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Welcome to The Tropical Breeze
A silent
tear, wiped away by your generosity ™ |
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The Tropical Breeze: Geraldine's story
Following is the story of a rescued girl,
Geraldine. Told in her native Philippines
dialect of Ilongo, it is translated here for
you.
September 2014
I was seven years old when my mother left to
work as housemaid in Manila. I had to look
after my three younger sisters and older
brother. But he soon left to live with
relations 70 kilometres away.
My mother left because father only relies on
her earnings from doing laundry for other
people. She also tried manicuring nails to
earn more income.
When my mother got to Manila, she started to
send money every month. Father always got
the money and used it to buy rum to drink
with his friends instead of buying food.
Three months had passed and mother heard
what father was doing, so she stopped
sending the money. That was the last time we
heard from her. Later, we learned she was
living with another man and pregnant with
his child.
Father hardly came home. When he did, he was
always drunk. He came home very late and did
not bring any food. He would kick the walls
and wreck the roof, which was already
leaking very bad. When it rained at night we
had nowhere to go so we huddled together
trying to find a dry spot to sit and go to
sleep. We tried to protect our youngest
sister because she was too small to handle
the cold, she was only a month old when my
mother left.
Most times we go to sleep without any
food, waiting for father to bring us food.
We wake up hungry and often go up to three
days or longer without real food. We picked
edible leaves off trees, called 'bago', to
cook to stave off hunger. We learned that
people in the market will buy these edible
leaves. We tried picking the leaves and
selling them. We were proud to earn some
money to buy rice and told father about it.
He took the money and bought rum for
himself. We went home crying and hungry and
ate more of the bago leaves.
People saw me and my sisters sitting on the
ground, around the cooking pot, eating these
leaves. A couple of people living nearby saw
us sitting there eating the bago, and felt
pity for us. We were able to eat good when
you guys
stopped in with some food, when you passed
by on their way to town. Father started to
brag saying he does not need to bring home
food anymore for there are people feeding
us.
Our living condition got really bad. The
house was collapsing and there was hardly
any roof left.
You gave us a tarp to
cover the roof to keep the rain from getting
us wet. But instead of fixing the roof or
putting the tarp on, father took us to his
friend's house to spend the night with his
friends. The old man seemed to treat us well,
giving us hot chocolate drinks before we
went to bed. We did not know he was putting
sleeping pills in the hot chocolate to make
us sleep. Most nights when we slept in this
old man's house, I could hear my sisters cry
out in the dark. When we woke up in the
morning, we found it very strange that we
were all wearing the old man's clothes.
There was a bunch of earthquakes several
times a day for over two weeks.
You guys found us wandering around on
our own when most people had moved to higher
ground in fear of a tsunami hitting the
lowlands near the seashore. Then you picked us
up and took us to your home. My father did not even ask about our
whereabouts or look for us.
Thanks for reading my story,
Geraldine
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