"Are we lost?" I asked Cliff.
"Wandering, not lost."
I wasn't concern. That was a vacation and we were in no hurry. I enjoyed those aimless walk, with my fingers locked with his, weaving into cityscape with high rise buildings or suddenly finding ourselves in a slum area. I like to be seen with Cliff and how he held my hand in public, as if to make it known to the strangers in a strange city that I belonged to him.
"... and of course, so that your hands are too occupied to do something else." Like lighting a cigarette.
"Does it bother you?"
"No... or maybe a little bit. But I am not asking you to stop."
He leaned down to kiss me, as an assurance that he accepted me just the way I was. I dabbed my lips with my sleeve. "Wet," I explained with a smile.
"Haha, no apologies for that. Your lips are cracking, I am just doing you a favour. Drink more water. Otherwise I would have to moisturize them again..." He said with a cheeky grin.
Indeed, we got lost. Apparently the network connection was choppy, might as well rely on common sense rather than follow a GPS guide that was accurate to 20 metres two minutes ago. Cliff consulted the GPS on his phone again, when a boy approached us with a basket in his hand.
"Mabuhay, sir, ma'am," he asked courteously "would you like to buy some cupcakes?" He was in a shabby t-shirt, most likely a hand-me-down, unkempt hair and dirty face.
"No thanks," I smiled politely at the boy, at the same time pulled my backpack a little closer to me, and tugging Cliff away.
Cliff wasn't budging. "Hang on, babe."
"What's your name boy?" Cliff asked.
"Roon. I am 13 years old," he answered.
"Oh, how come you are not at school?" Roon diverted his eyes and thus diverted the question.
"How much are these cupcakes?" Cliff tried a different approach. Ah, come one, Cliff. This is Manila, he could be part of a syndicate.
Roon answered "50 peso for 3 pieces, sir. Or you can pay me with 1USD. My mom made them, please buy some, sir."
I had to interrupt them and pulled Cliff aside "Seriously? What are you going to do with those? I am not even confident that you can put that in your mouth and won't get diarrhoea tomorrow."
"Simple. Motivate him, he will try harder to make a clean living. Demotivate him, he might think that stealing at the streets is an easier way to find money. What is your choice?"
"How do you even know if he is legit?"
Cliff thought for a while and grinned, "There is only one way to find out, isn't it?"
"Roon," Cliff addressed Roon again "Take me to your home and I will buy all the cupcakes here. This is like... say, about 5 USD?"
"Sir? You want to come to my home??" Roon was genuinely surprised, but agreed to lead us to it.
As we navigated the slum areas heading nearer to Roon's house, I clutched Cliff's arm tight. I will never come to such place alone, not that I think any less of the residents, but I feared for my own safety. We crossed some wooden foot bridges that creaked loudly and held by rusty nails, passed many other squatters houses closely situated from one another, where the occupants can pass a bottle of soy sauce to another house via the windows. Many stared curiously at these foreigners.
Roon reached home and spoke with his mother in Tagalog. His mother was visibly surprised and embarrassed that their shabby place had to be opened to visitors. However, the Philippines were really down to earth and friendly. There was nothing much in the house, a living room cum dining area with a simple wired lamp and table fan, no tables apart from some boxes, no chairs. The other section should be a small kitchen and a bedroom. Toilet? You take a dump and everything goes directly down into the water.
Roon's mother ushered us to sit down.
"Okay... now what?" Awkward, I whispered to Cliff.
"Just enjoy the journey, baby," he whispered back.
Roon introduced another two younger sisters to us, both dressed in oversized t-shirts, torn and patched. The kids sat across us expectantly, with smiles on their faces. "Hello..." I smiled.
Suddenly Cliff thought of something "Faye, I'm going out to get these kids some proper food. Wait for me here?" And he left.
Roon began to entertain his only guest. Out of somewhere he showed me his toys, a set of 5 plastic colored rings and attempted to perform a magic trick, by linking and unlinking the rings. Of course, I could see the slit at the cheap toy, but I thought he performed quite well. He passed the rings to me and indicated that I try.
I gave it a few attempts with much blunder, to which, Roon's sisters were laughing heartily. We were connected not by words or communications, but by smiles, body languages and laughter. Roon's sister spoke to me in Tagalog, with much child-like simplicity assuming that their new friend totally understood them. They need education, I thought sadly, they cannot stay in the house day in day out and live their lives like these... but they seemed to be pretty happy.
I returned the rings to Roon. To my surprise, he took two from my hand and as for the other three, he wrapped my fingers over them. He said "For you."
I looked at that dirty face of the little guy, trying to hold back tears. He didn't have a lot of possessions, but he wanted to give me his toy? How many cupcakes he had to sell for him to obtain that toy?
True richness is not how much you have in your pocket, but how much you are willing to take out from your pocket for others. I linked the plastic rings to my backpack, indeed they are worthless toys, but they carried a priceless lesson.
So we returned to the hotel room late and tired. I showered first and quickly dried my hair. We had such an extraordinary day. The other gnawing thought casually popped up in my head and I pushed it aside, like I wanted it but I wasn't ready. When Cliff was in the shower, I hurriedly tucked myself in bed and pulled the blanket over my head. I shall pretend to be asleep when he stepped out of the shower.
Cliff bid me goodnight and went to the other bed.