by Sheila S. Coronel

	Everyday, hundreds of hungry and homeless queue for rice porridge at the Quiapo church. [photos by Jose Enrique Soriano]

TO MAKE lugaw or rice porridge for 200, Diding, the volunteer cook at the feeding center of the Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, in the noisy, throbbing heart of the old Manila, begins by heating water in two giant, iron pots, each about three feet deep. When the water is in a roiling boil, she pours in the juice made from one kilo of ginger (the ginger is first peeled, then grated, before being wrapped in cheesecloth and squeezed of its liquid). After that, a handful of salt is thrown in. Only then is the main ingredient added: three-and-a-half kilos each of plain milled rice and malagkit (sticky rice).

For nearly three hours, Diding and her two male assistants hover around the hot stoves, stirring the porridge so that the rice is evenly cooked and doesn't stick to the bottom of the pots. When the grains are soft, several handfuls of kasubha (dried safflower petals, the poor man's version of saffron) are thrown into the pots, followed by a few hundred grams of powdered chicken flavoring. The rice is kept at a boil until it is fluffy. More water is then poured in, the stirring continues, and after a while, the grains are floating enticingly in the thick, yellow soup garnished with saffron threads.

Three times a day, a few minutes before 6 a.m, 12 noon, and 6 p.m., the pots are loaded onto a cart and brought just outside the tall, iron gates that seal off the Plaza Miranda entrance of the church. Promptly at the stroke of the hour, as the pealing of the bells of the grand Quiapo basilica rises above the din of the city's traffic, Diding and her assistants start ladling out the porridge into plastic cups. By then a queue of hungry and homeless people are already lined up. More than 200 people are fed each time, although the numbers can swell to 400 at night. Some wait at the plaza for over an hour. For many, Diding's lugaw will be their first — and last — meal of the day.

The first sip of the porridge, taken on an empty stomach, scalds the tongue, with the warmth slithering down the throat before settling in the belly. The rice grains are fat and tender; cooked for hours in a mix of flavors, they are tasty as well. The chicken flavoring probably has more MSG than real chicken in it, but its saltiness tickles the taste buds. Many queue for a second round, and if there is enough left in the pot, even for a third.

For Christian Alvarez, aged five, who lives on the plaza, near the Mercury drug store, with his parents and two other siblings, the lugaw is a staple. Friendly and frisky, with a mop of peroxided hair, Christian is at the feeding center with his entire family three times a day. Today, after the noon feeding, he will share with his parents and siblings, as well as Mark Anthony Gañedo, a nine-year-old runaway from Bulacan who considers the Alvarezes his adopted family, their only real meal of the day: three cups of rice bought for P5 each and a vegetable dish sold for P10 at the Quiapo market.

Today is a bad day, says Rowena Alvarez, Christian's mother, one of the many herb and potion sellers for which Quiapo is famous. Not many people buy her wares during the Christmas holidays. Her husband Lawrence, who peddles cigarettes and candies, isn't doing brisk business either. So tonight, as in previous nights, Rowena and Lawrence and their three boys will go without supper. They will sleep on milk cartons laid out on the plaza, saved from gnawing hunger by Diding's lugaw.

Lawrence will think of his favorite food — tinola and fried chicken — and try as he might, he will not remember when he tasted them last. Rowena will remember her other children — two who are staying with relatives elsewhere in the city, one who was adopted by a friend, another who was sent to an orphanage, and the girl, then aged two, who suddenly disappeared on the plaza one night six years ago when Lawrence left her for just five minutes to fetch water from Jollibee. She will wonder whether they have eaten tonight and what they will have for breakfast tomorrow.

EVEN BEFORE day breaks, Plaza Miranda is already astir. The herb sellers are setting up their stalls, displaying assorted elixirs, love potions, charms to ward off evil and beguile lovers, and an abortion-inducing concoction euphemistically called pamparegla or period inducer. The candle peddlers are unpacking long, thin candlesticks of different colors, for the Quiapo devotees' every possible need: white for birthdays, red for good health, green for money, peach for studies, orange for career, pink for love, blue for peace of mind.

