They reached the car—a battered old maroon-coloured Toyota. Father Finn went round and opened all the doors quickly, whilst Mann lifted the boot and made some room inside for their bags. The heat was sweltering inside the car.
‘We need to leave it to air for a few minutes. We’ll turn on the air-con once we get going.’
‘You have air-con? I’m impressed,’ said Becky as Mann slammed the boot shut.
‘Ah, well, I might have exaggerated that slightly, no?’ he said with a mischievous smile. ‘We have Filipino air-conditioning in the car. When the windows are down that means the air-con on. When they are up its off so, if you wouldn’t mind…’ He gestured towards the back windows
Becky smiled. ‘Of course.’ She slid into the back seat and set about winding the windows down as fast as she could. Her legs were already sticking to the hot leather.
Mann sat in the front beside Father Finn, who grated the old car into gear and waited for it to stop juddering before pulling erratically on the steering wheel and heading out of the car park. Becky smiled at the armed guards, who grinned back from their sentry boxes at the car-park exit, their rifles resting just inside the entrance.
‘I read a report about the DDS, Father,’ said Mann, his elbow resting out of the open window, his sunglasses on. ‘They seem to be growing from strength to strength. They are still killing anyone the authorities deem to be undesirable. I thought that the world press would have shamed the powers-that-be into stopping them.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it’s the very opposite. They are being praised for their good work. The government is encouraging all other cities to do the same—get rid of the unwanted from their streets. It’s even been suggested that the government are funding them indirectly. How else would they exist?’ Father Finn crossed himself and shook his head in disbelief. His erratic driving seemed to fit in perfectly with everyone else’s. Cars beeped, swerved and braked continuously. ‘The government is holding the city up as a shining example of a caring, crime-free city that loves its children! Something has happened to the Death Squad—they are under new management, I think. They have taken a step up. They are an organised body now. They have a bigger team—not just two men on a motorbike. They now have new cars, black, plateless, of course, and they have been seen carrying the children away.’
They passed an ambulance with no windows. Curtains were flapping, and inside a man sat slumped forward, a blue mask over his nose and mouth. He was facing backwards, towards the road. A nurse held his T-shirt from the seat behind, to stop him collapsing and falling out of the back of the vehicle.
‘Is it true that the younger children are being trafficked? Is that what you think has happened to Wednesday’s daughter?’ asked Becky as she leaned forward between the two front seats. There were no seat belts in the old car.
‘We think so. At the refuge, we have heard many stories from the children whose friends have disappeared. They have seen the black riders appear, kill one or two of the children, then force the others into a car that accompanies the riders. They are selecting the very young girls. I’ll take you to talk to Wednesday. She’ll be happy to see you, Johnny.’
They left the wide streets of six-lane traffic, flanked by long low factory outlet buildings and squatters’ villages that had attached themselves to the factory walls and occupied every gap. The roads became congested as they split and narrowed and wove over and underpasses and they neared the city. Beside the roads litter blew and became snagged on the barbed wire that ran alongside the road. The billboards were old and tattered with flapping grey paper bits peeling away from the images. A woman advertising sanitary towels smiled apologetically out from a big sign.
For Your
Red
Day.
The roads were congested with Jeepneys. Drivers hanging out of the sides all honked at one another. They beeped their horns constantly to communicate with one another, not aggressively, just passing on information:
I am coming out whether you want me to or not. I am a VIP, look at my car. You are an arse.
They had their own language.
‘Things are no better than the last time you came, Johnny. We seem to take ten steps forward and eleven back. There are more children living off the streets than ever before.’
‘How do the children end up on the streets? They must have caring families?’ Becky asked, shouting to be heard above the traffic noise.
‘Poverty is a terrible catalyst for misery. They consider a life on the streets is preferable to being hungry. Sometimes the parents just can’t afford to feed them and the instances of abuse in the home are high here. It’s a mainly Catholic country. The lack of contraception doesn’t help. I have tried to introduce the idea—but it’s not popular. Condoms are still not used much, even in the sex industry girls have to work without them.’
They stopped at some traffic lights and were immediately surrounded by a group of children. Their hair was matted, their skinny arms and legs emaciated. Their little dark bodies were clothed in just a few rags. Large, desperate eyes stared out from dirty scabbed faces, but lit up when they saw the three westerners. The children were especially delighted to see Father Finn. Their tiny black hands reached inside the car like monkeys after nuts, palms outstretched and begging for change. They peered into the back and beamed at Becky. Father Finn rubbed their heads and talked to them in Tagalog as he fished in his pockets for change. Then they smiled and waved farewell as the lights changed and the car drove off. Becky looked out of the back window and watched the small ragged group as they stood at the side of the road, waiting for the lights to change to red again.
‘Surely the death squads are not killing little children like those?’ she asked, as she watched the children scamper out of the way of the moving traffic. She shook her head sadly. ‘Someone in the world would love one of those children, would give them a home. I would,’ she said quietly to herself.
Father Finn turned off the main road and made left and right turns as he headed down towards the river. Becky was still thinking about the children when they turned down one street. At the end of the road there was a rubbish dump. They were heading straight for it. But then she realised that the rubbish dump had doors and walls.
She leaned forward, between Mann and Father Finn, and stared out of the windscreen.
‘What is that?’
‘A Davao housing estate. That is where eighty thousand of the city’s workers live—the waitresses, the shop assistants, the janitors, the labourers, even some teachers and professionals live here.’
‘What do they do for sanitation? Water?’
‘The government provides them with a standpipe for water. Sanitation? That’s easy. They use a bucket and empty it straight into the water below them.’
They parked up.
‘Please do up your windows,’ said the Father, ‘otherwise our seats will be someone’s new three-piece suite when we come back.’
They followed Father Finn as he walked along the mash of cardboard and rusty tin until he found the entrance he was looking for—the alleyway that marked the beginning of the slum town, on the edge of the Davao River. They left the sunny street and walked into darkness and stench as they entered the Barrio Patay, the Place of the Dead.
33
Mann walked behind Becky. He could see that her shoulders were rigid. She kept her eyes straight ahead. They slipped down an alleyway and were immediately plunged into darkness and stench—a stifling world of raw poverty—a living rubbish heap. And yet, children ran past, laughing and playing amidst the putrefaction. A sleeping woman dozed on a platform next to the alleyway. An old man squatted on the ground and washed himself. In the rubbish heap was a normal world.