Socio-Pastoral Institute

School of Dreams, Bridge of Tears

by Jose Clemente

It doesn’t seem to get any easier even though I’ve done this drill a few times before. You’d think that a bit of practice brings confidence and poise but you’d be wide of the mark because none of those, not even a smidgen of those are pending with me now just when I need them. Even though I have my dependable hiking boots laced securely on and the jerry-rigged houses are packed so close together that it’s a simple task to keep a hand clutched to walls, posts or bare beams at all times, I’m still petrified as I unhurriedly inch my way forward one uncertain step at a time over this unconvincing, swaying bamboo bridge.

We’re in Leon Kilat, an urban poor Muslim settlement of about 500 stilt houses packed into a solid, heaving mass of material and humanity on the water’s edge of Pagadian City. The reputation of this place is that it’s the mother-warren of drug peddlers, hardcore thieves, hired killers and cut-throat pirates so it is a rare prospect indeed to see dandy interlopers ineptly negotiating the maze of rickety, patch-work bamboo bridges that take you around this outlandish labyrinth of teeming, jumbled, rough and ready shelters that clutch thousands of lives.

All this is made more intimidating when you take into account that Pagadian City is widely acknowledged as the wild west of the Philippines because over here, business, political and personal issues, plain grudges and petty resentments are settled decisively with frontier justice. Hence the never ending rounds of assassinations, involuntary disappearances, police saturation raids, forced migrations, drug wars and vendetta killings or “ridos.”  It’s like a crazy merry-go-round with everyone super-glued to their seats so that no one can get off albeit their stomachs are inside-out already from the violent whirling, spinning ride.

We have been working here as well as in 3 other equally depressed Muslim communities in the vicinity for several years now. With our funding agency, Christian Aid and our local Moro partner, Ummah Fi Salam, we are trying to promote peace by empowering the Muslim urban poor communities so that they are able to address their issues – political participation, cultural marginalization, access to health care and education, land tenure, peace and order – through skillful non-violent means. The key is to ensure that their struggle to claim their rights and to participate in action for the general welfare of the community is rooted on faith and spirituality. It’s a slippery slope we are navigating and after many years of striving, we still move to the idiosyncratic pulse of two steps forward, one step back.

Oh yes, the reason why we are carefully crossing the bamboo bridges is because we want to get a glimpse at the classroom for the adult literacy course that Sr. Agnes built at the outermost periphery of this community. Of note is that this stilt-town is still expanding so the outside edge is constantly shifting further and further to the ocean.

Sr. Agnes is the head of our office’s adult literacy program for women. This undertaking is one of the key ingredients of our inimitable brew of interventions in the community alongside leadership development, interfaith dialogue, health education, clean-up drives, feeding program and so on. Sr. Agnes is the foremost reason why what they said could never happen transpired – that illiterate women from the Samal tribe would bother, at this late stage in their lives, to learn to read and write. The Samals are a sea-faring tribe, so people assumed that they have little desire for literacy. Sr. Agnes proved them wrong; after a shaky start the course took off like a possessed missile on a mission.

The illiteracy rate among the Moros is very high but among the Samals, it is depressingly excessive. I don’t have the numbers nailed down because illiteracy is an elephant in the room that no one mentions but I would say it is about 50-60 percent of the population. I come to that figure because of an experience a few years back when a huge fire wiped out another community near Leon Kilat and we distributed relief goods. To ensure proper allocation, we produced a list and asked the qualified aid recipients to sign their names when they take out the austere hoard of goods. I was surprised that a vast number of recipients were unable to do signatures. A quick thinking CB sister, Sr. Rosalie saved the day when she suggested that we get a soot-blackened rice pot and use that to get their fingerprints instead.

Sr. Agnes is a young CB sister who came in the adult literacy for women project at its inception. Given that there are no ready made modules on adult literacy and that the office has no prior experience on this, she had to pretty much snatch everything up from its bootstraps. Fortunately, she was provided with outstanding help by her own mother who is a teacher by profession and vocation.

Our challenge to Sr. Agnes is that the program not be just about teaching the women how to decode and encode the alphabet but that it also stimulate the women to undertake the journey of self discovery and greater awareness. What’s more, we asked her to develop a team of Muslim volunteers from the marginalized communities that will eventually take over the program when we are gone and out of here.

In terms of qualification, Sr. Agnes has some experience teaching in public schools but what she really brings to the table, what she really has in abundance is the fire in the belly – the unshakable mixture of courage and determination to go where she is most needed to bring life-blessings to the poor. Yes as a Catholic, she believes in the life hereafter but she also believes in life here and now which is why she endeavors to bring food, education, health, housing and so on to the excluded and marginalized.

