Red Stars

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“Red Stars,” Rukmah Panti Atab called the tiny crimson flowers nesting on a vine with needle-like leaves. The vine was climbing a double-arched bower by the façade of her house.

We were in the newly-rebuilt village of Delabayan, 12 kilometers uphill south of the Poblacion facing the Iligan Bay, about 30 kilometers west of Iligan City.

“Their seeds, like this house, were given to us by the pastors and the soldiers,” Rukmah continued to explain as I stopped to admire the earthly constellations by her door.

Two years ago the entire village was torched to ashes but today the rows of houses and their vibrant gardens of dahliahs and zinnias and chayote and squash and gabi and corn, and clotheslines drooping heavy with washed malong had hidden the damage done by war to the earth and to memories.

The houses made of sawali with galvanized iron roofing were twice bigger that those built for low-cost housing in the cities.

“You know Major Mac? He is our Papa here. Santa Claus, too, for many,” she said.

Major Mac is Major Johnny Macanas, spokesperson of the Fourth Infantry Division of the Philippine Army in Cagayan de Oro City.

We have heard of this re-building project of about 80 houses “that rivals Habit for Humanity’s for its quality” from Maj. Macanas himself in December 2000. The first invitation to see this village reborn six kilometers from Inudaran also came from the armed forces public relations officer after a video film of the pastors’ benevolent free carpentry was showcased as pre-supper treat at a party at the army camp.

It was a time when the military, especially the Marines, got the flak for the rampage they inflected on villages along the warpath with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) way back in March and April 2000.

We declined to join the trek then, ever wary of public-image retouches. Or even just a semblance of it.

We were here, part of a convoy of sojourners commemorating the siege of Kauswagan and eventually the burning of Delabayan. The jaunt through the wounds and scars of local history was part of an interreligious peace summit.

Organized by Pakigdait, a tri-people organization committed to peacebuilding, the summit was hatched by local government officials and civil society organizations at the culture-of-peace workshop sponsored by the Local Government Support Program (LGSP) a month before.

Earlier the caravan went to a shrine for Sarip Cadapan, a Maranao warrior and hero and to Fort Almonte, the stone fortress built to ward off Sultan Kudarat’s sorties in the 1800s in the adjacent town of Linamon.


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Noranisa Ismael and Asa Macarambon ran to meet Pilar Bonete as soon as they saw her alight from the jeepney. Bonete hugged them tight as well. She called by their first names. They called her Ma’am, the former school principal who stayed with them for 14 years before she retired in 1995.

Noranisa had golden feet, Bonete remembered.

Nisa was the skinny kid who sprinted for gold medals during athletic meets. That was before she got married at 18, and had eight kids, one after another as if they were dashing out from her womb into the earth’s stale air.

I learned to run again, Ma’am, when we had to flee from here, said Nisa.

Nisa ran, five kids in tow, down the valley, crossed rivers, through the forests of Munai and then hiked all the way to Marawi where she and her kids stayed at a classroom at the Amai Pakpak Elementary School.

There was no time to salvage anything from their houses.

But anything, any thing at all, bisag luwag lang, a piece of cutlery or an album of photographs would have been an encumbrance, she speculated, when you are fleeing for your life.

After the fire, only grove of betel palm trees was left standing by the cliff. The nuts and leaves are a cultural heritage to the Maranaos. Their elders would chew these with a bit of lime.

Bonete retired seven years ago and had not been come back. Now the retiree is president of the women’s cooperative in Barangy Paiton and active at the Chapel of San Vicente Ferrer. She joined the peace summit because she was curious about “this thing called culture-of-peace” that the Catholic parish priest Reggie Quijano was always preaching on Sundays.

The trip to Delabayan, her former workstation, was then an unexpected bonus.

Despite the frequent clashes between the Bisayan settlers and the native Maranaos, she was always spared. Despite the diference in religion, she has earned the respect of the Delabayan residents.

Rukmah, the class valedictorian the year Bonete assumed the post as principal in 1981, went to college and only lacked a year before she could have graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education.

But there were lessons she learned well in school and remained thankful for.

“Like, just having only three kids. I could not imagine how I could have run had I more kids, “ Rukmah said.

Further counting the imprint of higher education on her life, she went on, “Like, knowing how to return the generosity of others, even if indirectly. We sent several bundles of malong to Camiguin when a flood hit several villages there.”

It became difficult to go to school with the growing kids and her husband working in a construction firm in Saudi Arabia. At least, even if she could not teach, she helped her sons with their homework.

Her husband bought a jeepney after he came home from Saudi three years ago. They named the 32-seater passenger vehicle, Anwari, after their eldest son.

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Rukmah’s eldest son, Anwari was playing with wooden tops made from the branch of wild guava. But most of the kids were playing with matchbox cars, dolls and puzzles. Her two other sons joined a play of tag on top of Moonlight, the neighbor’s jeepney parked by the roadside. We passed by the children on our way to the mosque. Rukmah wanted me to see the mosque the Christian pastors had helped to rebuild.

“We missed to get the gift boxes so my sons did not get any toys which were distributed two months before we came back. Those are still from the pastors and the soldiers who built this house and gave flower seeds and brand-new malong and kombong.”

“We stayed too long in Marawi. I enrolled my children at the Amai Pakpak Elementary School. Oh, we took a long time coming home,” she said.

And they came home first to mourn the death of her parents who died one after the other, right after the war. They waited for the war to end before they could die.

“We still live in fear,” Rukmah the orphan confessed in a whisper as we entered the new mosque on unshod feet, veils covering our heads.

Afraid of whom? The soldiers? There were many in the village, about 50, milling around, escorting the visiting party which included four whites. Chris, a Dutch and a Mennonite, right at this moment, would also be thinking about the difficulty of living with and among soldiers with their guns and grenades.

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I waved a hand at the barangay chair who was telling stories to Carino Antequisa, Chris Vertucci, Eric Torch and Myla Leguro. I waved my hand again but it looked like he did not recognize me at all or maybe he was busy sorting out his answers to questions thrown by inquisitive representatives from funding agencies.

In April last year, in Marawi at Amai Pakpak Elementary School he had told me of the courteous army sergeant who invited them back to Delabayan.

Even if the military would also provide the trucks to ferry their families back, he hesitated.

“We have kept on fleeing and returning, returning and fleeing all these years. Massacres here and ambushes there. We want a new life from where we don’t have to flee,” he said so resolutely that it was not difficult to believe him. He also was wary of soldiers and rebels alike, he told me.

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Rukmah was more afraid of the em-ays, (“MI”, short for rebels belonging to the MILF)

“I am less afraid of soldiers. My father who was the village elder for 21 years, always told all of us to trust the government. That’s why we are more afraid of the MILF. They don’t like us and they are just around, in those mountains. All they have to do is cross that river below and they will be here by the betel trees in less than an hour.

The mountains she was pointing to me on our way from the mosque back to her frontyard were cumulus clouds and the river below was a glossy gray thread in the valley.

“Here,” Rukmah said as she thrust a handful of something into my right palm.

“Plant them right away,” she admonished. “If you take care of them, they should be flowering by Christmas.”

In my palm were the ant-sized brown seeds of the climbing plant with the blood-colored blossoms Rukmah Panti Atab called the “Red Stars”.