My best friend in the streets

I met her in 1989, at a time when Quezon City was still clear of flyovers, when commuters were stuck at the traffic light in the intersection of Quezon Ave. and Edsa.

It was an hour’s drive from my school to our house in Fairview during rush hour. My Papa Nick would fetch me in school, with merienda ready, anticipating the heavy traffic ahead. Talking between bites, I called Papa’s attention to a girl who sold sampaguita.

She stood out with her long black hair that flowed down to her waist. She was slender and had auburn skin, towering over the other sampaguita girls her age.

The girl was a staple in my high school life that it became a habit for me to scan the crowd, or look for her at the island in the middle of Quezon Ave. every day. On different occasions, I would see her wear her long hair in a pony tail, or tucked behind her ear, or wearing a hair band, or barrettes. I watched her closely each time. Papa teased that she was my best friend.

When I entered college, I hardly passed that intersection anymore, and frankly, I never gave her that much thought. But I found myself back in that area in college while working on a term paper on street children.

In the course of my research, a group of vendors in their late teens or early twenties were having their usual lunch: patong, as they called it, their very own version of rice toppings. Theirs was a mix of several viands over rice placed in a small transparent plastic bag. They used their bare hands to eat, soiled from the day’s work but it never bothered them. Normally, I would want to try it, but its smell was far from appetizing.

The vendors assumed I was a social worker from the DSWD. Social workers have come and gone, they said, and left nothing but empty promises. I didn’t bother to ask what kind of help they expected, I simply assumed that they needed homes or livelihood.

After lunch, they busied themselves with selling different things under the sun – from rags to fresh strawberries from Baguio. Thinking it was a cinch, I asked one them if I could give selling a try. He handed me a tray of strawberries.

When the traffic light turned red, I got ready with my million-dollar smile, inching my way in between the rows and columns of cars stuck in Quezon Ave.

But what happened shocked me. The strawberries that I held made me invisible. Or, at least it seemed.

The drivers alongside their passengers completely ignored me. They stared straight at the road, pretending to have a conversation and not "see" anyone or anything. If I could read lips, I’d bet they were saying something like, "ignore that vendor, she will go away." Frankly, I would have settled to being a thing at that moment, but worse, I was nothing to them. No one even dared look me in the eye to at least acknowledge that I existed. It was a painful experience that the poor go through every day of their lives.

Urban cities like Manila are surrounded by poverty every day, and it is convenient for most of us to ignore this reality. The poor – the beggars and vendors – are deemed part of the cityscape, like billboards, cars and flyovers.

I never had the chance to know my "best friend" whom I saw so frequently in the streets when I was young. Now that I do volunteer work with Childhope Asia, Philippines, an NGO promoting street education for the children, I became more aware of their plight. Here are some of their realities that they face:

• The working street children work from six to 16 hours, often in a combination of "occupations."

• They usually come from large families, with six to 10 children per family.

• Street children are generally malnourished and anemic, many of them physically stunted.

• They suffer psychologically from undue family pressures, abuses and neglect at home. Very often, they also develop very low self-esteem.

• Street children are prone to street fights and bullying from bigger youth, harassment from policemen, suspicion and arrest for petty crimes, abuse and torture from misguided authorities.

• They mostly come from broken families.

• Boys outnumber the girls. Girls are more disadvantaged because of their sex. They do more housework and are prone to sexual abuses.

• Their parents are preoccupied with earning a living, oftentimes engaged in low-paying jobs such as construction workers, vendors or scavengers.

(Source: www.childhope.org.ph)

The DSWD and local government units conduct rescue operations of children living in the streets. In Manila, the street kids are brought to an institution which the kids call "The Rock," but I question whether they are really rescued there. I met some girls in their teens who were "rescued" in the streets and brought to that facility. They had tattoos on their wrists, the markings of being members of gangs like Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Bahala Na Gang. Apparently, they were recruited to the gang by other kids who were also in the custody of The Rock. These gangs give them a sense of affinity and belongingness, and protection from other kids while living in the streets.

It is ironic that they find refuge in an environment that poses so much harm to them.

The problem of street dwelling is but a manifestation of how bad poverty is in our country. It is something that cannot be addressed by merely giving shelter for the poor. But a good starting point, perhaps, is sensitivity on the part of those who have more, to embrace their existence and treat them as humans. Give the poor their dignity, and surely, they will strive for something more because they deserve it.

Years passed. I wonder what has happened to my "best friend." I’m sure I’d recognize her if I saw her again. I wonder if she still walks tall and with so much grace, or maybe poverty has taken the best of her.

I want to see her again, if only to say "hi."

"Here we are, take a look at us.

Here we are, can you see us at all

All alone and unsure.

Can you feel our fears?

Let us share them all with you.."– excerpts from the song on the Rights of the Child