Respect for Life and Human Dignity

by Fr Shay Cullen

Payatas Dump, Quezon City, Philippines [Wikipedia]

Bennie had a thin, hollow face, the picture of malnutrition at 22 years of age. He had never been to school for more than a few months, could not read or write and he was a one-meal man. He ate once a day. He was dressed in shorts and a dirty t-shirt. His flip-flops were worn thin. They were his only possessions. He pushed a small wooden cart along the back streets of Manila picking up discarded plastic bottles, bits of metal that fell off a jeepney or a truck. He was a discarded piece of humanity himself.

On a lucky day in a garbage bin outside the gate of a mansion he found an old computer keyboard. Finds like these were the treasures of his long walk. That was a big day for him and he sold it at the junk shop with the other bits and pieces he picked up. He joined his fellow scavengers and together they cooked what they found in the garbage – a plate of pagpag and a little rice. Pagpag is made from the throwaway leftovers from the plates of diners that end up in a restaurant’s garbage bags in a back alleyway. It is retrieved by the very poor and boiled in a big pot on the side of the road. It makes an excellent meal– for the hungry poor.   

Preparing pagpag

After eating his pagpag Bennie decided he would celebrate. That night he went down an alleyway to buy a small sachet of marijuana from the local re-seller named Joey who was not much better off than him. Bennie just wanted to ease the loneliness of life, the ache in his back and legs, the pain in his feet and to forget for a short while the misery of his daily search for junk and his one meal of cheap pagpag food. There was nothing else in his life.

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