Hometown Changes

I go to my family's hometown in the Philippines almost every 5 years. Each time it's shocking to see the stark difference. In 2017, I saw that the once green courtyard of the town school was now covered in sand and the remaining grass was dried out. The air felt heavy and polluted as the streets were filled with motorcycle cabs. There's so much more litter than there was before. The worst part of it all was that a commercial building was being built right against my parents' property. Before, I could just see the big open sky, but now the building just casts a large shadow over our house.