How fortunate I really Am

I have been travelling to the Philippines on business and pleasure since 1977 and always stayed in Makati in 5 star hotels. I had a preconceived opinion and perpective of the FIlipino people. Smiling kind but not too worldly or ambitious. Always ready to say Yes even if they did not understand you.
Now in 2008 I came to stay with a family - my own family having grown up and having been divorced for many years on my own armed only with a small pension very different from the opulence of yesteryear.
I was met by Victoria and two for her daughters and taken in a pickup truck to the small apartment they were living in. As is the custom in the Philippines I was immediately offered food and drink. I was expecting to stay a couple of months. Victoria worked in local education and had done so for over 25 years. She had 5 children (well young adults) put them through college on her own ( I never enquired the reason though I understood that her husband was unwilling to work and was abusive). The apartment had two rooms and a living area with a toilet and a shower that they had specially bought for my stay. It was next to the railway tracks but considered a safe area. The next day Vicky asked me if I wanted to "do the tourist bit"or go with her to assist her in her charitable work. I chose the latter and my journey the change began. We took a tricycle (a bicycle with a sidecar not a motorised version) to the local train station and went to the pick up point. We crowded into a 7 seater van and drove for an hour through streets with shanty town like structures and children running around. Vicky explained that the area had been reclaimed from a garbagedump (Payatas) and that we were going to the feeding station of her family charity. Here every day morning noon and night 50+ children are fed and taught basic education. As I walked in I was greeted with stares and smiles. The food was very basic rice and vegetables but it was the only food these children would have, their families living in the converted dump. Vicky and her family have very little in the way of wordly possessions, With this she pays her rent and feeds her family. After the falseness of the previous visits I had made to Manila it was eye-opening to see people who have very little themselves give so much to those who have even less. I came away that day a changed person. And my opinion of the true spirit of the Filipina in the personae of Vicky and Family was completely revised and I felt better for it.