The Neighborhood

Our family lives in one of the most noisy and polluted commercial disctricts in Quezon City. Oddly enough though a few meters from the nearest commercial establishment, Mercury Drug Store, is ourr quiet neighborhood. Generally silent and peaceful for most of the time except when the jeeps and other forms of public transport passes by or park from time to time. The place may lack the genteel atmosphere of a Forbes Park village or the impossing gates of Greenhills but its a place we call home. Plus you are just a hop and skip from the nearest grocery and the cineplex so living here has its advantages. According to my father, our neighborhood used to be called University Village - hence the name of the streets Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, etc etc. And I recall that for a time we had open canals that actually had fished in them. And most of the residents lived in houses, domestic domiciles. Today, you have buildings, warehouses/houses, apartments and some open slots, most of those open slots are occuppied by shantytowns. At present there are more people square meter than there was five or ten years ago. Shantytowns mushroomed all over the place. One particular shantytown used to be called mani or peanut town. The main business of the populace was the hawking of boiled peanuts. So whenever you pass by that place you would often see people cooking peanuts on the sidewalk. Their cooking fuel would be old wood and their utensils the big steel basins. Sometimes you would also find them cooking corn too. Some shanty towns would be less colorful but inside each is thriving population of students, maids, mechanics, gamblers, drunks, faith healers and all other sorts. A mini society crammed into a a little space. This pockets of community compromise the bigger community of our neighborhood. Yes we are neighbors. All of us living and trying to make ends meet in this neighborhood we call home.