Fish Me Out of Here

For most of my life, I had one consuming dream – to become a lawyer, not because I was considering it a money-making profession but rather because lawyering obsessed me.

“What would you be like when you grow up” was a once-upon-a-kid-time question to which I invariably replied: “I want to be a lawyer.” I want to see justice served, perps sentenced to a life of eternal misery. No, I wasn’t exaggerating.

And Ronnie, Tan-Tan, Nonoy and ten (10) other child sugar workers did not sound exaggerated when they told me the same thing. While I had persistently and repeatedly denied myself of this lawyering opportunity, for lack of time, and those not-sure-yet-what-to-do-with-my-life excuses, these children have set their minds off to this profession as their way out of freeing their families from poverty and other children from working in the fields.

All these years, without ever having set foot on a sugar cane plantation where children are working, without ever having crossed a roller-coaster wood bridge just to be able to transfer to the other side, without ever having stared face-to-face at the hardened little hands of children working in the fields, I was not sure if I could accomplish the difficult journey through the cane fields, to families’ preoccupations, to the heart of child labor in agriculture. To Negros.

My heartbeat increased as my feet touched down the freshly plowed soil ready for cane planting. The sun was at its peak, thickened by the absence of trees along the horizon. Nervous with anticipation, I followed the group of adult workers as they crossed their way inside the fields. A frustrating minute of waiting seemed to take much longer before a somewhat different world opened before my eyes. I squinted past the towering sharp canes ahead of me and saw the murky silhouettes of bare-footed little children crawling, advancing to a clearing, a clearing that went on and on to the very core of the fields. Briefly, nothing could be seen again. Then they emerged into what seemed another dimension where some ten children as young as 10 years old, boys and girls, are engaged in weeding, cultivating, fertilizing and other manual tasks. Except for the wind and the sound of the cane tops/leaves touching, and the hissing noise of cutting/cultivating tools, the place was unnervingly silent, suspended in time.

Abruptly, someone yelled at the children to stop working for a while. Watching the clearing from where I was standing, I saw them coming out one by one heading towards my direction. At that moment, I wasn’t much interested in their numbers but how fragile they all looked with their heads concealed by mere piece of old cloth, tattered shirts showing sun-burned skin all the way up.

Taking all the strength to use their little arms to wipe sweat from their brows, the children approached me looking puzzled. My head started to ache from the strokes of the sun but a stronger thought insisted, adrenaline pushing me. I have to get this right. I must have said it loud, because Ronnie was suddenly speaking to me.

The smallest among the group with hands too wrinkled from cane work, Ronnie who stopped schooling at the age of seven, stood out with lots of funny stories to share. With grime on his face and sunburned skin, he looked adult something than his actual age of 10. Except for some afternoon escapades with fellow child workers, he said he spent most of each day starting from 6:00am-10:00am and 1:00pm-4:00pm weeding and cultivating the cane fields for a meager income of averaging 50-100 a day. Lunch is spent with friends swimming in the nearby river, trawling and feasting on grilled JANITOR FISH. Everyday, three meals a day or whenever they want, families and children in the area indulge on janitor fish as source of energy they most needed for each day’s work in the field. Ronnie fishes well, Tan-Tan said. Indeed, Ronnie’s cane-wrinkled hand became so severe with added rough blisters of janitor fishes’ scorched skin.

I was silent for a minute, trying to take in the unusual news. My instinct wanted to tell Ronnie it’s disgusting, to ask for a more detailed explanation, fiercely repressed it, ignoring, acting as if it’s no big deal, glancing around hoping that others felt how shocked I was feeling. They were all smiling at me, almost laughing actually. As it was nearly lunch time, Ronnie suggested they bring me to the river and watch them swim, trawl in the muddy water and eat the fish.

Now, heart pounding, we went to the river about five (5) minutes away from the fields. Along the way, I was drawn to the acrid smell of sun-dried janitor fish beautifully arranged in kawayan stalls. When we got there, the children immediately jumped right into the water and using a recycled fish net, caught more than 20 in a minute time. I had never seen anything gigantic like that! Before I could recover, Ronnie was already holding a big one close to me. Tightening my grip on the camera, I raced in greater frenzy taking pictures of Ronnie, Tan-Tan and others with the still wiggling fish tucked into their little mouths.

