Dumaguete’s future criminals

I found myself at the fishball and tempura area at the boulevard the other day. It was my first time to actually sit in those small chairs and savor

the seafood (although some would say they’re not really the real thing) dipped in hot sauce.

Ideally, the hot food goes well with beer. But the fishball and tempura area, I discovered, is like heaven, in a sense that they don’t serve beer at all. Tirso, my fishball vendor, didn’t have mineral water either. So, I had to down the spicy food with soda.

I was starting to enjoy myself when I noticed these street kids— about ten of them—going from table to table begging for leftovers. I guess they don’t mean to, but they actually make you feel guilty about having a good time while they look like they haven’t had a decent meal in days.

The worst part is they don’t just pass by your table once. They keep

coming back!

“Where’s your father?” I asked one of them. “Over there, selling cigarets,” the boy said.

“And your mother?” “At home,” he replied. Tirso said that sometimes, the parents of these kids just stay a safe distance from the kids while the kids beg. When they shall have earned a few pesos, the parents would get the money from them and buy themselves some drinks.

“The kids come back complaining that their parents took their money!” Tirso said.

“These kids ought to be taken in by the City,” my companion, an employee of the city government, said. He complained that these kids were being robbed of their study time.

Looking into the not-too-far future, my friend said he would not be surprised if these kids turn out to be tomorrow’s criminals. “If they get used to getting food from people simply by asking for it, someday they’re bound to entertain the idea of taking things by force,” he said.

There was a time when the police would round up these kids at the stroke of 10 every night. But Tirso said that in order to avoid being caught, some children jump into the sea and swim away from the policemen.

“They look like Badjaos, but they’re not. They’re actually from Lo-oc,” he said.

When they’re not begging for food, they're huddled in a corner, sniffing rugby, I was told. The thought of those kids continued to fill my thoughts as I was going home that night. They looked so innocent but I don’t know how much longer they’d remain that way. Was I looking at Dumaguete’s future criminals? I had an uncomfortable feeling that someday, I’d be proven right.*

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