(This piece, written by Suhaini Nasher D. Pagadilan, won first place in the Essay-Writing Contest sponsored by the Office of Provincial Board Member Jeff Adiong in June 2020, on the theme “Hope Amidst All: Ramadhan in the time of pandemic; Eid’l Fitr on the siege’s anniversary.” Pagadilan passed away on January 2, 2021 at the age of 33).
It is the end.
It may be the end.
It will be the end.
Or not.
You choose.
Marawi is still in ruins and its people are fettered to a huge trap of dire uncertainties. The struggle has been enormous ever since and the sufferings are piling up like dumped garbage in a wasteland for the past three years. The stench in the air is already so nauseating, you would want to throw up and fall down to the ground; to the damp and tarred surface of Ground Zero.
I do not remember the date anymore because my entire system refused to go back to that dreadful day that started it all. Yet, the pains kept coming back and the resulting agony gets deeper and more excruciating to the soul. Three years and practically nothing has changed. The wounds were not healed and it seems that the world around Marawi’s sick condition has moved on unwantedly.
And now, three years of homelessness, hunger and injustice is coupled with a suffocating pandemic that is COVID-19. The ropes are not loose yet but we are tied much tighter by an enemy that we would never see. God knows which throat will break next. The sad part is that we have left more people into the open: clueless evacuees who might be gasping for their last air in the next hours or so while many simply pass by their already dilapidated tents that were never sturdy in the first place.
Being hopeful these days is exhausting. We are all fighting a war we could never seem to win.[]
We are rather losing every day, every week, every month from the years that gone by. I may sound exaggerating but this is the truth I have come to accept.
It makes it difficult for me to convince my own students in my community engagement and solidarity classes that we can still cure the ills and fix the gaps when they, themselves, are still oblivious of both the bigger and smaller pictures of the Marawi scenario. Their perspectives have gone so limited, perhaps because of the same hopelessness they already share with all of Marawi.
This is both saddening and frustrating.
But God intervened in a very special way.
Ramadhan came in our most unprepared form, similar to how unprepared many of us were from three years ago. This time, however, the unpreparedness was not due to being internally displaced but because of the growing fears of a corona virus that affected the entire globe. We were mandated to stay in our homes which logically limited our preparations. We bought supplies in panic because of scarcity and soaring prices. We all have to conform and obey to tight protocols. We have to strictly observe social distancing when out in the streets. We have to reach our havens before curfews are off. All summed up to our new normal.
As a trade-off, we were able to come together as families in almost all of our dealings.[]