Santiago Gonzaga Jr., 56 years old, hails from Malapascua Island. He was born with a physical disability that made him lame since childhood. He built a house at Ponce 1 with his wife Flora Virgil, 60 years old, from Asturias whom he met when she visited her sister in Cebu City. Santiago found his way to the Chinese cemetery, where he has an aunt watching over a mausoleum. Unfortunately, they have no other place to live, and they are left with no choice but to live in the cemetery.
Living in the cemetery is a high-risk situation, but Santiago and Flora have nowhere else to go. Every day, they walk in the morning and afternoon to sell bottled water and cans they collect from garbage just to buy rice. Sometimes they earn 60 or 80 pesos. Santiago cannot work due to his disability, making it challenging for them to survive.
Their life is challenging. They wake up at 4 am, boil water for coffee, and prepare porridge in the morning for breakfast. They only have coffee if they cannot afford to buy food. They boil water at dawn and buy a biscuit, which is often all they eat. They pray to God every night to help them find food.
Flora pushes Santiago’s wheelchair to look for garbage. They pick up valuables such as bottles and plastic bottles from the garbage. If a garbage truck passes by and picks up everything, they have nothing to collect, so they go back home. They go to Manduae, the pier area, or anywhere they can find garbage. Santiago crawls to pick up garbage.
Flora also helps put plastic garbage in sacks whenever she sees it scattered on the ground. She ties the sack, and Santiago puts it on his lap, and they go home to sell it. They’re happy when they can sell enough to buy food for the day. There have been times when they had nothing to eat for two days, but they never give up and hope that someone will help them.
Santiago is very grateful to Flora for choosing him despite his condition and joblessness. Santiago lost his parents when he was young; his mother died of tetanus, and his father got high fever. Flora has no regrets and lives for her husband. They have no parents, and they believe that God brought them together to live together.
Flora is able-bodied, capable, while Santiago is handicapped. The strength to commit to Santiago under such harsh circumstances reveals a character that should make many of us envious. Flora is also dealing with her health issues, such as high blood pressure and a lack of nutrition due to their diet of cheap packaged foods high in sodium.
Whenever it rains, their place floods, and they have to move all the garbage and find shelter from the rain. They sleep on torn tarpaulin without roof and walls.
One remarkable thing we discovered while visiting the cemetery is a small functioning village situated on top of the apartment-style graves. It’s a phenomenon only seen in the Philippines, where cemetery slums have existed since the 1950s, and generations of families now live in many cemeteries around the country.
There is an entire village built on top of the graves of the long-deceased. Their tombs have been raided by desperate thieves and left empty and desecrated. Above their final resting place, an entire human ecosystem thrives, complete with shops, restaurants, and families living like bees in a honeycomb, desperate for a cheap dwelling. Despite their morbid surroundings, these occupants somehow ignore them and continue to live their lives. Children are shuffled off to school, laundry is cleaned and hung to dry, meals are prepared, and life goes on. Such is the human condition for survival.
While we climb out of bed every morning, Santiago and Flora climb out of a mausoleum, and then the hard part begins.
Their beautiful and inspiring story is one of never leaving each other, even in pain. The We Hear You team have seen their hard work that’s why we chose to help them. We gave them something for their daily needs. We also went shopping and purchased some much-needed supplies for a memorable Christmas.
We came to this cemetery to document the people living here, but after meeting Santiago and Flora, we were so inspired that we felt compelled to get them into a proper dwelling. So, just a few days before Christmas, we rented them a modest house, and the results were absolutely heartwarming.
From being grave dwellers for more than 15 years, Santiago and Flora now have a place they can call home. Their hard work was not left unnoticed. The We Hear You team threw a small get-together for Santiago, Flora, and their new neighbors.
No longer required to sleep in the oven exposed to the elements, the thieves, and the packs of ravenous dogs, the feeling of a newlywed couple creeps into the air like a welcome song.
A few weeks later, the We Hear You team visited Flora and Santiago in their new home. They no longer get rained or swept away by the floods. This is a one-of-a-kind love story, and to help preserve it is a very proud moment for us at We Hear You.