sucked, the impossible thick human walls you couldn't penetrate and pass through, leaving you sort of impatiently stuck and nearly irate, the five-hour-long SRO, the growing heaps of rubbish everywhere and every minute, and the steaming air that unwittingly raised both eyebrows and cooked our balls, I had seriously nothing but a feeling of accomplishment and gratitude for being a part, yet again, of Sinulog.

I mean, there were some inconveniences. It was chaotic, of course, as it has always been. But when colors fly like a water wheel or a zoetrope, when the music starts its familiar insatiable rhythm, and when the singsong 'Pit Senor' drowns the crowd, all the world's inanities, caprices, and fatigues shelve themselves to shame. The simplest, yet most meaningful, word there is, is joy.

Sinulog is one of those few reminders for me to come to terms with my worsening faith and have it renewed. Thank you, Señor Santo Niño.

The Fisherfolk of Bantayan Island, Cebu

Sunrise commits itself to a cyclical responsibility for the world to see. 

Every early morning, its soft lights knife through thatched-roof homes of slumbering heads, gagged mouths, and motionless bodies, leaving no dust in a spectrum unmasked. Sunrise is the culmination of the death of night and the first sign of the birth of day, where two long-rivaling ends meet. It is a predictable phenomenon, which could mean many things to a billion different people. It could mean just another monotonous day for the uninspired, another dreaded day for the burned-out rat, another sunny day for the optimist. Or another sweat-it-all-out day for the hard worker who has mouths to feed.

In Santa Fe, one of only three municipalities on Bantayan Island, sunrise means another day to possess and thank the gifts of water. Unsurprisingly, as being islander locals, a lot of whom are fishermen. As early as five in the pastel-colored morning, fishermen end their fishing in deep waters. In a fascinating manner, they return and help each other by carrying ashore a banca (outrigger) in cadence, which goes to show the spirit of bayanihan (cooperation) still truly lives on. The toiling fisherfolk bring their past-midnight haul of bolinao (anchovies) to their anxious wives and drowsy children, where each member correspondingly untangles the fish out from the fishing net and puts them in a pail or bucket.

Apart from finding their fresh catch straight in wet markets, they also sell them as buwad (dried fish) prepared by themselves.

It is not uncommon to see fishing as a family affair on the resource-rich island.