LIVING INTO A GRAVEYARD

March 29, 2011 – Still today, at the 21st. Century, strange situations, even macabre go on existing which see livings and deads sharing the same home. And so, in Manila, capital of the Philippines, graveyards are haunted by strange sub-tenants. They are not vampire or succubus. In the South, entire families, without any resources and without any possibility for lodging, desert the slum areas for living into the graveyards of the capital.

Depending on the number of their members, these families are lodging into funeral chapels or burial chambers with more or less of surface. You find entire families with children and babies who have only less than 1 dollar per day. They collect all waste things and food, all objects they can find into the trash cans and system the chapels and burial chambers into what they try to change into a sweet home: they cook, they made love and children... into the tombs... and at the end of the day, they come back to the graveyards after having practising mendicy, waste collect, prostitution... for surviving.

The most lucky ones get some cents from the rich families owers of the tombs in return of their care. But for the others, those who are living into forgotten ones, it is misery and hunger, even starvation. The old widows, alone, live in the smallest tombs waiting for rejoining their tenants, the deads. These people who live into graveyards are exhausted and far and away, their shadows seem more and more to roving zombies.

Evertheless, they try to keep their dignity at the daily light in Manila searching for money in the streets and food in the trash cans of the restaurants while foreign turists for their part are wandering in an idle way asking for some amusement.