AUTOTOMY

Close to where we live there’s an ultra-modernist house with 15-foot walls surrounding most of the compound. The wall is topped with meter-long knife-point steel bars. These people are obviously rich. Painted white, the two-story house is composed of squares and glass, and one top window is a large circle. It’s surrounded by an open lot where carabao (water buffalo) and goats graze. Recently dump trucks have been parking in the empty lot as well. As we passed by the other night, a group of children, who would normally just be playing in the streets, had tied up a sheet under the back of the dump truck and were using it as a swing.