Trash talk
A colored photo in the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Sept 14 caught my attention. Not only that, it pierced my heart. It was a picture of a mother and her child literally swimming through neck-deep garbage on Manila Bay. Reason? They were scouring for recyclables to sell.
The photo captured the mom passing on to her child (who, by the way, looked not over 7 years old) a plastic yellow scoop typically used in infant formula milk preparations. The child, while flinging one arm over their “salbabida,” (rubber tube lifesaver) was holding a clear plastic bag where they collected their precious finds. His other arm was for reaching what her mother would hand over to him. A plastic scoop.
For the unfathomable dangers of drowning and the gravity of exposure to germs and the diseases that come with them, braving to slog through the sea of garbage is shocking.
What could make anyone do that? Hunger. Poverty.
Obviously, they had very little options – either swim through the garbage-filled seawater and risk drowning and getting sick or, the harder part, die from hunger.
I don’t know how to end this blog but there’s one thing I’m sure of – with all the squabbling and mud slinging in our Executive and Legislative departments, what our country truly needs are open eyes and warm hearts and our mouths full of trash shut.
(Kudos to Ryan Lim of PDI. Your photo speaks a thousand words.)
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