By the sea....

After long weeks in manila I get low. When I come back to the province, I feel the luckiest man alive, to have my friends who take me off to their quiet fishing village. The place, where the money is sparse but the smiles are in abundance. They remind me how good life can be and they don’t even realize. Always welcomed with choruses of “Kuya Josh” by children who come and wrap themselves around my legs. Refusing to let go, until I have swung each upside down and left them all a giggling heap on the sandy floor. I am fed and mothered within an inch of my life by all the ladies of the village. They teach me how to cook on small coal burners with children dangling from my neck. We recline in the comfort of the Bamboo hut escaping the heat of the summer. Strumming battered guitars and singing songs until the sun makes nothing but rippling orange light off the water.

When night falls and the tide is slowly easing away from the shore, the boys take me out fishing under the moonlight. We take each fragile step through the mud, the sea brushing my ankles as we fill the night with innocent laughter. The lights of home slowly fade to glowing pinholes. There is nothing but us, the moonlight on the water and all the life under our feet. We walk until we find crabs or water deep enough for fish, the boys laugh as I jump In fear of attack from tiny fish. My inexperience their favorite joke but each in turn patiently show me how its done. After hours of laughter and elbow deep in salty water, I have caught small fish by hand and wrestled with crabs the size of my head. Enough for us to have a large net full of life asking to be eaten. We salivate on the walk back thoughts and coversation filled with cooking the creatures that caused our net to buldge. The lights of home still burned and slowly grew as we got closer.

We sat around the water pump, the laughter never dying as we washed our bounty. Looking upon the smiling faces of the boys who took pride in having me there at the weekend. I felt myself filled with genuine happiness something that i knew would never be the same back home. Thoughts are often plagued by having to come home and all the things i will leave behind. Even Manila beyond the gangs, the rape, the murder, the drugs, the desperation. There is still so much happiness and so much hope. So much good within the people who are constantly told they should be miserable because they are poor and live in danger.

Simple things bring the biggest joys, I may not be changing the world but I AM changing lives and having mine changed a million times over.