PIKIT, North Cotabato –Barefoot, five-year old Mohammad Guianalan has been walking on dusty roads since seven in the morning. In both his hands, he cradles a tiny black-feathered chicken, “his beloved pet,” his mother Amirah, says.
“He does not have any slippers,” Amirah explains.
Her two other children, Norhana, 3, and Sarah, 2, ride on board a
carabao-driven sled manned by their father packed with their
belongings: cooking pots, a plastic gallon for water, mat, pails, some
more chickens, a couple of goats in tow.
Amirah is worried. “We are scared of the buto-buto (explosions) .”
It is now an hour past noon. Here, along the road inside Pikit, little
Mohammad and his family, like scores of others, have been walking
since daybreak this morning to flee “loud explosions” that ripped
through their villages.
The road to the Pikit poblacion is filled with images such as these,
grim scenes of war, families on board carts, motorcycles, carabaos and
cattle. Most of them come from the barangays of Pagangan, Dualing,
Tapodoc, and Dungguan in Aleosan, and Kolambog in Pikit.
The Bantay Ceasefire reports an estimated 22,000 evacuees scattered
all over Pikit and Aleosan as of Sunday.
Inside the gym of the Immaculate Concepcion church here, there are
already about more than 800 people, mostly coming from Barangay
Tapodoc, who have sought shelter.
One of them is Robert Malagya, 19, who was wounded in the left leg,
hit by a bullet from strafing.
Now lying on a straw mat in one of the bleachers in the gym, he
remembers making his way in crossing Silik just before dusk last
Friday when he heard a burst of gunfire.
“At first, I thought it was just a stone that hit me. I was shocked to
see that I was hit by a bullet,” he said, showing his bandaged left
leg.
Fr. Gene Gilos, OMI, Pikit parish priest, said it is “heartbreaking”
to witness how the lives of these families have been disrupted. He
appeals for donation of food and supplies as the number of evacuees
rise by the minute.
***
Along the national highway, just a few minutes ride away from the
Pikit parish, a ten-wheeler truck rolls to a stop in front of an old
abandoned warehouse. The warehouse called Buisan has been converted
into an evacuation center where as of Sunday mid-afternoon, about 36
families had already sought refuge.
First to come down from the truck are the women and children. One
woman, who says she is 15 years old, stands with three small children
with her. “My husband stayed behind to look after our cattle,” she
says.
Next came an assortment of luggage, big boxes, and other household
items being unloaded from the truck.
Inside the warehouse, there is Asmiya Ison, 16, a second year student
in Silik high school, who just arrived with her family, still tired
from two days of walking all the way from her village in Barangay
Tapodoc.
She was in school last Friday morning, she said, writing a composition
for her Pilipino subject. “I never thought that within the day we
would have to leave our home,” she says.
At about ten in the morning, her classmates told her that they had to
leave as soon as possible as soldiers will soon be entering their
villages. “Papasok na ang mga sundalo,” she was told.
Asmiya then rushed back home to Barangay Tapodoc, which is an hour and
a half walk away, just in time to find her family waiting for her,
already preparing to leave.
“In my rush, I was able to bring with me only a pair of pants, a skirt
and two pieces of tandong (veil),” she says.
Inside her bag are two notebooks, a ball pen, and a few of her
compositions. There is one composition in Tagalog where she wrote
about the importance of education and how difficult it would be to be
both poor and uneducated.
“I want to be a teacher someday,” she smiles, shyly.
Thus she made sure not to forget her school records and an important
manila paper that was folded several times. It is her project called
“Mga Yaman Tao sa Asya” (Asia’s human resources) that also tackled
different government systems in Asia including traditional sultanates.
“Without this, my clearance will not be signed.” Asked how she
understands the conflict, she replies: “It is about fighting for
freedom.”
***
“Tabi, tabi kayo (Move, move over.)” A group of evacuees on the road
ahead are shouting, waving their arms as if in a warning. Just then,
clouds of dust swirl as a convoy of army trucks sped by.
“We are tired but we have to move on,” says 47-year-old Farida
Dimalangan who is from
Barangay Manaulanan. She says though that they had to stop for three
times to let the cattle take a dip on rice paddies along the way.
“Kawawa naman. They would die from the heat.”
A ten-wheeler truck passes by, picking up evacuees along the way. A
man, his name is Hadji Cosain Alba, a municipal councilor, is taking
command. It’s a pity, he says, that some of the evacuees could not
take the ride because they could not leave their cattle behind.
It is now half an hour past two in the afternoon. Dark clouds hover in
the horizon and the wind is getting moist. On the way to Barangay
Maulanan now which is about five kilometers away from Pikit poblacion,
the steady stream of evacuees start to dwindle.
By this time, at about three in the afternoon, the rains start to
fall. In the heavy downpour, many evacuees had to walk in the rain.
Some found banana leaves to protect themselves with.
A few more minutes of riding on rough roads, there is no longer anyone
in sight. Villages are abandoned. There are houses, a mosque here, a
chapel there, a day care center, but nothing stirred. Only silence.
The long stretch of road finally ended at crossing Silik, some 10
kilometers away from Pikit poblacion. In a waiting shed, there were
three men sitting on a bench.
“You can’t go any further. The ‘encounter site’ is just two kilometers
away from here,” one of the men said.
***
On the highway along Aleosan, in sitio Taguan, Barangay San Mateo, a
teenage girl holds a teddy bear in her arms. Her name is Michelle and
she is 17 years old.
Michelle is with her family and they are on their way to an evacuation
center. They had stopped for a while on the road, joining a handful of
people who are gazing in the distance, at the plains and rolling hills
before them.
There, at the far end, are the “targets,” one of the onlookers say,
presumably the villages where many of the evacuees come from. One man
points towards the barangay of Silik.
A few meters away along the highway, soldiers are seen patrolling the
area where a couple of howitzers stand menacingly on the ground. The air
is filled with the smell of gunpowder.
Once again, in the distance, a rumble of explosions could be heard.
(12 August 2008/Charina Sanz/MindaNews)
