The baby was wrapped inside a woven mat being carried in the arms of an uncle, her body shrouded in white linen in accordance with Islamic tradition. Her mother, Tot, heaved muffled sobs a few seats away, her right palm shielding her eyes, as her three children looked on. Still mute with grief, she could not bring herself to be near Zaida and would rather watch her seven-month-old baby from a distance.
Zaida died an hour before noon inside the Dulawan school clinic where she was rushed in the morning already weak from a night of diarrhea. Her family are evacuees from Barangay Ganta who sought refuge in the poblacion here when mortar shelling pounded their village last April.
It would be the first time the Ponso family would be going home since they sought refuge in Datu Piang, intending not to stay for long, but only to bury little Zaida before sundown. “The last time we were on this river, riding a pumpboat like this, the night was so dark,” said a woman on the boat. Her name is Bai Didu, Tot’s aunt.
On this bright June afternoon, the waters of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, also known as Pulangi, flow rapidly in a timeless cadence southwards towards Cotabato City. Clumps of hyacinths drift along the water while here and there are bamboo stands growing on the river banks, their leaves framing the water in delicate arches.
The historic Rio Grande is a long stretch of water running all the way from Bukidnon to the mouth of the Moro Gulf that is laden with stories of war, glory, violence and power. In these areas along the river once called Dulawan, the brave Rajah Buayan, a descendant of Shariff Mohammed Kabungsuwan who brought Islam in these parts, was once lord.
Dulawan, once an important trading center, had since been renamed Datu Piang, which is now host to about 30,000 internally-displaced persons fleeing from military offensives against Umbra Amberil Kato, a renegade commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s 105th base command.
In the journey upriver, every village the boat had passed is abandoned. No life seems to stir except for some ducks pecking on corn cobs, a dog swimming across the river, and a man bathing in solo on the river banks.
“Over there,” a man on the boat exclaimed pointing at a field, “just a week ago, soldiers and rebels fought, exchanging gunfire from both sides of the river.”
Everyone on board fell quiet at this, gripped with a sense of fear. Danger seems to lurk at every river bend, from the shrubs up to the wide plains across. On a boat trip like this, a bomb fell from a military plane killing the Mandi family in October last year who had just evacuated their home in Barangay Tee which is another village in Datu Piang.
Since August last year following the collapse of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the MILF, the waves of evacuations have not ceased. Residents kept fleeing several towns in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and the two Lanao provinces where the military had launched offensives against three renegade MILF commanders blamed for alleged attacks on
civilian communities.
The fighting escalated after the Supreme Court restrained and later declared unconstitutional the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) that would have signaled a peace deal resolving the 30-year conflict.
In the ensuing “low intensity” guerilla war, the toll has been high for civilians who fled their homes from mortar shelling and aerial bombardment. More than 600,000 civilians were displaced last year, “the largest displacement in the world,” according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.
From the start of the war, over a hundred civilians had already died, most of them dying in the evacuation centers due to hunger, illness and deprivation. About a quarter of the deaths are children. Shortage of food, medicines, potable water and poor shelter conditions, such as lack of tents that would have shielded babies from the sun’s heat, rain and the night cold, are usually the causes of the deaths.
“No wonder the baby died,” said one onlooker, pointing at the family’s makeshift tent at the back of the Notre Dame of Dulawan school grounds. “How could a baby withstand the monsoon rains with only a tarpaulin as roof and without walls to shield the children?”
Zaida died quietly that morning. There is none of the wailing, only hushed whispers, yet one remembers for long the images of restrained grief and sorrow of her parents. She was lying on the middle of the bed, her still warm body swathed in a baby blue blanket, her eyes in a fixed gaze which her grandmother gently shut closed while caressing her face.
Then there on one corner of the room was the father, Nasser, who was crouched on a bed in a fetal position, his head facing the wall, his body contorting in pain and despair. The mother, Tot, was nowhere in sight. She rushed out of the room in anguished silence soon after the baby died.
Later, the grandmother covered Zaida in white linen handed to her by Datu Piang’s parish priest, Fr. Eduardo Vasquez of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who had readied several rolls “because of so many deaths that come one after another,” he said. It is a Muslim practice to shroud the dead in white.
Soon, an uncle carried Zaida now wrapped inside a mat towards the makeshift tent and laid her down on the bamboo floor where the women were waiting. They gathered around the baby and cleansed her with water, dusted her with powder and adorned her with her finest clothes in a tender, caring ritual.
