#ULOG 46 | Strange Beginnings

When I am a toddler it wasn’t clear enough for me to understand what my parents thought about life. All I know while growing up is I’m always with my parents whenever they are, teaching me this and that to which in my younger years I know nothing about. My father tags me all along going to his co-employee, friend and usurer just to hang out with him, drink beer and introduce me to his daughter. Most employees in the company who are employed are lacked or had only pass on their hands after they received their salaries and only goes to awaiting bills, buy food for two weeks, other various payments which is not part of the budget, etcetera that in no time dried up after a few days turns to my father’s friend, reqeusting for a loan payable on the said date to be paid, either every 15 days or monthly payment. Although loan is supposed to help the struggling family to survive but it added up another burden on the bread winner of the family even if both parents are working.

Such a painful truth to face that a family of 2 or 3 children can’t even have a decent dress or food to eat with a tight budget! That includes the schooling, miscellaneous; projects given to the students also have to be considering when the children started to study in the school. Parents in the low level class complain mostly about their dire condition in the society. Mostly poor family can only afford to send their children to a public school, colleges and state universities grants scholarship to the students who had a potential to excel in the academe. But not all students are as bright as what the government expect them to be. There are street children whose only wish is to go to school and study, there are some who were gone astray leading up to being a criminal, and drug lord, addicts, prostitutes and their lives are wasted.

I’ve seen this human condition growing up in the city with so many miseries cluttered on the streets even in the informal settlers who are living beside the rivers, under the bridge, etcetera. They too are human but the responsibilities for being human and having their own family isn’t their first priority, booming poor family has gone up yearly unable to provide enough sustenance that parents eventually sell their children, given to adoption to their relatives, etcetera. Woe to them that have the guts to do such a horrible action to their children. Parents who are poor and under school are the prime candidates of this unending circle of circumstances happening to them that will resort to atrocities to their children who don’t deserve to suffer in the first place. Their innocence started as tragic when they were born, abuse, neglect by their parents that these supposed to be the future of the world are now the most pervasive problem in the Third World country like the Philippines.

I’m always appalled seeing those children in their worst condition every day; do they deserve to be treated this way? I know it first-hand because I met a lot of them in my place, I talk to them in their miserable state, at times I asked them to dropped by at the house to pick some bottles to sell their goods (paper, bottle or even aluminium or steel) in the junkshop, they are like stray dog on the streets looking for a dime, asking alms or begging for food or money. I already made a post about Tom. There are a lot of Tom on the streets that had an opportunity to send them to a good school, but were always left yearly because his parents doesn’t have enough of everything of their own.

These habitual routine of having children has been a customary “silent tradition” among the poor family thriving for more but can’t be sustain due to the lack of education, jobs that is unfit to their skills among others.

To the children who were born in this world not knowing how to begin their lives without the proper guidance from their parents is a strange beginning to them. Their parents who are as neglectful as ever to the point of abandoning them are also the victim of this dilemma because they too have experienced the same predicament with their parents when they were a kid. Poor thing this will not end unless they are willing to create something useful and creative way to alleviate this difficulty.