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In 2016, while exploring the popular South-Manila Pasay neighborhood, by chance, I discovered its cemetery; I was immediately swept away by life, stronger than death but coexisting with it. Usually, would we flee from it in our Western culture?
Air circulates better between mausoleums than in surrounding slums. The sun filters in gently. Headstones are clean and safe.
Unrivalled playgrounds, endless labyrinths, children playing there and laughing. Protective dogs rest. Clean laundry dries in the sun. A strange sometimes surrealist sight for European people more accustomed to the silence of cemeteries.
This city cares for its facades, the memory of its dead people; how fortunate to be still united to life!
And the need to live prevails; families organize themselves, with many young children to care for. Indifference or kindness toward me, but a gaze that is always deeply human, worthy, alive.
So many people, no one knows how many they are, perhaps two thousand during the day, at least thirty to forty families living here full-time, out of necessity.
But in the 21st century, for most of them, electricity has been brought in; life is changing, fans, cell phones, a few TV sets.
I went back several times between 2016 and 2026 to be again with those welcoming people, to step once more into this daily life, to observe changes, and to continue this testimony. The simple and rough life still stood close by and above graves.