The Dreamland

With the Manila skyline hidden around the bay and just beyond the town gate by the sea, rests a land of dreams. But it is not a kingdom of magic or a land you visit at night.

It is a land where a town dumps its trash and it never gets collected. In and amongst the odd shoe, fraying tarpaulin, worn boat, tangled fishing nets, chickens and distorted tide grows a slum with its maze of narrow paths adorned by unimaginable homes and small shops. The men fish, the children play as they always do and women sit scrubbing clothes stained with more than just dirt.

No one who lives here is actually from here. They come from all parts of the archipelago in desperate poverty to be closer to that skyline in the hope that by being closer, you are closer to finding a job. Closer to being able to provide something meager to your family. Closer to the dream.

With one in four people already living in despairing poverty, the typhoon has exposed these dreams more. In its wake, many of the people who lost their homes were flown from the affected areas to bigger urban centers. Eventually some will return. Others may not and stay closer to the dream.

And so, over a bit further down the shore, there is a new group of devastated dreamers with displaced dreams. They keep to themselves and no one is sure of this new reality, how they will fit in or what will come. They call this slum between the skyline and the sea the ‘Dreamland’. If you will it it is no…