After the pandita, a religious leader, arrived and blessed the baby with a prayer, the family and their kin then headed towards the river on foot under the noon day sun, passing through the streets of Datu Piang poblacion where another death such as this one goes unnoticed
“Sometimes, I wonder what sins do we have why our babies die, why are we always on the run?” asked Bai Didu. It is the same question that lingers in the minds of countless other displaced civilians caught in a protracted war with no end in sight not unless, peace process analysts say, a ceasefire is declared or in the long-term a political settlement is negotiated that would address the Moro people’s historical grievances and clamor for justice.
“I had lost my father when I was eleven. He died in the forest where we were hiding from the Ilagas (a dreaded vigilantes group) during the 1970s,” she continued. Bai Didu’s face is creased with lines that had borne the grief from a lifetime of losing loved ones dying from hunger and disease in a vicious cycle of war and conflict. “Much later in another evacuation in Buluan, Maguindanao, it was my mother who died.”
Stories of displacements and violence such as these are embedded in the collective memory of families living along the Rio Grande. Each generation has its own story in an unending saga of conflict that Mindanao historians say are rooted on discriminatory land laws and flawed settler colonialism policies.
To the Ponso family, Zaida’s death marks another episode in a continuing narrative.
The boat suddenly jerked. A log floating on the river almost hit it and were it not for the boatman hastily steering the boat away, it would have capsized. After another half-hour, the boat finally cruised to a stop.
From the river, a small procession that included the baby’s father, mother, three young siblings, uncle, aunts, cousins, a barangay kagawad (councilor), a journalist, and Fr. Vasquez walked towards the village center.
A school stands in the middle with a streamer posted “Barangay Ganta Evacuation Center” but there is no one around. Nearby are some trees that lie fallen on the ground.
“Casualties,” a villager said, “from a howitzer bomb.”
Now on single file, the group walked towards a wide open field past through cogon grasses and a row of trees until reaching a large, deep muddy pit. Everyone removed their slippers and shoes, and sloshed through the mud on barefoot. Then to reach the other side, everyone had to clamber up a rickety bamboo pole serving as bridge over a small creek.
Another half kilometer of walking and finally there, not far away, is a cluster of nipa huts. “This is where we live,” exclaimed the baby’s uncle who had carried Zaida in his arms all the way from Datu Piang.
Without losing time, the preparation and rituals of burial begin. The men ripped out four slats of coco lumber from the benches to be used for burial while the others started digging a shallow grave.
Once the grave had been readied, the uncle unwrapped the mat and gently lifted the baby Zaida, whose white linen is now stained with a few specks of blood. He laid her down in another hole dug inside the earth, firmly placed the wooden slats over the grave and the mat over it, and finally covered it with soil.
The pandita then sprinkled water over the soil and knelt on the ground, praying over the grave as two men, one on each side, held a blanket over him, swaying it to and fro.
He began to open a page of the Koran and chanted a prayer, his melancholic voice sailing through the vast open field where only the wind stirs. In the distance, there is a kite flying.
Baby Zaida is finally laid to rest.
The mourners proceeded to her family’s hut that consists of only one tiny room abandoned since April. Only a cat lives there now whose left eye is soaked with dry blood and looks famished.
Besides the cat, there is only a worn-out baby hammock and a broken jar that spoke of how the family lived in squalor and deprivation.
“That is for the children so they could see the fields,” the father, Nasser, finally spoke, proudly pointing at a small window.
He then led us towards the back of the hut and showed a large crater on the ground. The men debated whether it came from a 105 or a 155 howitzer but on that day of the shelling sometime last April, the teenage boy Yusof was almost hit.
“It was a miracle he escaped,” his father said. But shrapnels of the bomb hit the side of the nipa hut and damaged a part. So scared of the bombs, the Ponso family fled their home to protect the children only to face tragedy later on in the evacuation camp.
Soon, it would be sundown and everyone prepared to leave. Just then, an old woman hobbled her way across the field, holding a cane, her back hunched, and struggled to walk fast. The moment she saw her son, Nasser, she wept and kissed her grandchildren.
It was only then she learned that her granddaughter Zaida was already gone. She came too late for the burial.
“That’s Balyen,” said Bai Didu. “She chose to stay behind because she’s too weak and frail to be able to join us in the journey and live in an evacuation camp. She told us she’d rather die here.”
Once again, the family bade goodbye to Balyen who stood in the fields, watching her children and grandchildren leave, until they are no longer in sight. “That is how cruel war is, particularly so for the very young and the very old,” Bai Didu said.
It was late afternoon when finally the boat arrived in the poblacion of Datu Piang. The family started making their way back to their life in the evacuation center, the couple’s two children carried on each of their backs and one walking while holding her mother’s hand.
“Sukran,” Nasser and Tot thanked everyone, extending their hands in gratitude. This time, their faces brightened. It was the only time they had ever smiled. (Charina Sanz/Special to MindaNews)
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