I woke up this morning at 7 a.m. to a bright sunny day. It was the first time in years that I got up that late. Everyday, I get out of the house at 4 a.m., walk straight to the market for five minutes and open my little ice blocks store in the wet section. I stay there until 8 or 9 p.m.selling ice blocks, earning some money that is barely enough to support me, my wife and my 11 year-old daughter.

Today, there’s no ice blocks to sell. My capital has been depleted from paying off debts, bills and everything. I have no money left to buy stocks from the ice plant. All I have is some money to buy us food for the whole day. My small business suffered from stiff, cutthroat competition. The new competitor has brought down the price of the ice blocks that we sell and I could no longer keep up with the competition.

There was no need to wake up early. I slept off my problems instead of thinking about them. My body has been very tired of working hard through the past 7 years for this business. I don’t want my mind to get tired as well because of it. Perhaps the extra three hours of sleep was enough for my body to recuperate and for my mind to get refreshed? Maybe so.

I made myself a cup of coffee, stood at the front door feeling the soothing warmth of the rising sun and savoring the bitter-sweet taste of my drink. Right across the pathway beside a neighbor’ s house, a little boy seemed to sit with his pants down. Taking a closer look, he was dropping cakes of feces on the ground. I spat off what I sipped and looked away. Darn! No wonder why the neighborhood stank like hell and why my dog sometimes come with a very foul smell. It seemed the neighborhood was one big toilet!

Indeed, it was a sunny day but it was being overshadowed by the gloom that was enveloping my consciousness, the disgusting sight I saw and the foul smell being blown into my nostrils by the morning breeze. I guess the sun shone to illuminate how miserable my life has become. Or did it shine to show me things I didn’t bother to look at before?

I finished my coffee, put my cup in the sink and stepped out of the house. I had a chat with some neighbors and learned that out of the 30 houses that make up our neighborhood, there are only five houses which have toilets! In this modern age when even beggars and mendicants have cellphones and ipods, I find it perplexing that some people have utter disregard for proper sanitation. Imagine human waste lying here and there and the nose pinching odor!