The Journey
Waking up to find that her granddaughter had been taken was overwhelming. The grandmother asked the people in the area if anyone knew where the young woman had gone with the grandchild. Several people told her that the young woman had returned to her home, some five hundred miles away. The grandmother, having nothing to leave behind, took the few rags of clothing she had and set off on foot to find her grandchild.
This search began during the typhoon season. With no shelter from the weather, no food and no money this journey would surely be very precarious. The mindset of the grandmother could be no less.
She was not unaccustomed to the hunger she felt on the journey. For that matter, the bad weather and lack of money were no strangers to her either. The worry and fear of what her grandchild might be going through was almost unbearable. The storms and floods, in her mind, could not harm her nearly as bad as the loss of her grandchild. The fears of what unknown dangers her grandchild might be enduring were immense.
The grandmother walked on, eating what she could find, sleeping whenever and wherever she could find a dry place. When no dry shelter was available, she would walk until she was too tired to walk anymore, and then sleep where she fell. As she got closer to where she was told that her grandchild had been taken she became even more anxious, more determined to find her. She continued to ask people if they knew the whereabouts of her grandchild and the woman.
In a small village not far from her destination, two men that she had approached for information told her that they knew the young woman and where she lived and that they would take her to the place where the grandchild was staying, but they demanded that their own desires be met before they would help the grandmother. When she refused to give in to their demands they decided to knock her out and rape her, repeatedly, until they were satisfied and their drunkenness had worn off. God surely must have been with the grandmother on that day, because, these men could have killed her and walked away. Instead of killing her, the two men, thinking about the grandmother and her search for her granddaughter, decided to revive her. They apologized to her and asked her to forgive them. After allowing the grandmother to clean herself up, they fed her and give her 100 pesos to aid her in her search for grandchild. It was not much recompense for what she had experienced. Somebody must have been looking out for them as well, because the grandmother's mind was on finding her grandchild, not vengeance.
Another day had come and gone as she entered the town where her granddaughter was. There were people at the house who would not let her see her grandchild. The young woman who had taken the child was the birth mother, but had not cared for the child since her birth. After several recent attempts to find someone who would feel sorry for her and help her get her daughter back, she had finally found a group of people who believed her story of kidnapping by the grandmother. This group told the grandmother that she would have to go away and stay away from her grandchild and the birth mother. If the grandmother did not agree to do this, she would go to jail. She can do nothing else at this point. She has no money, no representation and no way to protect her grandchild from this manipulating, self-centered woman whose only connection to this child was giving birth six years prior.