Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009

THE BAT PEOPLE

Around 300 families live beneath the bridge where Circumferential Road 3 crosses the Navotas river in Manila. They shelter in makeshift huts made of tin, cardboard and plywood, above, below and beside one another, crammed between the bridge and the water. Supported by bamboo poles, old ropes and planks wedged in the structure of the bridge, the inhabitants live like bats hanging from the roof of a cave. And that is what they are called: the bat people.

Once they labored on the land, dreaming of a better life in this city of 12 million. Now they wash trucks, haul fish in the market, collect garbage. Their wages are barely enough for food, a scrap of soap, water to drink. Few make it out of here. All told, there are believed to be 150,000 families living in a similar manner beneath the many canal and river bridges of the Philippine capital. Carlos, who lives with his wife and family under the Navotas bridge, finds comfort in grim humor: “Our bridge cost millions of dollars. We live beneath the most expensive roof in the world.”

(Text, Photos: Carsten Stormer)
Bilfinger Berger Magazine 2/2009