A tale of 2 Leos

It was dusk when I first set foot in Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. There was no trace of beach dudes and babes in their board shorts and bikinis. At this quiet hour, what you’d see are the homeless getting ready to vacate their shelter by the beach, before the crowd and tourists start coming.

I was there to interview Leo Delgado, a Filipino teacher in his thirties who always starts his day by bringing breakfast to the homeless in Hawaii before heading off to work.

When he opened the trunk of his 4 x 4 jeep, there were boxes of instant noodles and Vienna sausage in easy-open cans and a thermos of hot water. "So that they’d have a warm breakfast," he explained. Leo was poor when he was in the Philippines but someone helped him achieve everything he has today. He simply wants to give back

Sixty-five-year-old Leo Garnulo, on the other hand, is a Filipino boxer who fought in Hawaii in 1966, decades before people’s champ Manny Pacquiao and a couple of years before Penalosa’s reign. Mang Leo married an American, worked in housekeeping and left his hometown Ilocos permanently.

After 40 years in the Island Paradise, in soiled clothes and without a home, there was no hint of his glory days as a boxer.

Had it not been for the boxing belt that he wears like a prized possession, a conversation piece that brings people like me to query, I would not have known.

But the boxing belt that Mang Leo wore was not even his. It was given to him when he worked in a gym in Hawaii as a trainer, but it was his pride that he wore around his waist.

Like a boxer preparing for a fight, Mang Leo carefully covers his hand with a handwrap made from tissue paper available at the restroom in the park. But instead of mitts, he clutches onto a rake and broomstick as he sweeps through fallen leaves. He gets by from loose change given by complete strangers, and his early morning fill of chicken noodle soup from teacher Leo.

That morning of my visit, Leo immediately proceeded to the concrete bench where Mang Leo was resting. He politely greeted the old man, "Good morning" as he filled the cup of instant noodles with hot water.

Only few words were exchanged between them as Leo went on to give the other homeless folks their breakfast, and yet there was an air of familiarity and comfort between them.

I tried to make conversation with Mang Leo, and so I asked him if he has heard of Manny Pacquiao who had just won the match against Eric Morales then. He had no clue who Pacquiao was because for years he has had no access to television. Maybe I was being insensitive but even our homeless in the Philippines get to watch television sometimes.

Mang Leo’s world is confined to the Waikiki beach after his wife and children left him. The park is his home, while the young man who visits him every day is his only family. He says that his children visit him once in a while, though Leo has never met them.

Leo patiently listens to the stories of the homeless – some are real, while others are make believe, "Another Filipino who was homeless told me he was going to the Philippines for a week. And so for a week I didn’t see him in Waikiki Beach, but I saw him in a park in the other side of town while I was driving by." Perhaps, it is in wishful thinking that they are able to cope.

It was an irony meeting the two Leos in 100th anniversary of the Sakada, the first Filipino migrants to the US. They shared the same name, Leo, (a.k.a. Juan dela Cruz) but how different their destinies! Leo fulfilled his dreams and is looking towards the future, but Mang Leo was living in a dream and was holding on to the past.

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