I will illustrate with a few examples from poor life in Manila:
We were living in a squatter area, a slum, which was made of patches of wood, plastic and metal all stuck together, and built over water in Divisoria, Manila.
To get to our tiny dwelling we had to pass through a dark corridor inside it, passing dwellings on both sides, stuck together, and few sari-sari stores (kiosks), and people hanging out of doorways:
We continued through:
Until we got to this little corner, which was our little corrugated iron shack. The dark entrance with the red and white cloth is where we entered.
We had to climb a ladder and pass through a hatch in the floor above our heads to get inside our little house. It had a single room, about 3 metres by 2.5 metres and 4 meters high.
There was no electricity, and no electric lights. We used home-made candles. The old lady would collect melted wax from the church. She put a soda can upside down, put some wax on it, and a bit of rag for a wick, and that was how we got light at night. She couldn’t afford proper candles.
During the day we had to take a bath (wash with a tub and a scoop), wash clothes, and do other things like get food. There were some people selling rice and ulam (side-dish) for very cheap in the corridor from their homes, cheaper than outside.
In the day time, the old lady would wander off to a church where there was a feeding program, and get free lunch there.
Here is the lovely old lady feeling a bit hot, and needing to fan herself.
She cooked on an uling (charcoal) stove which she made herself out of a large tin can with a hole in the side, and some air holes and a mesh at the top. She liked to eat sweet potato and also its leaves, bico express, a hot shrimp paste which would go a long way with rice. Another cheap ulam was tomatoes. For breakfast we had champarado, a chocolate rice porridge.
When it rained, water poured down through holes in the roof, and we had to sit or sleep under umbrellas in the room.
She also needed to beg. It was frustrating for her being in the house, because the neighbors would have irritating conversations sometimes giving banter. So she preferred to sleep on the street to have some peace. She would sleep outside a Mini-Stop on cardboard, because people would give her money. Sometimes interesting things happened like an armed hold up of the shop.
When she passed through the street, and had no money left (from alms) she would also pass the street stalls selling food, and say, “Tutong tutong.” The cook would scrape up the burnt rice from the bottom of pots, and give it to her in a bag, and then find a spot on the street to sit and eat with ulam she bought from alms given at the Mini-Stop.
These were some of her neighbours. This family sells dried fish which the father is putting on skewers.
Another woman was a vendor. Every morning she would wheel out crates of soft drinks to sell in the street. Clothes had to be washed often as this woman is doing:
In the street, other ways to get money was from scavenging. My other friends would go to piles of garbage on street corners, and sort out all the recyclables, and take these to the junk shop. In a day we could get 200 pesos from the rubbish that was in our territory, which was not a lot, and this was only every several days.
From restaurant garbage bags was also pag-pag: food that was thrown out. Chicken, and fruit was a delicacy. They were starting to go off in the warm weather. We just washed them, and cooked the chicken, and had a delicious meal in an alley:
We were happy, even if life was so meagre. There was a joy in the close-knit community ties, and in the simple life if we were content with it:
On the street we washed in our own secret spot, which for us was in front of a club before it opened, behind a hedge in the courtyard, with a bucket of water, and soap and a tabo (scoop).
Sleeping on the street was comfortable on our cardboard and with our sheets. We slept close-together in groups, and it was cosy. We felt happy to be together and share life together. A lot of people of better living ignored us, but we knew our poor neighbors.
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