The poor and the dead have little choice but to mingle together in a
graveyard in the northern Manila port district of Navotas, one of the
world's most densely populated areas behind only a few Indian cities. The
residents of the cemetery sleep, cook, eat, bathe, and wash clothes
atop the tombs, and life can look grisly for an outsider. There
are no toilets or running water, garbage piles up among the tombs and
the area is infested with cockroaches that particularly like to parade
across the tombs at night. Due to a lack of space in the cemetery,
old bodies have to be eventually removed from the tombs and smelly,
damp bones are scattered throughout the cemetery or in sacks that have
been dumped on tombstones. Jerry Doringo, spokesman for the
Novotas city government, explained that local residents got free burial
when they died, but the corpses could only stay inside the tombs for
five years.
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| Children living in and next to the cemetery watch a
caretaker saw a mummified corpse into so it can be transferred to a
smaller tomb in the Philippine Navotas Municipal Cemetery. - LINK |
All photos by Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
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