Just sharing this story. My brother-in-law is named James. He drives a
trike that I bought him to earn a living (photo is not James, just showing
you what a trike looks like):
He is poor. But his parents are really poor. James helps them what
little he can contribute.
They have to support two grandchildren because the two separate
fathers either refused to support their children or could not afford
but a pittance. The mother of these kids died in childbirth (of course
of the the younger child). Two boys. One of them never speaks
(ages 12 and 10). She died in the same year that Rossel's brother
Jennel was murdered in 2010.
So the grandparents have to raise them. The father is 64 years old and
in poor health but he cannot afford his medication for high blood
pressure and god knows what else.
He gets up at 4am, walks 15 minutes to the jeepney:
The jeepney costs 67 cents each way. After a 30 minute minute ride
then he walks then he walks to the bus station. Then he spends the
next 6 hours selling dried pork on buses waiting to depart and on bus
platforms. On a good day he makes 300 Pesos ($6). Then he goes
home by the same route. He does this 5 days per week.
Anyway, today we gave them $200 (10,400 Pesos). We asked them how
they would spend the money - they said: "rice, school fees and medicine"
(I have asked hundreds of people around the world why they are poor.
The most common answer is: "no rice".
They were in tears. Later in the day Rossel and I talked about the
millions and millions of people we will never meet - in The
Philippines and elsewhere - with similar and worse problems.
Here are a few photos from today. James is on the far left, then James'
mother, then me, then his Dad. I gave them an extra 200 Pesos ($3.60)
and then told them to give to it someone poor in their neighborhood.
Within 10 minutes they told me they gave it to the boy next door who
was born with one arm. His photo is also here, below. The last photo
shows James' father giving the boy 200 Pesos.
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