Reporting from Malabon, Philippines — The boy knelt gracefully atop a floating wooden door like a surfer poised to catch a wave. But this was no blue ocean.
He was paddling the putrid waters of the Malabon River, which stream through the dank factory lands and heartbroken shanty towns of metropolitan Manila like the discharge from an infected wound.
Shirtless, his hands thrusting into the sickish brown ooze, the boy eased past a gnawed ear of corn, a red high heel, a blackened banana peel and a bobbing onion.
Finally, he reached his destination: a spindly shard of floating wood.
It was approaching eviction day at the place known as the C-4 bridge. The 13 families who have long made their wooden homes in the undergirding of the busy span were packing up their meager belongings, ready to face the inevitable.
Today, demolition crews from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority are scheduled to dismantle what is left of the makeshift bridge community in an effort to help clean the river and move residents to more sanitary housing.
In the days before the forced move, the families pored through the bamboo poles, driftwood and sheet metal they had salvaged over the years from among the flotsam and jetsam that flowed past on the poisoned river highway.
"We're tearing our homes apart, grabbing everything we can," said Rudy Valenzona, 38, hammer in hand, a tattoo of Christ in thorns on his shoulder.
No one here wants to go. For years, these soulless concrete girders and the wooden shacks beneath them have provided a roof and an iota of comfort, protecting the residents from predators, the glaring sun and the pounding tropical rains.
In a nation where half of the 90 million people are poor, this unlikely shelter is not the worst place to call home.
Those less fortunate live along the nearby Tondo garbage dump. Others sleep among the marble gravestones of an old cemetery, some in cardboard boxes. But for now, those homes are safe. Only the bridge people are being moved.
Across Manila, thousands of people populate bridge squatter towns. For years, officials have waged periodic efforts to clear the bridges. But the spans always fill with new residents.
Elena Gordon, a worker in the city's Community and Urban Poor office, said Monday that the city of Malabon, adjacent to Manila, will move the families for free to a vacant plot of land elsewhere in the city, albeit without housing, running water or services. There, they will be allowed to rebuild.
