Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Life of a Daily Commuter


I am now close to my second week here as an Intern in Saligan based in Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Campus. Aside from my legal training in developmental lawyering, this rugged independent experience has opened in me a greater lens through which I see my world.


Clearly Manila as the capital of the nation has always exerted its gravitational pull in me ever since I’ve known friends leaving home to open new worlds here. Now that I am here, I am, even though for a short two months, appropriate my own version of the manila experience and see if the noise and silence of this place strikes accord in my soul. The place, in itself, with all the accessibility, the resources, the fun, and the sheer mass of concrete and humanity constantly interacting every day, has yet to make sense.

My routine of walking towards the UP Ikot station allows me to pass a community covered with colourful plastic campaign materials. The structures of the houses are caught between the developed and the developing – a community with the perfect mix of the extremely poor and the capable. Those who just cook with fire wood at the side walk and those whose kitchen are as big as their living rooms. Half round in the UP Ikot Jeep, I get to see the state’s Primer University – UP. The sprawling campus spread out with lush greeneries in between - a green learning haven in the concrete jungle of Quezon City which once (and I guess still is) nurtured the minds of the revolution.

I then transfer to my second jeep which takes me to Katipunan. The old and the young, the employed and the student patiently wait under one metal jeepney roof. Sometimes it is obvious that people always rush away from the side near the driver. Who wants to be the defacto conductor of the jeep right? And worse, who wants to be the recipient of everyone’s germs right? A Mother wipes the toddler’s face. A sister shares a snack with the bunso. The old man guards his leather brief case with all of his life. An agent gently secures his item on his lap like it was a child. Workers of restaurants and books stores, and multi-level networking agents, and teachers and students with large framed glasses one by one exit the jeep. I get to do that under a blue overpass.



My day begins as I walk under a series of big trees and the engraved phrase under the shield Lux-in-Domino shines at the horizon. 

No comments: