Mabait: A Foothold in Life

The lives of Cielo, a sex-worker, and Angie, a bureaucrat, briefly but antagonistically intersect in Manila. Several years later Angie seeks the help of Cielo, but neither are aware now of who the other is. They both come to realize that each has barely a foothold in life and that they both want the same things: family, love, respect, dignity. In their respective struggles to attain these, each girl recognizes the other as fundamentally mabait (good at heart). Just as we may judge a book by its cover, so too may we judge people we meet, in whatever circumstance. Mabait tells the story of how Cielo, a Pinay sex-worker, is maligned largely because of her “appearance”—what she does to survive. But the narration also tells of a righteous middle-class girl, Anghel, who, once having denigrated sex-workers, not only herself becomes one, but in a twist has to call on the help of those whom she had once despised. She discovers that being mabait as more central, perhaps because it is that both girls have only a foothold in life.