REVISITING COLON

Revisiting an old place not only brings healing, but it also tunes you to the right frequency so to speak. I bumped into this realization lately. It happened when I came to smell the busy air once again in what used to be the hub of Cebuano shoppers and business, perhaps the oldest there is in the Visayas-- Colon.

Right now, the business there is not as promising as during my college days. In those days, Colon was the place to be to the bored and to the shopping freaks alike. These days, it has become the home of "ukay-ukay" industry. Call it the sunset of Colon if you please. I call it the dump site of Pinoy salvation. It's not meant to ridicule the hopeless state of affairs of Filipinos nowadays. It's both a comfort and a fixation of sort. It's a salvation to those who could not wade through department store racks of brand new clothes. It becomes a fixation, sort of like an addiction really, for men and women who are hooked in the blinding twirl of fashion and market brand names at a very affordable price. And yes, I should count myself in in this addiction. What with finding crispy Giordano shirt for just a matter of less than two hundred box or a pair of Nike shoes for my Kiny for just 80 pesos. Ahh, Colon and all its perks ( and don't forget the snatching spree every now and then, which definitely adds color to its history, I suppose).

But a few days ago, I was there and found something else. Or should I say "someone." I saw what looked like a two-year-old girl. She was there, in tattered dress with her family in the same fashion state. I guess they have made the hallway of that establishment as their bed space for their nightly rest and the murky ditch nearby as their bath tub. I watched the mother for a full half-hour feeding and then bathing her girl, obviously the youngest of her four under the rain while having her dip her toes in the ditch once in a while. I heard the oldest boy said, "Ma, I thought baby has a fever. Why bathe her?" And that question brought me into a momentary trance where I saw series of deaths of two-year-olds in our place due to dengue just days ago. I'd say, it has become a deadly epidemic in my neighborhood these days. And that fear and anxiety that wracked me up that instant made me stop and want to grab that girl from her seemingly uncaring mother. But what could I do, instead of doing that or even moving on to dig for another rare find, I went home, slumped myself, tear-drenched beside my sleeping 23-month old daughter.


I watched her sleeping soundlessly unmindful of what was happening with the other kids like her. I watched her. I still am. And I am resolved to stay that way.