As I watched the kids enjoying the performance, my mind seemed floating while worries spread slowly through my body. With subdued bitterness, Tan-Tan, who started working as early as 13 years old (now 17), said if only they could afford to buy rice, then, they don’t have to eat janitor fish all the time. He said they’ve been eating the fish for so long and no one was reported poisoned or anything. When one gets sick or injured, which commonly are colds, cough, headache caused by too much sun exposure and back pain from lengthy sitting or standing, they depend on water and sometimes a little dosage of aspirin for healing.

I studied Tan-Tan, deciding what further questions to ask when I felt Ely sat beside me. Still looking feverish, never once did he take his eyes off the other kids’ performance. Even though he seemed worried about what the future holds for them, he seemed at peace. Born with a weak heart, Ely started working at age 12 (now 14) weeding in the cane fields and stopped schooling at age 7. With no road built through the fields to allow a vehicle to cross, and the school much further away, an hour walk at most, Ely has been thinking about losing grip of his heart a lot. You bet, with the possible heart attack from God-knows when. With strained voice, Ely insisted that after almost 2 years of working, after surviving this long, cane work helped him recover his ailment.

Strange, as beat up as they looked, these kids who had never known what comfort was, or how little they had experienced of the world beyond this cane community, they never stopped smiling or laughing. They were so eager to get out of the cane work that they attacked the job with relentless fury. Their impatience filled them with greater anticipation of the money they’d been guaranteed and when they have earned enough, they don’t have to work and hopefully they can go back to school again. Nothing discouraged their desires to help the family, not the heat of the sun, not the insect bites, the acrid smell of fertilizer, certainly not the pain on their backs.

Ely is thinking that somewhere, there’s someone who knows about this sort of thing and whom he knows he can ask for help. Someone he and the other kids can trust.

He is right. Maybe trust is another part of what it takes to be human. They certainly trusted me back there at the farm. I was very convincing.

But I was feeling hopeless inside. Every time I look at the kids, it seems to me that they were all holding a sign saying help me/us. And here too, they were asking for food, a non-hazardous work or whatever or sometimes holding signs announcing their other needs. I might have given them books, a little grocery items and some old clothes, I still felt dejected that I would have given them more, just to heighten their spirits.

“Ate Anna, when are you coming back”, I heard Ronnie asked, holding my arm. To hear him call my name imploring shocked me as if he touched an exposed electrical wire sending waves to the very core of my soul.

Still grasping my arm, Ronnie asked if I could take him with me. I didn’t know what to say to him. I lowered my gaze and shook my head. We sat in silence for quite a while. Time to do some role-playing, a tough one, I told them. Playing the role of a genie and a fairy godmother, the kids started to make wishes.

Tan-Tan asked for working gloves, a plastic type, which he jokingly said would also be useful against the fiery scales of janitor fish. Ronnie said if I couldn’t bring him with me, then I must give him a cap, a raincoat and a pair of gloves too. Ely timidly asked groceries for his mother, while the rest of the kids wanted slippers. I had expected something extravagant like maybe new shoes, clothes, a house and lot which they could call their own, probably a trip to Disneyland or a food trip to McDonalds or Jolibee. But the kids had just wanted simple things in life. Sure, Ronnie said he’ll be lawyer someday with lots of money and who knows he could afford a hacienda. The children listened intently to all the enthusiastic young Ronnie had to say. An “achiever”, that’s what the other kids call him. Tan-Tan, on the other hand, not altogether certain what to do, has resigned to enhancing his arm-twisting skills in preparation for his law enforcement dream, so he said. And more kids discussing in detail how they saw their future.

The kids were having so much time enjoying the moment with me that we lost track of the passing time, until we heard footsteps approaching. The overseer declared the long break over. Unenthusiastically, the kids started to pick their things and marched back to their underground nests. Not in time, however.

As I watched them leave, the children kept waving at me, telling me to come back again. You bet I will, I responded screaming. I could hardly see them now. Their little voices seemed coming from far far away. I kept repeating myself, I swear I would return again soon.

FST, 25 years old, trying to revolutionize the system