Part 2: Quenching thirst in communion of lives

The Maranao community at barangay Cablangan and Pantaon met us with heartwarming welcome.
There smiles meant our acceptance.
Spicy native chicken and rice colored with dolag awaited us at a community health center. Such accommodating attitude is so wonderful that I begun missing my friends at Marawi city.
The presence of this center is inspiring although bereft of medicines except herbal medicines and no doctors nor midwives except those who are volunteering to aid neighbors in distress or of illness.
Over food, we exchange unceasing laughters about “sacked ass”, protocols and about some spur of the moments description on what transpired down the road.
“No Violy, you made a wrong answer. You could have answered ‘mas lalo na sa gabi. Wala na talagang shorts.”
“Uh yeah, kasi nakapajama na. Hahaha…,” and we explode into boisterous laughters with our imagination bordering to sensuality.
“What kind of ass do you think he has that it’s worth millions?” someone asked.
“Could be black diamond,” retorted another… and fits of laughters truly consumed us.
If it isn’t of urgency of purpose, we could have conversed further with so much fun. But duty calls and we need to be back to our original purpose.
Inside a tattered and unfinished school room, there were more than fifty persons who gathered for a preliminary program prior to the ground breaking ceremony of water system construction. This is a project of Ecoweb Inc. in partnership with Caritas Australia and other partners for conflict-affected and undeveloped remote barangays.
I found gratitude, submissiveness to Allah, the need to instill cooperation and unity, and respect to their culture and traditions in the speeches of leaders, sultans, religious leaders and barangay officials.
I also found camaraderie in them.
They were exchanging smiles and I noticed how they held each other; challenging to be united for common good.
These people had terrible violent experiences. They were bakwits during the all-out war in year 2000; in year 2003 and last year-- 2008 after MILF rebels launched offensive attacks to civilian communities in coastal areas. Have they recovered fully? Or are they becoming immune to those situations that it has become an acceptable societal condition for them to be perpetually dislocated and then again rehabilitated.
Unlike other communities who are far experiencing developments, these people here wanted government to help provide them with accessible farm-to-market road, social services such as medicines and health & improvement of their educational facilities [and instruction], agricultural inputs, alternative education to capacitate/empower communities. These are all basic. These can be done if there is political will among those who are practically directing the reign of municipal, provincial and national governance.
Many of them have professed that they have aged and yet its only now that they are experiencing to enjoy water system that help conserves their time and effort.
They said that for a long time they walk to faraway springs just to fetch water. They also rely to rain. The dry season truly braves them to be resourceful in sourcing water from faraway springs.
"Mas importante pa ang tubig kay sa bugas (Water is more important than rice.)," one mother said.
Are you thinking that people here aren't eating rice anymore? That was practically said so because they can cook root crops sourced from their farms as their alternative to rice.
Looking at them, I truly found hope in their smiles.
Despite elders’ old age, they are still able to exhibit good leadership to gather men and women alike to show their communal life.
But more than how they exhibited their lives, I felt like a thirsty person too quenched with belongingness I had with them on that day of which others wishes to experience as well.

[Chapter 3: upcoming]