This is Boracay

Island Children at Work and at Play

2008-01-06T07:28:00.000Z

Everywhere on Boracay, there were children working.

Like this boy who tried to sell us coconut drinks while we were on a snorkling trip.

And up and down the beach, there were children selling snacks, glow toys and knick-knacks or trying to charm tourists in the direction of parental businesses (massage, island-hopping tours, pirated DVDs). Late at night there were children collecting bottles and other recyclables that littered the beach to sell at to a recycler.

A young girl with a broom kept her father's sand sculpture smooth and untrammeled by the passing traffic.

"Please give a donation, my dad built this," she told me, pointing at a date etched in the sand which indicated he had constructed the edifice that very morning.

I noticed during my stay that the sandcastle remained where it was, the date changing daily. The sandcastle was sufficiently magnificent that I didn't mind parting with a few pesos for the privilege of photographing it.

Just a few feet away from the sandcastle, this boy was building his own little version. No question, another future king of the castle.

A boy of about eight years approached me with a handful of glow sticks.

"Buy a glow stick, ma'am?"

"No, thank you."

"For your children?" the boy pointed at my daughter playing with her friend in the sea.

I raised an eyebrow at him. "It's rather sunny, don't you think, to be playing with glow sticks?"

The boy laughed. My logic made sense to him. He performed a perfect Jackie Chan back flip in the sand.

"Wow, you're really good at that," I said appreciatively.

He put the glow sticks down. "Wanna see some more?"

A girl nearby threw down her glow sticks. "I'm much better than him!"

More children joined, each insisting that their acrobatic skills were better than the other's. I sat and oohed and aahed as each in turn performed cartwheels and flips and bridges in the pliant white sand.

The crowd of children grew. They jabbered at each other in what seemed a multitude of languages.

"What language are you speaking?" I asked the first boy.

"Muslim."

"Muslim? That's not a language, is it?"

He laughed and told me the name of his dialect which I didn't manage to record. "Have you lived on the island long?"

"A long time," he nodded.

"How long?"

"My dad brought me here in grade three."

"What grade are you now?"

"Grade four."

At which point all the children clamoured to tell me where they were from - which was everywhere. Provinces up and down the Philippines. They came with their parents, they said. And their parents came to work.

Then, almost as suddenly as they had surrounded me, the children gathered together to play a game - the sort you might find in any schoolyard around the world, except they were sitting on the finest white sand, on the shore of a beautiful island.

They played raucously until the sky began to glow orange at sunset.

The sunset was a signal for one of the bars that line the beach to turn on some disco music full blast. The children leapt to their feet. It was like the scene from Where the Wild Things Are ... let the rumpus begin!They danced and they danced.

Then when the night finally closed in and all the fairy lights had switched on in the coconut trees, they collected their glow sticks from the beach and went back to work.

Boracay After A Storm

2007-12-29T14:43:00.000Z

We should have seen it coming. In fact, we did, but the white sand and the calm sea distracted us from the signs. All day storm clouds glowered over Caticlan but the sky was blue over Boracay.

It stormed all night.

Our little unit at Marzon sprung a leak and when the fury of the rain and thunder and lightning was over, we heard the thump thump of the Marzon handyman on the roof, repairing the corrugated iron roof while the cleaning ladies mopped and cleaned below.

The rain eased off by morning and we set off for a jet-skiing session we'd booked the day before.
On the platforms anchored far out in the water, the crew seemed extra watchful of the flotsam that the storm had churned out.
Branches of trees and the husks of blown-down coconuts provoked a flurry of activity, the men rushing to extract the item from the sea.

They were catching crabs!
In the hour I was on the platform, they caught a dozen crabs. By the end of the day, they are going to have a feast!

Fruits of the storm.

My First Christmas In Boracay

2007-12-26T01:19:00.000Z

It used to be that only intrepid Westerners recognised Boracay's potential as a holiday island.

After all, it had no electricity, the journey was at its worst, arduous and at its easiest, expensive.

But oh the white sand. And the fresh air. And the sunsets.

These kids were playing with some toys they'd made themselves on the beach. They told us these were helicopters. They had never seen a car since there were no cars on the island, but helicopters sometimes visited the island.

The first time I spent Christmas in Boracay, we stayed at the Pearl of the Pacific, in one of a small cluster of huts made of bamboo and nipa, with a large clamshell sink, a bed, and slatted floors. There was no airconditioning and no electric fan, there being no electricity.

Here we are on the beach on Christmas day being observed by curious islanders.

We had barbecued chicken with every meal and went to the Coco Loco Hut for shakes laced with peanuts.
You were pretty much cut off from the rest of the world as there were no telephones, though you could go to a station where someone had a satellite phone.

In the sky, the stars swirled in clouds.

You felt like a pioneer, like you were standing on the very edge, at the very beginning of the rest of this island's life.

And how true that was.