Every year on Good Friday, the parish of St. Andrew in Paranaque in Metro Manila holds a traditional lenten procession. Hundreds of parishioners pull and push over 40 hundred-year-old floats along the crowded streets of what some might consider to be amongst the more deprived areas of the city. The statues they carry depict the saints who are said to have played a role in both the life and death of Jesus.
The route they follow is approximately 8 kilometres long and the procession lasts several hours, finishing well after dark. At times the procession is extremely slow moving, as telegraph wires frequently hang down directly in front of the elevated statues, thereby blocking their path. On such occasions, the wires need to be painstakingly raised by individuals accompanying the floats, who carry long wooden poles specially for this purpose. At other times the streets are so narrow that it's almost impossible to move in any direction at all.
I was fortunate to experience this touching event, thanks to the kind invitation of my friend Cari, whose family was responsible for the 5th float in this year's procession.
What I found particularly interesting were the people who lined the different streets which the procession went down. Living in the bubble of the comfort of Fort Bonifacio, it is only rarely that I get the chance to leave its security and venture out across town into the kind of environment that most Filipinos know only too well. Consequently, it was a real pleasure to share in an event which is evidently very close to so many people's hearts. Thank you Cari and Paul for making it possible.
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