One Meal a Day ~ Difficult Period of Rural Poor People in the Philiphines

@ikmalhariamuna is the most gentle person you will ever meet in life.
This 20-year-old man who is always smiling and steadfast is undergoing a healing process from his severe illness.

Her high blood pressure disease had forced her to not work too long in the sun. Now Ikmal is only able to work sweeping the streets of Mindanao City located in Negos Island, Philippines, every day from 4-7 am.

Mindanau (known by the official name of "Mindanau Negros Occidental") is part of the Metro metropolitan area of ​​Bacolod.
When I met Ikmal for the first time in August last year, he was still running a shop business located in front of his house. Once in a few days, he went shopping for stocks of his merchandise from the local wholesale market.

He told me his life story as a laborer as he guided us around the city streets of Bacolod.

Negros Island is known as a sugar center. The view of the island is colored by a very large sugarcane plantation. In the harvest season, large trucks passing the streets carrying crops to factories.

Land reform or at least the failure of land reform has become a character of life on the outskirts of the island of Mindanao. Extensive land ownership still dominates these out-of-town areas.

In ancient times, thousands if not thousands of peasants worked in these vast fields. Some work as permanent workers although the majority only work temporarily and are known as "Sacadas". However, the glory days have passed.

Local sugarcane can not compete with corn syrup imported from other countries. Cane industry has also reduced its workers. Many of these workers find it difficult to get another job.

Ikmal, his wife Doni and his six children are supporters of Punteuet. They are poor, landless but hardworking. Ikmal also supports the "War on Drugs" initiated by the President of Mindanao.



He started working when he was 15 years old and weeded his land for five years with a simple tool. He still keeps one of these tools in his home as a memento of his hard work for many years as a laborer.

Her father and grandfather work on the same plot which is 60 minutes from town.
His family has been living on the same land for 5 generations without spending any rent.

This pattern of life is part of a complicated and difficult relationship between the workers and their masters in the far end of the Philippines who have similarities with the feudal system.

Nevertheless, Ikmal's children were able to achieve success through their own efforts. Her first daughter, Eminem, was married to Neol, an engineer at a sugar cane plant, and they were blessed with a handsome and handsome boy.

Thanks to @damarth and @lightsplasher