Excerpt from, My Philippines Adventure Upon arrival, I stayed in the illustrious Dusit Thani hotel in Makati, adjacent to the mega, Ayalla and Glorietta malls. Right from the outset I didnt care for Manila, filthy and crawling with hustlers and thieves, and of course, a virtual army of heavily armed security personnel, checking your every move, in and out of everywhere. And ironically, even with all that security, and my formidable size, it was noticeably unsafe even to stand outside my hotel on the street at night. I wanted to get the hell out of there. However, it was then that I experienced a much greater tragedy unfolding around me! Thousands upon thousands of street children, lost souls as young as 6 or 7 years old, living on the streets, broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes, every day. I cannot understand the gross disparity between the wealthy and the poor here. Nor the sheer callous neglect that exists for the innocent lost children of the streets, without hope, without a chance in life, through no fault of their own, other than being born poor and abandoned all by those, both their families and the State, who should have loved and cared for them. I gave away many thousands of pesos into their hands, everywhere, trying in vain to ease their plight and atone for my part in witnessing such a tragedy, such a calamity, a crime against humanity and in the face of God. Unless something is done to end this misery, the Philippine people will pay dearly for the institutionalized, engineered cruelty and neglect, and the deliberate sacrifice of a generation of the Nations future, its children, to their own fate, without hope, education, dreams, without futures! Then, it went beyond bearing one rainy day while riding in a cab. We passed a lost boy draped in rags, standing frozen in the rain sobbing in utter hopelessness, his tears lost, drowned away like his plight, with the rain. I yelled at the driver to stop, and leaping out, ran back to this poor creature. My heart broke upon seeing him, an innocent child in utter despair. I wept involuntarily at the sight of this boy, while emptying my pockets into his tiny soiled hands. Of all the things I have experienced in this land, this image haunts my dreams. And I can neither speak about it nor even write about it here with a dry face.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:36:49 +0000
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