In the Slums of Manila

On my third day in Manila I saw a woman weeding her temporary patch of the park along the bay. One wall of her house, a squatter’s plastic-sacking and drift-plywood hovel, consisted of a hand-painted sign. It said, “10-PESO ACROSS THE BORD WAGE INCRESE.”

I was curious, and then electrified. She owned nothing more than her rags and salvaged scraps; and her position there on Roxas Boulevard near downtown was extremely precarious. Yet she had bothered, amid housekeeping ...