The sun is just peeping out of the Ilong-ilong mountain range in the east. It
is quite early in the morning in Nasipit. We are at the seaside, across the
waters from the bangus fishcages that dot the bay. Many Filipinos depend on the
sea for a living. At a distance, we can barely make out the fishcage caretakers
throwing fishfood unto the waters as the bangus fish splash aggressively, many
jumping up in the air, for their share of the feeds. A couple of small barotos
are out in the waters. The sea is calm and the sky is blue this Sunday morning.
Walking on the road by the bay is this young girl, about 5 years old. She
appears tanned by the seaside sun. She has smudges at the angle of her lips.
This early, she is already hawking shellfish gathered from the beach at dawn
when the tide was low. She has this small basin half-filled with seashells that
would make a good tinola sabaw. She peddles it for five pesos. After paying
her, she walked home. Our eyes follow her until we can not see her anymore
beyond the curve, half a kilometer away.
In other so-called developed countries, the girl's parents would have been in
big trouble for child labor. Exploitation of children. Unfair child labor
practice. But, is it? Even as we ourselves just bought her shellfish to help
her plight, were we in the so-called advanced countries we might have also been
implicated.
The waters are now stirring with more barotos, some with outriggers, others
without. Looking closer, we see many small boys, bare-skinned except for
tattered short pants, paddling, talking and laughing loudly, transporting the
newly delivered bags of fishfeed towards the fishcages. Omigosh ! More children
doing the chores of helping their parents tending the fish. Child labor. Child
exploitation. But, in the context of barangay Talisay in Nasipit in the
Philippines, is it?
The first world would shudder at the sight and call it abhorrent, but the
simple folks by Nasipit bay would never understand why. For the same reason,
the people of Mountain Province do not understand why it is illegal to eat
dogmeat when their ancestors consider it a delicacy.
It is easy for us to see why those endorsing the so-called values of the west
on the poor people in other parts of the world may have to re-think their own
values. But, will they?
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