The Vendors of Mendiola

by Erika Denise Dizon

HE DRAGGED his tattered slippers on the soiled and unpaved streets of the province daily to attend his afternoon class some 40 years ago.

He never really liked school.

For five times a week, he cursed at the piercing rays of the twelve o’clock sun that walked with him for adding to the burden. Always the reluctant and lackadaisical student, he rarely opened his workbook at home. At school, he was the perpetual latecomer. It was easy to spot him sleeping in the middle of the lecture, but hard to drill in his head the name of discipline. That was Edgardo.

One day, he stopped attending class. Instead, he opted to help his mother sell clothes at the nearby plaza at the ripe age of 16, not knowing that his decision to forever cease schooling would someday be the foundation of his regrets and toils.

At 55 years old, he is now a sidewalk vendor who sells clay pots at the short stretch of Mendiola Street in Manila.

Edgardo’s story is all too common in the Philippines where, according to the Basic Education Statistics of the Department of Education, in 2009, 7.45 percent of the country’s high school students are dropouts.

Seated behind three brightly colored clay pots on the floor, his worn out cap slightly covered his face as he talked softly but fervently on that cloudy morning. At the age of 17, Edgardo married his childhood sweetheart and had five children. All five of them are already married and three of them did not finish high school.

“They just weren’t fond of studying,” he said boldly, but with a seemingly disappointed expression. “They were all like me when I was a student.”

He sells clay pots at Mendiola Street only on Thursdays because that is the only day the vicinity police allow them to.

“Many people pass by this area during Thursdays because there is mass going on in one of the neighboring churches.” He also sells his clay pots in front of the historical Quiapo church every Friday.

Edgardo admits that his weekly earnings are good enough to sustain him and his wife’s basic and daily needs.

Pisila, 54, is also a sidewalk vendor. She sells pocket-sized prayer booklets in front of San Beda College for the small amount of 20 pesos.

"Sometimes, I get to earn around a hundred pesos at the end of the day when luck favors me."

A hundred bucks would go a long way to the sidewalk vendor, whose conspicuous white hair and wrinkled hands echo her five-decade-worth of trials. A hundred bucks would provide her family at home rice for the whole day, and school allowance for her two grand children whose mother left them under Pisila's care in exchange for greener pastures in Olongapo City. A hundred bucks would provide them hope to endure the two or three to come -- but only when this so-called "luck" is by their side.

One of her two grand children, six-year-old Katrina, skips school every Thrursday to help her grandmother sell the booklets.

"It's okay [to have a difficult life]," Pisila said. "It may be difficult but you don't have a choice. You have to work hard to get by."

Pisila's husband spends time at home on most days of the week while she stays at Mendiola to sell the remaining prayer pamphlets until six in the evening.

Lastly, there is Melchor, a pedicab driver, a jolly old fellow at the age of 39, and a present day Magi, who gives his gift of service to the civilians of Manila.

Census showed that underemployment rates in the country have gone down to 17.9 percent, a 1.9 percent decrease from 2009 stats.

Although he has been a pedicab driver for 15 years now, and earning only about 250 to 300 pesos a day, he has a degree in Electrical Engineering but failed to graduate because of his family's fiscal problems then. Despite all those, Melchor dreams big for his three young children. He hopes that one day, they may finish their schooling in order to attain a better and brighter future.

"No pain, no gain," he said in high spirits