DIGGING DREAMS

The Story of Young Miners in Dap-Dap, Rapu-Rapu, Albay

An investigative feature on the heavily normalized child labor cases among marginalized sectors in far-flung rural places in Albay.

Dreamy sepia lenses, overflowing laughter in our senses, and growing fonder in our housesthat is how we often remember our childhood years. An age where we learn the young concepts of love that are often associated with happy feelings, fulfillment of filial duties, and the daily practice of social justice.

In a contemporary era of abominable cynical concepts of love, how can one truly find it when one only sees the suffering of inherited poverty? When the daily practice of love and filial duty is digging through the harsh punishment of reality - to work at an early age searching for hope as murky and dark as the mine’s cave underneath an abandoned little child’s dreams grave.

In a little mining community of Dap-Dap in the coastal municipality of Rapu-Rapu, mines have borne the grave of hundreds if not thousands of children whose dreams have died because of extreme poverty. This community had heard many children dreaming of clashing away from the inherited fate of being a miner.