For Nanay Librada, one is never too old to study

GEMAL. Photo by Charisse Ursal

One is never too old to learn the ABCs. This is what Librada Gemal, 77, strongly believes in. She is a Grade 4 pupil at  Tisa 2 Elementary School in Cebu City where she learns basic education along with 30 others, mostly 10-year-old children.

Fondly called “Nanay” by everyone in the school, Gemal says she decided to go back to school because she wanted to learn how to read in English.

Gemal was 74 when she enrolled in Grade 1 in 2010 after she felt envious of the children who knew how to read. “There was this song, ‘No read no write,’ so I told myself that I would go back to school,” she says.

Gemal, a native of Dumanjug town in southern Cebu, was never given the chance to study because her family was too poor to send her to school.

Her mother sold rice cakes while her father didn’t have a job because of a disability. Being the eldest of 10 children, she had to help her parents earn a living.

She recalls that she didn’t have the time to play as she had to help her mother sell rice cakes.

When she turned 16, she worked as maid and gave her P30 monthly pay to her parents.

But some people made fun of her because she could not read and write. She knew how to count the money but did not know how to write the amount.

“I wanted to go to school because I didn’t want to be ignorant, and [so that people] wouldn’t laugh at me anymore,” she says.

Gemal was a housemaid for 14 years. She was 33 when she got married. But seven years later, her husband died. She raised her five daughters alone by selling cloths, working as a laundry woman and becoming a herbal masseuse.

In 2010, her daughter Janeth, who sells accessories in Barangay Kalunasan in Cebu City, left her two sons-– Lito, 12, and Jomar, 8, with her in Barangay Buhisan, also in Cebu City.

Janeth gave P100 a month to Gemal, which was hardly enough to sustain their needs for a day.

So Gemal continued to work as a laundry woman and masseuse to send her two grandsons to school.

While waiting for classes to be over, she would clean the school garden for free.

In 2010, she was hired as a school guard by former principal Dr. Howard Devilleres, and received P500 a month. After a month, Gemal’s yearning to go back to school returned.

She begged Devilleres to help her enroll in the class of Grade 1 teacher  Cecille Bartical because she felt envious of pupils who were in school.

Devilleres took pity on her and helped her prepare the enrollment papers.

Gemal didn’t disappoint.

Bartical said Gemal was determined to learn. To help her, Bartical would give her school supplies.

Although Gemal was no longer the school tanod, the school had sort of “adopted” her, according to school principal Jenalyn Rico.

Teachers would take turns in giving her money and school supplies for her and her grandsons. They would also include Gemal and the grandsons in the list of beneficiaries for the daily feeding program.

Fedelina Aytona, home economics personal coordinator, volunteered to give Gemal P500 every month. “I pitied the old lady. She cried when she lost her job as a tanod so I asked my husband if he would allow me to give her P500 every month. He agreed,” she says.

Aytona, who also prepares breakfast and snacks for Gemal, says Gemal serves as an “inspiration to the youth.”

“The old woman goes to school. Why not the young and those who have money?” she says. She adds education is for everyone who is willing to learn.

Everyone in the school loves Gemal,  Aytona says. “She serves as a mother to the children,” she says.

Gemal says she is lucky that she has found a second family in Tisa 2 Elementary School. If not for the help of Aytona, she adds, she would not be able to proceed with her elementary education.

Now she dreams of getting a college education. She says she wants to become a nurse because she likes taking care of people.

But reaching Grade 4 is already a big feat for her, she says, adding, “I am happy. I used to dream of going to school. But now I am in Grade 4, I know how to read and I can speak a little English. God is really good.”