Manila North Cemetery

Manila North Cemetery is one of the more obscure places I visited recently. The city’s largest cemetery, it’s not only the final resting place of the people and animals (yes, seriously) buried here but also home to a sizeable population of a couple thousand people.

Entire families live, eat and sleep between the graveyards and tombs. It’s an eery and somewhat macabre feeling walking through the roads of this “village”. I understand it’s mostly poverty driving people to seek shelter in a cemetery. That said, there’s a different attitude towards death (and life) very much tangible.

Dark clouds linger above and something tells me it’s better not to roam around for too much longer. That’s when a group of kids asks me to join them for a game of basketball.