Hard Life Among the Dead in the Philippines<br />" Mrs. Javier said as she tended potted plants outside one of the 10 mausoleums she is paid to take care of.<br />that Since Duterte become president, every time there is a police raid here I go home to my children, usually,<br />Jane said that Sometimes it’s difficult living here,<br />Its elaborate mausoleums and endless rows of humble, stacked tombs are home<br />to an estimated one million of the dead — and a few thousand of the living.<br />Her husband, Felix, said ghosts were "just something you see in the movies." The cemetery’s<br />many children, playing happily among the tombs, seem unconcerned about ghosts.<br />Residents say drug use and crime have been on the rise in recent years; Mr. Zapata, the headstone<br />carver, dated it to roughly 2000, when slum clearance nearby led to a wave of new residents.<br />Virginia Javier, 90, said residents now locked the gates to their tombs, which wasn’t the case several years ago.