By the way, did I mention that we are not into converting Muslims? We are more into the projection of faith rather than in the conversion of peoples of other faiths. Our God is the God who loves diversity; that is the God we believe in.

Against all odds, Sr. Agnes started the adult literacy program about a year ago. The first batch produced all of 5 graduates from an initial field of 7 – not a very promising start if you look at it from the hard perspective of time, effort and resources expended versus outcomes secured. Luckily, we are more than about the bottom line. Our office is convinced that if we are able to teach a few adults how to read, it will create an undulation, a swelling of the spirit in the community that will tear down the walls of humiliation and silence that keep many shackled to a life of ignorance and oppression. Sure enough through the power of the testimonies of those who learned to read, others were inspired and so they too came, and they came in great numbers. The second batch produced 33 graduates and an additional throng of mothers waiting to join the next cycle of the 4-month adult literacy course. Even now, as we are preparing for the 3^rd Batch, the men have overcome their dithering and they too are asking when we will start a literacy course for them.

When the program started about a year ago, Sr. Agnes held the classes on the homes of the different students themselves on a turning round basis. But when the number of students swelled several folds, she had to find a place that is accessible, available and robust enough to hold more than a dozen students at a time. There was none in the area appropriate for their use so she moved heaven and earth to secure some funds to build one. With 7,000 pesos in her pocket, Sr. Agnes then got the necessary nod and say-so from the local leaders to build in the area. She then recruited local volunteers to erect a brand new classroom on stilts. Unfortunately, the only space available is in the outer edge of the settlement, hence, the need to traverse the dangerous bridge to reach the classroom.

“I will not fall, I will not fall” I kept repeating to myself as I made my way on the swaying bamboo poles stitch-joined by distrustful nylon strings and rusty nails.

As an aside, we refer to the network of slap-dash bamboo conduits as the “Bridge of Tears” because Nora, our finance officer came here once to accompany Sr. Agnes to her class and she broke down in tears when she saw how many children have gashes and scars from falling off the bridge. Nora then campaigned for the renovation and mending of the bridge and so about a year ago we repaired the most dilapidated section of the network, about 60 meters or so of it.

After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time negotiate the bridge with unblinking eyes and light feet we came to a clearing in the forest of make-do shelters. Finally the now weathered classroom lay before our eyes.

“Ahh so this is it,” I mumbled to myself, “the school of dreams.”

Yeah it was a patch-work of planks, bamboo stilts and thatched nipa roofing just like all the rest of the other houses in the Leon Kilat settlement. It was remarkably unremarkable.

“Heto na yon,” was all Sr. Agnes said; she never referred to the classroom again.

With surprising swiftness, women came out of their gloomy houses to quickly approach us. Soon Sr. Agnes was encircled by a handful of women eager to exchange a few kind words or to just spend time with her in wordless communion. We were, of course introduced and every one was polite but it was obviously Agnes they wanted to talk to. At an opportune moment, I broke away from this strange vision of Muslim women around a Catholic sister and slipped into the classroom.

I sat in a corner by the window to take in the full weight of what being here in this place at this very moment means.

Bishop Julio Labayen constantly reiterates that “the Church is the people” and not the building. This is why he does not unduly exert himself regarding infrastructure and construction; he dedicates, on the other hand, all his earthly powers to help people reach their fullest potential. That is what being Church means to Labayen!

I celebrate that Sr. Agnes vibrates to the same inspiration and spirit. She built that classroom from scratch and she must be proud of it but that structure acquires value and import only in its relation to the empowerment and development of the women in the community. Split from that mission, that classroom is just a low-cost, Mickey Mouse, structure of sticks and poles on the water’s edge.

We are not about building houses, although we built over a hundred when one of the communities we work with was razed to the ground by fire. We are not about building toilets and bridges even though we built a few of those in several communities. We are not about building classrooms, although we built one now in Leon Kilat. We are really about helping develop grassroots leaders with the awareness, commitment and organizing skills to help their communities confront and solve their issues. We are about bringing life-blessings to the poorest of the poor. We are about spirituality and total human development.

That is who we are and that is what we do.

So we celebrate the school of dreams that Agnes built; never mind that you have to cross the bridge of tears to get there, it’s worth it. But we celebrate more the previously illiterate women who have grown and are now stretching their wings, exploring how they can make a difference in their families and their community.

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