WE will never know what the last exchange of words between 15-year-old Lee Libantino and his younger brother, Junior, as they locked in a tight embrace to fight off the avalanche of mud and stones that overran their rented shanty in Antipolo City in the morning of September 2 was about. What was evident was the instinct to serve as each other's shield, to protect each other, and even to face death together, brothers in life and death. Their deaths are a testimony to what we have known all along: that profound humanity throbs in the hamlets of extreme poverty.

Were the last words a muted cry for help? Or, pleas for the timely arrival of their mother, Maricar, a cleaning and laundry woman toiling for meager wages at the gated subdivisions nearby to keep body and soul together? Toiling for meager wages even during the onslaught of a deadly typhoon because, to the poor, wages have to be earned, and food has to be put on the table through hell and high water.