"can't help falling in love" - by jamaican version

I was born in the ghettos of Tondo, a squatter-built community in the heart of Metro-Manila, the largest city in the PHILIPPINES--a true marvel of nature, an archipelago comprised literally of over 7,000 islands. (If you got some time--you can read up what the encarta encyclopedia says about the original Islands, man!).

The youngest of five kids, I was the envy of my siblings. When I asked my parents why they decided to have five kids, they told me it's because they didn't want six. My brothers used to tease me that  I brought the curse of poverty to our family. And for a while there, I really believed them... You see, I was really the sixth--and therefore the unwanted child because the fifth one died in our mother's womb about four months to term and was subsequently aborted. And in those days, D & C procedures most often leave the uterus unable to support another pregnancy. And after five years, my parents gave up trying to have their 5th child. On the seventh month of the seventh year after that little tragedy, I was born. I used to wonder if that had any sort of significance--I used to read of heroes being born on on such and such a month of such and and such a year and always it would sound good. And 'seventh month of the seventh year' couldn't sound any better had the Gods planned it.  

Maybe the day had to be considered in order to determine if indeed, the fates were at work. And I was born on the eight day of the seventh month. My birth certificate listed me as being born at 4:21 AM. So by international dateline time, I was really born on the seventh-day of the seventh-month of the seventh-year. I was to find out much later that I was also born to a  Seventh-Day Adventists family. My father, who was an elder of the church and the moving force for it's re-construction, was a devout and religious man. I knew the extent of his devotion to his God, when he dedicated his first-born, and his second-born sons to be ministers for the church. And so it was that he gave his word, and so it came to pass....

Back then, poverty was the teacher which molded my instinct for survival. Thinking back now, I was raised in a scaled-down, but real-world version of 'DOOM' (the title tells you what future awaits you).  There were those
of us who yearned to escape our surroundings--a constant reminder of our limitations, a black hole which sucked up
the energy and life out of many of my childhood friends. I vividly remember the few times when I dreamt of escaping into another world, and back then it was an extra-terrestrial world, where every one was FREE, and everything was abundant, and accessible to all. No more hunger....

(TO BE CONTINUED)

GOBACK