ONCE UPON A TIME AT PHILIPPINES!

On the other side of the world.

It surprises us this landscape of an incredible nature giving its best. This temperature difference that leaves the body in doubt at such a drastic change.
The sky is dark and it rains, decorated with lightning bolts drawn with light, or becomes clear in blue and sun, leaving us despairing for a cloud that saves us from the heat.
Moisture turns the air heavier, making smells more intense. It smells of green and earth.

We are in a place impossible to imagine.
The words we heard before we come are confirmed: "forget all that you have seen, that is another world." It is.
But more than the postcard landscapes, it's the people. People like the best place of all the smiles and affections.

I left the group behind and went down to the beach. The kids were playing. They give the landscape as certain and it passes unnoticed. They don't know that the on other side is cold and nature was not so generous. It belongs to them, in such a poor place, one of the greatest riches ever: time.
Time to play, to be free, to be children.

They stretch out their hands and I have nothing to give them.
They open the smile. Always the same smile of a sincerity that hurts. A smile that does not fit in the face, which embraces. They point the photograph machine and ask me for a picture, forgetting everything else I could possibly give them.
They are children.
Just children.

I just wanted to go back to this place and give them back the photo they asked me to do. Are them. It is theirs.
Give it to them on a beautiful frame that more than embellishing the simplicity of the house would frame their smile.

It is not the turquoise waters, the white sands and one of the seven wonders of the world, the best of the visiting passports for this place, are the smiles of those who having so less always chose to give everything.
Editing, writing, I smile them back.
Because everything I can give them seems so infinitely poor and so small in front of the generosity with which they smile.

Maybe I'll never see them again.
But they remain like this, with me forever, at this moment when we were ALL so happy.
It was easy, we chose to smile!

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3rd December of 2016