By 5:45, as the first light of day shines on the plaza and all the poor souls who sleep there, a plump middle-aged City Hall employee carrying a stick starts waking everyone up and shooing them away. The street sweepers are soon unleashed. A new day is beginning and the night-time residents for whom Plaza Miranda is a place to sleep must give way to those who have other uses for it during the day.

Evelyn Tedranes has been at the plaza since 5 a.m. With her husband and nine-month-old son Jonas, she sleeps beneath the eaves of a building fronting the San Sebastian Cathedral, about two kilometers away. By 4 a.m., the guards there drive all the homeless people out of the pavements, in preparation for the daytime commerce that takes place on the street, so Evelyn, with Jonas in one arm and a bag containing all her family's possessions in the other, walks to Quiapo church to wait for the feeding center to open at 6. Her husband follows behind, dragging with him a big plastic bag of recyclable — and saleable — stuff.

The couple has been living on the streets for years, Evelyn, for more than two decades since running away from home in Concepcion, Tarlac at the age of 12. They collect used cans and bottles and sell these to scrap dealers in Divisoria for P30 a kilo. They also act as middlemen, buying the refuse collected by the other homeless people in the area, a business they started with P100 given by someone they had met on the streets. Today they roll over P150 as capital to buy the scrap and then resell these to other merchants. They make about P50 daily, which they use to buy food, coffee, soap (for bathing in public toilets), some clothes, and for Jonas, disposable diapers, as it is difficult to wash and dry nappies if you live on the streets.

When she can afford it, Evelyn buys a sachet of instant coffee for P2, to help her and her husband start the day. They have only one real meal daily — sometimes tinned sardines, tuyo or Dipsy pork crackling — eaten with rice. To stave off hunger, they line up for lugaw at the church three times a day. The day before, all they had apart from lugaw was a cup of rice bought for P5; a plate of pancit (noodles), also costing P5; and soup from dinuguan, which came gratis from the food vendor. The week before, some do-gooders driven by the Christmas spirit had given the homeless families on Evelyn's street a kilo of rice and some eggs each. So supper for them that week was rice and hard-boiled eggs cooked in a can on the sidewalk, with scrap wood collected from a construction site nearby. "Hindi ka matitinga (That's not even enough food to choke on)," Evelyn says, wryly.

For Evelyn, everyday is like camping as she forages for food and scrap in the concrete warren of Quiapo. She shrugs it all off, even the regular anti-vagrancy drives, usually when there is a major event and the city gets itself ready for a public preening. The last time this happened was National Heroes' Day on November 30, when she and other homeless people were forcibly hauled off the streets by the police and kept a couple of days in a building near City Hall. They were fed what looked — and tasted — like pig slops and then released.

Once, Evelyn joined a rally because she was promised payment by the rent-a-crowd entrepreneurs who regularly come to Quiapo to recruit. "I was pregnant then," she recalls "But they gave me P50 and free food. When we were near UN Avenue, I got hit in the ass by a policeman."

She can laugh about it now. "I didn't even know what the rally was about."

The streets harden you, she says, and after a while, you can laugh at anything, including the time she was walking around the city dazed. Her first husband had left her, taking all their children with him. She searched everywhere but could not find them. She says she must have had a nervous breakdown, because after that she found herself at the mental hospital, in a roomful of really crazy people. She spent three months there before she convinced them she was sane and they finally released her.

It is really not so bad on the streets, she says. On December 21, the Quiapo church held a Christmas party, giving away to each of the homeless persons there one kilo of rice, two packets of Lucky Me noodles, and two tins of sardines. They were also fed adobo and pancit. On the 26th, there was another party, this time at the Paco church and they were given soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste and fed chop suey, fried chicken, and more pancit.

There is always the seasonal kindness of strangers who, the rest of the year pay little heed to people like her. "Yagit" is how Evelyn refers to her kind — society's refuse, scrap, unwanted litter.

"Ikaw ma'am," she asks, "anong pamasko mo sa akin (And you, ma'am, what is your Christmas present for me)?"