Even poor couple wish survivors well

LILIA “Nanay Lily” Magpantay-Tagle, earns an average of P50 a day from selling rags. She does not want anything for herself this Christmas, but hopes for a better life for survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.” DELFIN T. MALLARI JR.

For the past six years, Lilia Magpantay-Tagle has been living in a makeshift shack in the corner of a lot owned by a rich clan in front of Perez Park in Lucena City.

A 69-year-old widow, Tagle, or Nanay Lily, earns an average of P50 a day from selling rags to passing jeepney drivers to augment the equally meager income of her 70-year-old partner, Pedro Samonte, or Tatay Pedring, a widower, from whatever job that comes his way.

Despite their sorry plight, the woman’s Christmas wish is not for herself but for the survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in the Visayas. “With the agony of losing loved ones and fear of uncertain future, they all deserve a better Christmas and bright New Year. Let us all help them,” she says.

Tagle keeps herself abreast with the news about the devastated areas from tabloids and radio reports.

“They are really pitiful. I have no material things to share but they are always in my prayers,” Tagle, a devout Catholic, tells the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an interview in front of her shed along busy Perez Street.

Samonte was selling charcoal at the other side of the city at that time.

By January, the couple will have to move. Their shack of iron sheets and other materials salvaged from the dump will be demolished as what the new landowner has planned.

“I was told by the caretaker that we should get ready to leave. It’s alright with us. This is the reality of being poor that we have to face,” Tagle says with a faint smile.

Companions

After her husband died in Manila in 1982, Tagle returned to Lucena and started to live on her own as a dressmaker but ended up selling cigarettes, candies and other items at the park. They had no child.

In 2002, the widow met Samonte, who was also a regular at the park, and they decided to live together—with three dogs and three cats. Her partner has nine children, all of whom have families of their own but living the same hand-to-mouth existence.

Six years ago, Tagle was allowed by the landowner to build a hut in exchange for cleaning the property. “This place was full of garbage when we first settled,” she recalls.

“Living here is much better compared to living in a farm. At least, we’re earning money here,” she says.

They use the public toilet for their personal needs.

Samonte actually owns a hut along Maharlika Highway in nearby Tayabas City. “We still prefer staying at the park and continue selling on the sidewalk,” Tagle says.

When asked what her Christmas wish is, she shyly confesses that she is praying for a kind and generous person who can provide her with a small capital and a huge umbrella to protect her from the sun and rain when she sells rags.

“I want to sell more items and not only rags so that I can save. I want to consult a doctor for my arthritis,” she says.

In past Christmases, some motorists in private vehicles would stop in front of her shack and give gifts of rice and grocery items.

This time, Tagle says it is alright if she will not get any, knowing most donations now go to the typhoon survivors.

“I know that the typhoon victims will rise again because there are still lots of kind persons,” she says.