To dream in a Third World country

To dream in a Third World country is to carry a weight heavier than our bodies were built for. Our dreams are not free-floating wishes. They are packed inside our pockets with loose change, folded into the crumpled bills we count again and again, hoping they will stretch far enough.

We dream in the middle of traffic, our foreheads pressed to jeepney windows, watching the city blur by as we calculate how many hours of our lives are lost to waiting. We dream while lined up outside government offices, our papers damp with sweat, our patience stretched thin, whispering to ourselves that maybe this time, the system will not fail us.

Our dreams are not extravagant. They are survival-sized. We dream of roofs that do not leak, of meals that do not have to be halved, of jobs that do not demand every ounce of our strength only to return so little. We dream of stability, of enough. And yet, even that feels radical here.

Because wanting more than survival in this place sometimes feels selfish. To reach beyond what is given feels like arrogance. We are told, “Be grateful, at least you have something.” But gratitude cannot silence hunger, cannot cure illness, cannot keep the floodwater from rising.

Still—we dream. With clenched fists and tired eyes, we plant our hopes in soil that cracks beneath us, in streets that flood each year, in nights where the electricity dies and candles burn low. The parents who dare to imagine their children stepping onto stages they never reached, the families sleeping under roofs they built themselves, the lives expanding beyond scarcity.

But dreaming here is not just a private act; it is communal and collective. It is inherited. It is passed down like heirlooms stitched into the seams of our stories. Our dreams are patched together from the fragments of our mothers’ sacrifices and our fathers’ endurance. They live in calloused hands that refuse to stop working, in tired feet that walk miles to save a few pesos on fare. Even when we are too exhausted to dream for ourselves, others dream on our behalf. Elders whisper prayers before dawn for grandchildren still asleep. Siblings share a single pair of shoes, so at least one can make it to school. Neighbors celebrate a graduate’s victory. There is no such thing as a dream untouched by someone else’s labor.

We do not dream in peace. Our dreaming is constantly interrupted—by brownouts that plunge us into darkness, by news of another tax increase, by sudden illness for which there is no budget, by land that must be surrendered to a developer, by leaders who campaign on promises and govern on amnesia. Yet somehow, between crisis and chaos, we still manage to look toward tomorrow. We learn to dream in fragments, in moments stolen between overtime shifts and unpaid commutes.

We dream on buses that reek of gasoline, in classrooms with electric fans that stutter like tired lungs, in cramped apartments where walls are thin but hope is thick. We dream while scrolling through pictures of other countries, wondering what it feels like to live without constant calculation. We dream of eating without counting coins, of resting without guilt, of existing without fear of sudden loss.

Our dreams are not housed in vision boards or journals. They are handwritten on the backs of receipts, hidden in pawned jewelry, whispered into envelopes of remittances sent across oceans. They are stitched into graduation togas rented for a day but remembered for a lifetime. They are etched into every line of every face that has weathered too many storms yet still wakes up saying, “Bukas ulit.”

And so, we continue—not because it is easy, not because we are endlessly strong, but because stopping would mean surrender. It would mean confirming what the world has long assumed about us: that we will settle for less, that we will stay where we are put, that we will accept the fate laid out for us without protest. But we do not. We cannot. To dream in a Third World country is not to float—it is to climb. It is to scrape our knees on walls built to keep us out. It is to bleed sometimes. But it is also to discover that the view from even halfway up is enough to remind us: there is more.

And so we dream—not softly, not apologetically, but with the stubbornness of those who know that hope is not a luxury here. It is a necessity. It is fuel. It is lifeblood.

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We dream because we must. And because one day, somehow, somewhere, one of those dreams will land on solid ground—and the world will have to make room.

And when even one of us breaks through, when a diploma is handed to calloused hands, when a small house is finally ours, when someone among us dares to fly and find work in another land, it is not just personal triumph. It is proof that the impossible can be bent by those who were never meant to bend it.

To dream here is to struggle. But it is also to resist. Because every time we imagine a better life, every time we insist that we are worthy of more than scraps, we defy the weight that was meant to crush us.

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Yvaña Welch Deroña, 18, a University of the Philippines student who believes dreaming is a form of resistance.