“Oo. Puntahan mo lang ako dun. Lagi naman ako nandun. Sa gilid ng tawiran sa Edsa-Shaw.” - Aling Binay, Balut vendor
How many times have you seen sidewalk vendors? I’ve lost count. Every sidewalk in the metro is teeming with them. They have varying age…from someone as young as five years old to others as old as sixty. And that has been their life for how long, you would ask? I don’t really want to know the answer. I’m afraid it will just bring tears to my eyes.
I used to eat balut when I was younger. It’s a eccentric Asian food – a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell (Wikipedia). I stopped eating it without even noticing. I probably just never had that chance to eat one again. But looking back, whenever I buy a balut, I never looked at the vendor or even take notice of him or her. The eagerness to hold that warm balut in my hand and the anticipation of eating it is more than enough to capture me at that moment. Everything else disappears, or at least is immaterial.
But last week, my eyes, my ears and my heart showed me more than I was able to see back then. And it struck me, and it made me feel uneasy and it showed me a bigger world than the one I am living in.
How many stories have we seen in the movies focusing on the poor, on their struggles, on their daily battles? There are numerous. There are many that at some point they become unreal. They become just plots in the movie, of a book, of a play. What I was able to witness that one Saturday afternoon is one that I’ve heard of, read of and seen of a lot of times in books, movies and commentaries. But they never really struck me as REAL. They are after all just secondhand information. They are after all, so far from home.
But to see it firsthand, to hear it being said, to be in the same room with the person telling her story – that’s a different thing altogether. Goosebumps, sullen faces, teary eyes, words uttered sans emotions – these things will bring you to a different kind of reality. It brought me there. Her story was no different from those I’ve heard of. In fact, hers was very familiar. From the province, her family tried their luck in the city, lived in the slum areas which were later on demolished. She literally lost her daughter. She never laid eyes on her again since the demolition incident. She heard she got married – at 13. She heard she changed her name, that her husband changed her. “She’s prettier now, is what I heard. I also heard she’s going to Japan”, says Aling Binay.
Will she see her again? Will she be able to embrace her again? She really doesn’t know. She hears about her from acquaintances and friends and relatives, and that’s enough to keep her going in life – to know that her daughter is doing okay. But exactly “how” okay – I have a feeling she’d rather not know.
Reality can be daunting if you stay too close to it. Sometimes we’re looking but we’re not really seeing it for what it is.
So how did my afternoon end? She left the UHF office and was told by one of the staff to visit her younger son this Christmas at the Fabella Center in Mandaluyong. That’s another story, I’m afraid. But for Aling Binay, that was one very happy day because at least she knows where her son is. And she knows he is “doing okay”.
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“Keep swimming, keep swimming” - Dory (Finding Nemo)
How many times have you seen sidewalk vendors? I’ve lost count. Every sidewalk in the metro is teeming with them. They have varying age…from someone as young as five years old to others as old as sixty. And that has been their life for how long, you would ask? I don’t really want to know the answer. I’m afraid it will just bring tears to my eyes.
I used to eat balut when I was younger. It’s a eccentric Asian food – a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell (Wikipedia). I stopped eating it without even noticing. I probably just never had that chance to eat one again. But looking back, whenever I buy a balut, I never looked at the vendor or even take notice of him or her. The eagerness to hold that warm balut in my hand and the anticipation of eating it is more than enough to capture me at that moment. Everything else disappears, or at least is immaterial.
But last week, my eyes, my ears and my heart showed me more than I was able to see back then. And it struck me, and it made me feel uneasy and it showed me a bigger world than the one I am living in.
How many stories have we seen in the movies focusing on the poor, on their struggles, on their daily battles? There are numerous. There are many that at some point they become unreal. They become just plots in the movie, of a book, of a play. What I was able to witness that one Saturday afternoon is one that I’ve heard of, read of and seen of a lot of times in books, movies and commentaries. But they never really struck me as REAL. They are after all just secondhand information. They are after all, so far from home.
But to see it firsthand, to hear it being said, to be in the same room with the person telling her story – that’s a different thing altogether. Goosebumps, sullen faces, teary eyes, words uttered sans emotions – these things will bring you to a different kind of reality. It brought me there. Her story was no different from those I’ve heard of. In fact, hers was very familiar. From the province, her family tried their luck in the city, lived in the slum areas which were later on demolished. She literally lost her daughter. She never laid eyes on her again since the demolition incident. She heard she got married – at 13. She heard she changed her name, that her husband changed her. “She’s prettier now, is what I heard. I also heard she’s going to Japan”, says Aling Binay.
Will she see her again? Will she be able to embrace her again? She really doesn’t know. She hears about her from acquaintances and friends and relatives, and that’s enough to keep her going in life – to know that her daughter is doing okay. But exactly “how” okay – I have a feeling she’d rather not know.
Reality can be daunting if you stay too close to it. Sometimes we’re looking but we’re not really seeing it for what it is.
So how did my afternoon end? She left the UHF office and was told by one of the staff to visit her younger son this Christmas at the Fabella Center in Mandaluyong. That’s another story, I’m afraid. But for Aling Binay, that was one very happy day because at least she knows where her son is. And she knows he is “doing okay”.
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“Keep swimming, keep swimming” - Dory (Finding Nemo)
Doodle
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