Freedom.

* story published with approval & permission.

” If I could turn back time, I would.”

You see, he was crucified and flogged, and then, on trying to save himself, was forced to tell on his best friend and watch him beaten to death by the guards when they were caught for stealing food.

“We were just hungry.”

They were only 11 then.

I met him through my publisher, who found his powerful photos online. Social reportage photographer, Mio, who asked me to come with him has been visiting Tondo regularly for more than a decade now, exposing this other world through his blood-stained eyes. Even though you’d mistake him for just another Chinese Singaporean, he was born in Cambodia. Since seeing the grotesque killings and atrocities in his childhood, he has used photography in his mission to help underprivileged children, in his attempt to bring hope to a new generation, freedom to captives, and bring healing to his guilt-ridden past.

“I used to have nightmares every night. Every night, I would go back to the prisons in Cambodia and see my friends screaming in pain. After I believed in God, I started praying for them, and since then, every time I dream, I’ve been able to free someone.”

He sets captives free.

Guilt for causing his best friend’s death no longer plagues him. During one of his trips to Cambodia, he met a small Cambodian boy named Tira, who looked just like his best friend who died. On getting to know his family better, Mio found out from his parents that Tira had had nightmares since he was 4 years old, of guards flogging him to death. Tira grew attached to Mio and now calls him “Father”. It was if God had used Tira to bring healing and forgiveness to Mio, and to set him free, too.

“Wai Jia, come with me to Smokey mountain in Tondo? I work with an organisation there called Malaya Kids Ministries. Malaya in the Filipino language means Freedom. “

Smokey Mountain. That’s what all the local people of Manila call it.

Smokey, because of the burning ash. Mountain, because of the formidable heaps of rubbish piled up to the sky, with rolls of rancid smoke rising up like chimneys from the chopped wood burnt to make charcoal.

Smokey Mountain at Tondo. Tondo, it is a dirty word, in many senses of the word.

I know, because we hailed and were rejected by more than 10 taxis before we found a driver who would take us there, even though it was only 15 minutes away. Even then, he was only willing to drop us on the highway, and no where nearer.

Tondo. It is where the air is still and the smell of soot, trash and most of all, dreams hang still in the air. I have been to more than 10 humanitarian trips to various developing countries, but nothing could prepare me for what my eyes and heart had to take in.

It started to rain. The heavens grieved and moaned, shaking its bottled melancholy out of its clouds, as if it were a strange foreboding of what was to come. There were tall buildings and working streetlamps and nice cars and boisterous crowds and colourful markets, and then suddenly, a bridge-a bridge over troubled waters and then a long, grim line of black and grey houses fashioned from wooden boards, rusty mattress rings and plastic. A gigantic rubbish truck stationed itself at the end of the long road where a group of children prowled around to raid the loot from the putrid present.

Tondo. We’re here.

As soon as we tumbled out, it was as if the skies could no longer hide its grief, and raindrops fell like shiny, pin-like guillotines onto the ground below.

“Come, Wai Jia. Stay close,” he said. A Filipino and another Singaporean photographer whom Mio had connected up with online came too. Each had a heart to help the people of Tondo through telling the hidden, untold stories of this public atrocity.

Through his photographic endeavours, Mio has raised funds for the poor, brought hope to the needy and also caught the eye of famous people in the likes of the President of the Philippines. He has formed ties and bonds with the poor, and helped many. This time, he was on another photographic adventure, and hoped that by bringing me to see this world through my own eyes, God, too, would be able to use me to help.

The rain only got heavier. Our clothes stuck to us like clingy orphans to loving arms. We waited under a zinc roof, but the rain showed no signs of abating.

“Are we still going?” I asked Mio.

” Of course,” he said gently. “This is nothing, the last time I came, there was a thunderstorm. No problem, God is with us… let’s go.”

And off we went again. Suddenly, the long empty road ended and the stark landscape before us gripped me like a strangulating vice.

“Oh, Mio,” I said. But he was walking ahead already. I remembered what he had told me before-Living in the midst of montrosity as a child had made him immune to any kind of tragedy and given him an eye to convey the deepest of emotions through his photography.

Towering piles of rubbish, heaped like grand mountains, loomed over us like an evil fortress. Billows of white, acrid smoke in the distance came to greet us. I shuddered, half out of the cold and half, in seeing children in various states of undress hiking up the mountainous terrain of trash in the pouring rain, taking the chance to bathe or play.

