July 2017
On one of my many visits to Bacolod, JRC took me down to the moribund Bacolod Baywalk Recreational Park. Unlike the fabulously successful Riverwalk in Iloilo [see: Iloilo Riverwalk] just across the Tañon Strait on Panay Island, the Baywalk in Bacolod was absolutely empty and forlorn. A case of "build it and they will NOT come", perhaps one day it will be re-discovered as Bacolod creeps slowly toward the sea with its endlessly sprouting apartment towers. I was disappointed, but insisted on finding something interesting on that little side trip. I walked to the end of the promenade and noticed a bit of natural coastline. I went to inspect it.
I was greeted with a small inlet filled with garbage. It was low-tide and looked even worse than usual. Built on stilts over the sometimes present, sometimes not water was a collection of ramshackle homes. This was the "other" Bacolod. It stunk from both natural and manmade garbage. Kids were playing in the debris. People just looked at me from their bamboo-supported perches likely wondering what I was doing. It was crushingly poor and I still recall feeling how unhealthy it must have been to live there.
As counterpoint to this, the sun was setting over the Tañon Strait. Everything was reduced to black silhouette with a colorful sky painting the sea on the horizon. What was formerly poverty and ugliness became beautiful. These people could see that sunset every day from their homes - a view worth millions of Philippines pesos. I enjoyed the spectacle and took a few photos. Before it became too dark I found JRC again who was waiting for me patiently back on the Baywalk. I told him I had taken some nice sunset photos, nothing more. He knew what I had seen - what else could have been said?
Coming face to face with abject poverty head on is never easy. Many people shake their heads and say "someone should do something". Indeed someone should - we are all included in "someone" - something people are remiss in remembering.