All Souls Day

The first of November is all souls day, it is a Filipino tradition to go and spend this day with there family who are no longer on he earth. I had been invited by Juniors family to go with them, back to the grave i had carefully painted and made presentable a few days before. I accepted the cemetery had intrigued me, ironically it had been full of so much life and carried so many stories. Also this was an honour, making me feel even more like i had been brought into the family. It was the hottest day i had felt in a long time, and i struggled as we walked up the hill to catch a jeep. I went with the first wave of Tejol's, this would be the first of many, they are a catholic family after all. I went with Juniors brother, his cousin and there mothers. It was the same trip only this time the streets of the small town we jumped off to were heaving with people. The walked carrying bags, umbrellas, tents and blankets, it felt more like i was on my way to a festival, but then in a way i guess i was.

We walked down the same familiar road, still lined with the women and children selling their candles, this time joined by more selling flowers. Surrounded by families all walking with the same purpose, we reached the basketball court that before had seemed so vast and empty this time full of stalls selling food and drink. Stalls filled with cheap plastic toys to keep the children entertained, the air full of the smells of a hundred different foods. We reached the cemetery that days before had seemed so solemn and peaceful, was now full of laughter and music. There were not hundreds of families all come to weep and mourn, they had come to celebrate to commemorate the hundreds of lives lost. The passageways that had seemed vast and lonely, were now full of people crouched on the floor, some now two narrow to walk down with out stepping on people. Vendors wandered making business with the hordes, selling single cigarettes, sweets and ice cream. We found ourselves at the Tejol camp, the family already setting up a table of food inches away from other large families here to do the same. No one carried a frown everyone was smiling, we ate and drank as one by one the sons lit the candles for their father. It was the same all over the cemetery i wandered again this time welcomed by what felt like a thousand smiles and curious looks. What was the white guy doing in the poor peoples cemetery? This question was not hostile but curiously excited. As i sat with the family and they joked with a guitar being passed around and songs sung, my eyes wandered to stones that didn't have the same white gleam of the walls i was confined too, they towered higher over the maze i was at the heart of. I set off intrigued and trying to find where they lay, i walked to the far wall. Finding no route to them other than up, i walked back slightly disappointed, not willing to feel the wrath of the caretakers broom. I came back joining the family again, perching on a small stool that might as well of had me sitting on the ground. My eyes were fixed on those old overgrown stones, wanting for no real reason that made sense, too see what they were. By pure coincidence junior then came and asked if i wished to see the old cemetery, suddenly it made sense, and i jumped up a little too eagerly than one should, when visiting a place where people are laid to rest.

The old cemetery didn't have the same neat rows and columns, but piles of stones all precariously built up much higher and not painted a crisp white but wearing the old weathered stone they had been placed with. The passageways were even narrower here some so narrow it would be an impossible task to squeeze through. It was like a lost world, i struggle to find the words to describe it. It was a maze more complex then the newer cemetery. You could easily get lost for days within its crumbling walls. We passed empty mausoleums cramped and some which looked very much abandoned and forgotten, all surrounded by the towers that seemed to stretch for miles towards the skies, the bodies all piled on top of each other.

We went back to the safety of the new cemetery, where we sat around talking until the sun fell deep in the sky, and it began to get dark. We left by the candlelight of hundreds of memorials, we left the party of the souls. When we returned to Payatas the sun was fully set, as we walked back down weary from a long day in the sun. Each house had a candle in the door way i looked on curiously this was soon explained, they were there too keep the bad spirits out of the house. The streets had an eerie flickering orange glow, thousands of candles lined the outside of the houses all down the streets. I walked back to the house saying my goodbyes to the family, guided by the orange glow. I lit a candle and placed it at my door way just in case.