The Smokey Mountain of Tondo

    

    Beyond the glimmering skyscrapers and bustling colors of the urban life lies a filthy facade. The pretty skies and shirts in dyes masks the neglected garbage that had established its own identity. A Mountain  of waste, and a home to some. Filths that one would avoid, a source of income to another. 

    A man neither younger nor old treks upon mucks waltzing in mires. He grins in spite of the awry ambiance for where one should be. In garments of nothing more than preloved pants and rubber boots topped with a fedora gets him through the day. Accompanied by his cane to make ends meet. No weights of sacks will anchor him to exhaustion as he floods his mind of what he earns from the gathered rubble. One of the boys is no older than five nor younger than of an infant lifts sacks after sacks than prancing with peers of his age as any child should. Another with a sack tailing his very move through the ocean of rubble, gazing upon the half-dressed older fellow. Two among hundreds of youth whose hands should be holding pencils and clays, grasped with shards and rags as dirt paints their hands.

     A Scavenger, hooded in bags of indifferent cloth, finds his share through the musky landfill in exchange for today’s only meal. There was no room for fatigue from the filth. Like farmers plowing in their fields, he plows through gardens of garbage. Diapers as his roses and plastic bottles as his gold. Alone afar halts to take in the scenic land of incomprehensible  chunks. In pink, they sigh sorrow from a hustle that lurks underlying threats to one’s welfare. Salvage anything that can sell as the sun scorches and the humid atmosphere wafts around was an everyday movie. Poverty waltzes with corruption as they play the lives of the vulnerable. With the endless lust of power and papers of green by men and women in suits, while these fellows wear nothing but sacks and ragged cloth. Promoting recyclable and reusable commodities distracted minds of ever fixing the growing hill of beckoning. 

    It repels the use of innovating environmental alternatives. Humans are the danger to humans themselves. The growing population where garbage greets them instead of bread first thing in the morning and the last they see as they succumb to slumber. Stomaching a putrid embrace as quenching one’s hunger becomes a race. Garbage is the new gold.