Hope in the year of fire and rain

Their house swept away by flood as the Iligan River overflowed in the wee hours of Dec. 17, 18-year-old Alemar Buenaflor returned to its banks to gather sand and gravel which his family sells for P50 per sack.

This is why Buenaflor’s family shunned the evacuation center for a shack in their old riverside place in Barangay Mahayahay in Iligan City.

“We cannot move on with our lives by simply lining up for free food,” the third-year high school student said. “We don’t only need food. I need to earn for my school needs and those of my younger brothers and sisters.”

Like Buenaflor, Bayug Island resident Teresita Ragasajo, 71, hopes to rebuild her life that was ruined by Tropical Storm “Sendong” and the manmade disaster that it unraveled. Until now, she is still searching for her missing husband, a son-in-law and a granddaughter.

Ragasajo said a permanent house she would share with her youngest daughter, the only child staying with her, would be anchor enough to start anew.

Imbibing a defiant hope is what most of Mindanao’s peoples would be taking as a legacy of 2011, a year defined by fire and rain.

The havoc of Sendong in Northern Mindanao and the continuing torrential rains that brought more areas on the island under deep waters brought tragic conclusion to 2011, its final quarter filled with climactic events.

The year was greeted with renewed hopes for a peaceful settlement of the over four-decades-old Moro and communist rebellions that created major battlegrounds from Mindanao’s poorest regions.

In January, government ended its bickering with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) over technicalities in the negotiations and announced that it was ready to resume formal talks.

Five formal meetings had taken place since February and the negotiating panels are looking forward to threshing out a framework for a political settlement next month.

In February in Oslo, Norway, government negotiators met with their counterparts in the National Democratic Front (NDF), political front of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Talks have not moved forward ever since although there were activities among the technical working groups.

Eight months into the Oslo face-off, the CPP took advantage of the absence of a ceasefire pact with the government to carry out its vow to “punish” mining and logging companies for supposedly plundering the country’s natural wealth.

In a move that panders on growing sentiment against unchecked environmental destruction in the Caraga region, the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), attacked a nickel mining operation in Taganito, Claver, Surigao del Norte, on Oct. 3.

The offensive has been an offshoot of the swaths of farmland destroyed for mining extraction. The mining industry likened it to the stealthy Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor which triggered the Second World War.

The mood for war deepened as forces of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) clashed with Philippine Army troops in Al-Barka, Basilan, on Oct. 18, resulting in the death of 24 people, 19 of them soldiers.

The scale of casualties led to hasty calls for abandoning the peace negotiations with the Moro rebels and pursuing an all-out war. Although these were roundly rejected by President Aquino, more than 20,000 people fled their homes in Zamboanga Sibugay during the government pursuit of “lawless elements.”

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has kept mum about its findings on the Al-Barka clash. Its troop deployment, which overlooked ceasefire coordination mechanisms with the MILF, and the involvement of fresh trainees have remained a mystery.

Nonetheless, its silence exposed some cracks in the military establishment. How much of it is really committed to the primacy of the peace process when dealing with the Moro and communist insurgencies?

The rains of cool December would have been a welcome respite from the fiery events. But not the scale brought by Sendong, especially among people of Northern Mindanao who have known the region throughout practically their lifetimes as typhoon-free.

In barely a day of fury—winds and 180 millimeters of rain that poured mostly between 8 p.m. and midnight—Sendong’s visit claimed at least 1,200 lives and affected almost 700,000 people in 13 provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao, according to a Dec. 26 report of the United Nations’ Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Actions (UN-Ocha).

Some 250,000 people are in dire need of food assistance, the agency added.

In recent memory, the disaster is second in direness to that of the yearlong war between government and the MILF beginning in August 2008 when a botched Moro homeland deal that displaced some 400,000 people.

It exposed the true ecological state of Northern Mindanao, whose mixed economy is the largest on the island and among the fastest growing nationwide.

The 10-kilometer line of logs floating in the Mindanao Sea found by Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliaries during a reconnaissance mission, as well as those along some 5-km coastline in Iligan attest to weak environmental law enforcement.

Logging and mining are again on the spotlight and needed to be reviewed as a natural resource use policy. People fear that unabated extraction amid very weak regulation could further eat away Mindanao’s natural resiliency to disasters.

Moreover, the disaster revealed the moral and institutional capacities of the leaders and local government bureaucracies of flood-hit communities.

Iligan and Cagayan de Oro City, where the UN-Ocha said 60 percent of the humanitarian needs are concentrated, are new to this scheme. The disaster newbies were introduced to the thin line between moral compassion and careless practicality.

While Cagayan de Oro chose to dump the  foul-smelling decomposing bodies that remained unidentified in the garbage landfill, Iligan was defiant to give them dignity.

And, even as the Iligan local government had shortcomings in aid delivery to flood survivors, it has been looking for a “permanent solution” to their shelter problems this early.

Next month, Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz hopes to churn out the first of “decent housing units” for homeless residents, like Buenaflor and Ragasajo, for them to really start a hopeful 2012.

A similar transfer to higher, safe grounds is planned for those displaced in Cagayan de Oro.