Indeed, death is part of our life, if the only thing everybody if sure is about the dead will wait for us. What Enzo smoked today you could be thinking right now, but I want to talk about a strong relationship between life and death I see today in Manila.
After brunch, I went out to Manila North Cemetery. This cemetery is the biggest in Phillippines and maybe one of the largest in the world. It’s too big that they have an address system base in street and avenues, taxis and cars have free access to the commentary, but to be honest, doesn’t look like a cemetery, check the picture is just like a regular neighbourhood in a country in develop.
When I walk a little more in the graveyard I could identify people selling drinks, flowers, and others until here could be not weird for some people; But later I saw entire families with children in arms “living” in big mausoleums maybe never visited for their relatives. Why perhaps you ask, well living among dead people doesn’t look so bad if your other option is living under a bridge or just on a sidewalk.
They look like very adapted to live here and must to be a lot of people; because they have some basketball fields, and I found evidence that they are running a championship.
In the end, as I said, the cemetery looks like a neighbourhood, so they reuse the soil in their benefit.
Continuing with the sightseeing, I walk a lot due; I didn’t realise how hard it takes a taxi in Manila downtown. I visit the Golden Mosque, to be honest, nothing special, but the Philippines is a Catholic country.
Nevertheless, around the mosque are thousands and thousands of street shop, where you can find anything inside this functional chaos.
At night, I join with other foreigners that are in The Philippines for DrupalCamp Manila 2016. Easily this could be an APAC Drupal Summit because:
- We have an APAC Blue Sky.
- We have people from 10 countries (Japan, Indonesia, India, Norway, the USA, Singapore, Canada, Vietnam, Colombia, and the Philippines)
Walking
| Distance (steps) | |
|---|---|
| Manila (today) | 20.914 |
| Previously | 1.086.601 |
| Total | 1.107.515 |