Not mentioned is the fact that people live hand to mouth. You spend your hours looking fish guts, a little swamp cabbage, a small plastic tube of raw rice. Then maybe scrounge some waste wood to cook it. For them human company was the only consolation. Now that is gone.
The Tondo ladies used to make a little money taking in the washing or selling cooked food on the doorstep. The kids would fetch a bucket of water from the man who sold it for a delivery fee. If you had a trade, like a carpenter or plumber you were royalty.
Poor though it was still it was life. They had a saying: "sa Tondo man ay may langit din" which means "even in Tondo you can glimpse heaven". The poor still had each other; something which many in their comparative wealth have unaccountably lost.
