Long-ass Overdue Post On Orphan Kids and Pong Pagong.
April 21, 2008Two Saturdays ago, our friend Sheena celebrated her birthday at, of all places, The Haven for Children in Alabang. It’s a center that houses boys who have been orphaned or have dealt with various types of abuse, among other things.
She used to work for UNICEF so this should come as no surprise. I mean, every Christmas for the past couple of years or so, we’d get cards from her saying that a donation had been made in our names, to which I would always react with anger and frustration, leading to the said card which I received being torn, the throwing of bottles, the breaking out of a small and manageable fire, and the words "BUT I WANTED A GODDAMNED CD" echoing within a three-block radius.
So Tintin and I met up with some of our friends at the center at around noon and started organizing art materials (a drawing book, crayons, a huge-ass pencil, and a small-ass sharpener) which we would be providing to the 80-plus kids there.
Unfortunately, the huge-ass pencils couldn’t quite fit into the small-ass sharpeners, so we scrambled and forced them suckers in there, and made sure that they were ready for an activity which involved the kids coming up with the best caricature of the celebrant. This, of course, resulted in fucking blisters on our fingers, but it was all worth it, because most of the drawings they made were funny as hell.
The kids were also treated to a lengthy magic show and some contests by a couple of clowns (Literally. I mean, "clown clowns," not in the derogatory "ass clowns" sense.) Most of my friends were mingling with the kids and took part in the games, but I just sat by the sidelines, doodling on one of the unused pads.
The clowns mistakenly referred to Sheena as "Ate Shena," as in "Ate Sienna" from Batibot so I drew Pong Pagong and, sensibly, a Ninja Turtle when we wrote our greetings for her.
