Slums are ugly, obscenely ugly. Very often, you smell it before you even see it. The stink of unwashed bodies and dwellings, open sewers, garbage and human excrement permeate the area. This is the smell of poverty. This is also the smell of apathy and hopelessness among the poor. Nobody wants them. Few are willing to help them, and less than half of these few—saints or fools—dare to dream that the poor has the capacity to change from squalor to dignity.

Slums have been mushrooming in practically all the cities and towns in the Philippines. At the rate the Philippine economy is sliding downhill, the whole country turning into one big slum is not farfetched. Everybody blames the corrupt government; the government blames the imperialistic First World; and this bad habit of looking for scapegoats blinds them to the fact that the solution lies within themselves.

The promise of empowerment and self-determination is not easy to believe or accept., not from where the poor come from.

"Bayanihan"

They say that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies; only permanent interests. So cynical and yet so true, but we could turn this the other way around. Let us believe, as believe we must, that we all have a common permanent interest: the good of our beloved country—the land and its people.