Isay has to walk for two days to buy school supplies

This is an excerpt of Mags Maglana's June 13 Sunstar Davao column. She recently visited and expressed solidarity with the lumad bakwits at a poetry and integration night

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Isay was one of the affected Manobo school children and with a warm smile she asked for my name. She volunteered hers, stated that she was Manobo and began to talk about why she, other children, and their family members were in Davao. Wistfully, she said she would have been Grade V this school year, had their school opened.

Beyond issues of compliance with regulation, there are charges that militarization is the driving force that prevents 3,000 lumad kids from benefiting from schooling this year. Isay candidly said that her school is accused of being influenced by the New People's Army (NPA) but clarified that all they are studying in school are subjects like English, Math, Pilipino and their culture.

She also rued the organizing of the Alamara, a paramilitary group composed of members from their own tribe. Isay said that they had experienced being harassed by members of the group who order school children to collect firewood for the Alamara's use, and who fire their weapons indiscriminately when angered. And yet she expressed pity for members of their community who joined the Alamara saying they often run out of provisions and are forced to go hungry.

A DepEd representative acknowledged the need for schools for those in hard-to-reach areas and assured that this need would be met. Isay echoed the argument of one of the Datus of her tribe who claimed that they had been requesting for schools from government to no avail and found it ironic that now that they were able to set up their own with the support of NGOs, their very efforts would be thwarted.

Isay claimed that government teachers, who had to go home for the weekend and come back the following workweek and teach multiple grades, were only able to hold classes for two days within a week and that students sometimes received no more than an hour of instruction each week.

Isay has to walk for two days to buy school supplies like ball pen and paper; but this and the harassments they have had to endure, seem nothing when compared to the prospect of not being able to go to school.

As I listened to Isay's inspired narration, I can only grasp at the different interests and arguments at play. And while the issue is obviously complex and layered, the question that kept popping up in my mind was "what about the children like Isay?"

I would like to encounter more Isays, children from marginalized communities who are articulate and have vision, who can tell their own stories and compel others to listen, who in the face of their daily challenges, have no qualms about approaching others with a confident smile. And if only to make space for these Isays, let the schools in Talaingod open, and let there be more schools for more Lumad children.

In the past I winced at how my columns were viewed as progressive but not politically comprehensive. But if my role is only to ask "what about the children like Isay?" perhaps there is room for my kind of writing after all.

Read the entire column here..

Alternative science class

University of the Philippines Mindanao biology major distributing pieces of clay to eager Manobo kids. The clay was used to demonstrate three types of bacteria (cocci, bacilli, and spirilla). The science class with the Manobo kids who are victims of militarization was part of Alternative Science Academy's (ALSA) effort to bring science back to the people as well as its contribution to the campaign to help the lumads. Click here for more photos.