The Five Directions

The Five Directions

By Maxine Laurel

There are 121 reasons why this story isn't for you but this story might just change the way you see things, like how these little rascals from the street change mine. And, although, these kids running around with nothing but their dirty shirts on their backs and threadbare shorts has nothing really to offer at first glance, if we just take a moment of our time and look past their dirt-smeared face, we will realize that, without a doubt, these kids are actually our nation's future. Is it a sad fact? Frankly, it is not. Because everything is not dependent on how one appears before our eyes, or what their living conditions are. Sometimes, we have to peel one's complex layers and see them for what they truly are, who they want to be someday, and what they want their future to become.

My story begins as I sit down, with my laptop right in front of me, my mind travelling back in time to recount the day I met these five boys...

***

One promise I made right after I graduated college was to leave my hometown, Zamboanga City, and to be this independent girl living in a more posh place. But that never happened. I found myself, one day, applying for Med school, thinking about the prestige it would bring to my family once I became a doctor. And also because since at the age of ten there was nothing else I wanted to be when I grow up but to become a doctor. After I graduated from Med school, I started taking my Master's Degree right after I completed my internship.

Every single day, before I reached school, I would pass by an area where street children could be seen sitting on the curb, playing toss coins and sniffing a bag-full of Rugby. Out of precaution, I would clutch my bag tightly and eyed the children in dirty and tattered clothes with vigilance. It turned out, most of the students and the passers-by did the same. This area lined with shops and peddlers, only a half of kilometer away from our City Hall, was a haven for pickpockets and thieves. These people with extremely talented hands could easily blend in with the sea of students rushing past by the long side-walk. He could be the one behind you; she could be the one at your left. It could even be the little boy on your right. You would only find out who they were a tad later when you realized your phone or your wallet was missing. Or if you happened to see a police officer chasing a snatcher-slash-pickpocket-er.

I did witness it once. I saw a policeman dragging a boy of (I presumed) thirteen by his shirt collar. I heard the witnesses saying the boy stole a phone. I immediately checked my bag—thank God my phone's still inside.

I thought that was the last I would be seeing that grubby boy, it turned out I was wrong.

To pass Graduate School, I needed to complete my research. I opted to make a study about orphaned and abandoned children and the effect of their situation with their mental health status, since, I might as well admit, the said study was more feasible for me.

The institutionalized home (which was known to everyone simply as the Center) where I would be conducting my study housed sixty children aged seven until seventeen. Some days the number would drop to fifty since children would often escape and go back on living in the streets. And some days it would go as high as seventy.

I had qualms about conducting my one on one interview as I surveyed the children before me. It would be to my greatest shame to admit this, but I would tell it anyway: I allowed myself to judge them the way I saw them that day. I saw them as the children who sniffed Rugby solvents on the streets. I saw them as the children who begged for coins outside the church. I saw them as the children who stole wallets and phones on unsuspecting passers-by. And it turned out, I was right all along. They were those children I had imagined them to be. Well, most of them anyway.