Out-of-office

Nilo Yacat is out of office.

Everytime I see my Ateneo friends, they tease me about my out-of-office message. They think that all I do is travel outside Manila. To them, my out-of-office message means “I can’t be reached so don’t bother at all.”

But to me, “out-of-office” simply means it is time to get dirt on my boots. It is time to see what is out there, what is really happening, what is the purpose of all the pencil-pushing and keyboard-ticking that I do when I am “in-office.”

Last week, I went to the province of Sultan Kudarat for my first project monitoring mission this year. It has been a while since my last project visit. Last year, Aires was pregnant and I had to limit my travels to be with her, if possible all of the time.

Together with a new colleague, Nogel, I visited a remote village called Midtungok, almost three hours from the capital city of Isulan. Midtungok is a village of about 1,550 people, mostly Ilonggo-speaking Christians and a few Manobos. The village center is at the foot of rolling hills and mountains. Around 50 other families, mostly Manobos, live on the mountain slopes.

In July last year, a flashflood swept through the village, destroying crops and properties and submerging houses for days.

When we were all getting ready for Christmas last year, the villagers of Midtungok had fled their houses, hiding in the forest or cowering in fear in evacuation centers, after a band of rebel soldiers attacked and ransacked houses.

The rebels strafed houses and fired at the elementary school. One big hole in the wall of a classroom is now covered by a cute flower cut-out colored paper. Medicines and the only blood pressure apparatus were taken from the health center. Cattle and poultry animals were snatched away. For three days, the rebels put the village under siege. When a military strike finally arrived on Christmas day, the rebels had already gone ahead, leaving a note on rice sacks saying: “We will be back.”

How are the villagers now? Many have tried to rebuild what was damaged. But two Manobo families stay at the health center (all 14 of them) because the women are still afraid to go back to the upland. Two of their neighbors (Manobo fathers) were killed during the attack.

How are the children? The grade 6 students are graduating this March. And many of them now want to become policemen, policewomen or soldiers. “To fight the rebels,” they said rather cheerfully.

But the younger ones carry the brunt the worst. I met one family who has a two-year old son named Ronron. Their house was near the riverbed, where the rebels took camp. When they fled, little Ronron saw men in fatigue uniforms barging in houses with high-powered guns. The family stayed overnight hiding in the forest, with just bamboo trees protecting them from the cold and from gunfire.

Today, Ronron clings fearfully to his mother every time he sees a man in fatigue uniform, every time he hears banging sounds.

Then, I learned of the story of a Manobo woman named Langini Gamboa. She gave birth on that fateful Christmas day but died during the siege because of excessive bleeding. Her husband, Efren, could not take her to the nearest health center for no one would look after their children and they could die amidst the gunfire should he take everybody down from the mountain. I wanted to meet Efren and the surviving children but we were not given clearance to go to the periphery of the village. It saddened me that I could not, in my capacity as a development worker, reach out to them.

It breaks my heart, knowing that peace has remained elusive in Mindanao. I tear up because I have spoken to Muslims and Christians in other villages in Mindanao who have learned to live peacefully with each other. All they think each day is how to till the land, and what to feed their children. And yet, we hear of news stories about gunfire and crossfire, of displacement and evacuation, of children missing school and losing their parents.

If peace were an office guy like me, then he has gone out-of-office too long.