My eyes trailed the horizon, searching for some glimmer of colour or hope. But all there was, was tragic, bleak black-browness and a rancid odour. The ground was carpeted with black, soggy trash, compacted by a million barefooted footsteps bearing the weight of heavy charcoal and bags of trash. Used plastic bags, old sacks, thrown-away slippers, broken wooden planks and filthy food wrappers tiled the ground. Piles of broken wooden planks, rusty bicycles, bags of empty bottles and old toys and stacks of worn tyres flanked the path. Everything was either old or used or worn or broken or faded. There was debris everywhere.

It reminded me of the time I went to Sichuan on a medical relief trip after the earthquake- there, was death and destruction. Now, before my eyes lay a similar picture, except that this place was full of life, full of the sense of people building and working and trying to eke a meagre living out of whatever they could.

We had no umbrella, only broken hearts, and so trudged through the terrain, fraught with the danger of rusty nails, sharp wood and uneven ground. It was cold, and heaven’s tears soaked our grief-stained clothes.

Brown houses and grey slates flanked the muddy paths, dented with tyre teeth and filled with puddles of water. As we trudged through the mud, sometimes almost slipping, clouds of smoke billowed up like white pillows in the distance. The smell of soot and the sight of piled charcoal, overwhelmed us, even in the rain. Children streamed out like snails on a rainy day catching a breath of fresh air. Our feet and slippers sloshed through the murky water, sometimes getting stuck in the mud.

Little kids, covered with soot, dotted the black landscape, hiding behind the veil of angry, choking smoke because that was their parents’ livelihood- picking trash and making charcoal from burning wooden planks.

This, is Smokey Mountain.

A naked child ran barefoot in the rain, up the steep trash hill, and squatted down promptly to defacate. Then I realised, that the children were everywhere, enjoying this God-given relief of hydration, oblivious to the plight of their own states. Thousands of homes were embedded in this dumpsite, homes which contained mothers and fathers and teens and young children. A little girl runs with abandon across the muddy ground barefoot, over the dangerous trash, smashes open a plastic bag which explodes with a white potpourri of snow and gleefully starts to play in the muddy puddles. Her little friend skips over, skewers a plastic cup with a sharp stick to make into a funnel and joins in the fun. It is dessicated coconut, and she kneads it like dough, moulds it like plasticine, and when it is finally all brown and squeezed out of life, she and her little naked friends use them like water bombs to throw at their bullies in glee.

“Oh, Mio,” I say, but he has walked ahead. This is not new to him.

It was raining heavily, but life went on. Just like how even though there was trash everywhere, even though there was choking smoke everywhere, even though life was picking a huge bag of trash and earning less than a dollar a day, life went on.

Life went on.

I stood in my tracks, overwhelmed by it all. I had seen poor people live before- but nothing came close to this. This was a dumpsite, and everything, from the homes they lived in to the toys they played with to tools they used… were made of trash. Houseflies buzzed around in swarms.

There was trash, trash all around. And perhaps, the taxi drivers who were afraid to drive us there didn’t want to because they saw the people as such too.

Said our Filipino friend, “It is very common for taxi drivers to refuse going to Tondo. They think the people are bad.”

That night, I left heavy-hearted. I saw the stark reality of poverty and captivity, trapping the people in a vicious cycle. I saw the children rolling on top of bags of trash, pretending they were beanbags; I saw the children working amidst the coal, breathing in noxious fumes and getting covered in soot; I saw the people living in cramped, dirty, spartan living conditions. I saw trash, trash and more trash.

Today was a hard day. Even though I had left the place, my heart was broken and any talk of the place and the children only soured my nose. I have been on more than 10 mission trips to various developing nations, but none has been more heartbreaking than this.

And then I knew, that God had called me there for a reason. There was a reason why I saw a rainbow after meeting Mio for the first time. There is a reason why I did not grow up in poverty, amidst the smell of burning coal and putrfying trash. There is a reason why we have the privilege of living the way we do.

“Pray for us,” said Pastor Nixon, the young Filipino man who started a ministry to help the poor. “I was a Smokey Mountain boy before, living in these sort of conditions. The people here have no hope. They are trapped. I set up Malaya Kids Ministries because I want them to know they have a hope. They can be set free. Malaya in Filipino language means Freedom. All is not lost. Look at me now.”

All is not lost. Freedom awaits.

Melaya means Freedom. The sun will shine someday.

“If God therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”
-John 8:36

“For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
-2 Corinthians 3:17