Life isn't fair
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Ina woke me before the sun rose
and I got up slowly, hoping that my brothers had
brought back food after I'd gone
to bed last night. No such luck. My last meal had been
breakfast yesterday and I was
starving. But the one I pitied most was Ina. She had to look
after seven hungry, working
children and Ama had died three years ago. I know she
missed him, but she had to
forget or suffer the consequences.
Ina often left us after dinner
and came back in the mornings crying, but holding 50 Pesos
in her hands. I didn't dare ask
how she got the money, I had heard too many horrible
stories about women so desperate
and how they became rich in the night.
“Jaina! You're late!” Triani, my
older sister by five years, called from our dusty front yard.
“Coming!” I called and ran
outside to join her. Triani was lovely, but incredibly impatient. I
knew she was hungry, tired and
pulled down by many worries, but sometimes she still
annoyed me. I didn't act like
that and I was feeling the same way. “Life isn't fair”
I thought miserably as we walked
towards the fields outside our town. “Life just isn't fair”
This harvest I'd been assigned
to the rice fields and I was glad to get out of the cramped
confines of the packaging hut
filled with so many children that we were practically sitting
on top of each other. It was
hard work and bad for the eyes. The fields at least offered
sunlight, even though it was
physically hard.
Every morning, about an hour
after the sun rose, I would stop work for a few minutes and
watch the richer children go to
the small schoolhouse on the outskirts of our town. The
children mainly came from
parents who worked in shops or were taxi drivers in Manila.
Since I could remember, I'd
always wanted to go to school, always wanted to live the
lives of those children. I
wanted to have fun, to not work, to be able to read and write, to
be able to not worry about not
having enough to eat. I wanted to be free of all my
worries.
But with a sinking heart, I realised that I never could be.
Ilona Clayton, DSKL (Kl. 8), 1/2012