After fleeing Marawi, kids keep longing for home
Faisania Khalid (left), 10, and her cousin Janisah Mohammadali, 11, transferred from Calocan Elementary School in Marawi City to Urdaneta 1 Central Elementary School in Urdaneta City. —WILLIE LOMIBAO
URDANETA CITY—Saidameh Baguinda, 11, cried as he remembered the day he and his family left Marawi City amid gunshots and explosions in his village on May 23.
They hid in a mosque where other people from his village also sought refuge.
But as fighting between the Maute group and government forces escalated through the afternoon, Baguinda said his family moved to a power plant for the night and squeezed into a truck with other refugees for a three-day trip to Iligan City.
“I was afraid,” said Baguinda, one of 12 students from Marawi who are now temporarily enrolled at Urdaneta I Central School (U1CS) here.
“I saw tanks and soldiers and some fighters of the other group. They were shooting at each other,” he said.
Baguinda and his family traveled to Manila and took a bus to this city to stay with relatives.
Faisania Khalid, 10, said she could no longer remember the day she and her family left Barangay Calocan in Marawi.
But she could not forget the gunshots and the explosions that seemed to get closer every hour to their house.
“We took a van to Iligan. It was a long ride because there were many people and vehicles on the road,” Khalid said.
They also traveled to Manila and took a bus to this city where her family had relatives.
Transferring schools
But unlike Baguinda, Khalid brought with her the report card issued by her adviser in Calocan Elementary School, where she completed Grade 3. “I heard that our school was destroyed,” Khalid said.
Robert Tababa, U1CS principal, said he had no problem with children transferring to his school without any credentials, adding that all they needed to prove was that they came from an area devastated by manmade or natural calamities.
Tababa said he had interviewed the children and their parents or guardians to make sure they were from Marawi.
If the children’s records were destroyed in the fighting, these could be retrieved from the Department of Education’s individual learner’s system where these were kept, he said.
Mohammad Yusoph Macabiro, 10, a pupil from Mindanao State University Integrated Laboratory School in Marawi, said he wished the fighting would end soon so that he could return home.
Missing Marawi
Right after the end of the school year in February, Macabiro, his two siblings and their father traveled to this city to visit their mother, who operated a business here.
He and his father were supposed to return to Marawi on May 23 when the fighting escalated.
“I want to return there, to finish my schooling there. I miss my friends. I do not even know what happened to them,” Macabiro said.
His younger siblings have also enrolled here.
A 32-year-old woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she was at U1CS on Thursday to talk to the Grade 5 adviser of her daughter, who had just transferred here from Wawalayan Elementary School in Marawi.
“We have relatives who have evacuated to Iligan and Cagayan de Oro cities. We want to help them but we do not know where to send our help,” she said.
She said her daughter, who spent her school break here, was supposed to return to Marawi to resume her studies. But her relatives told her not to send her daughter back because of the fighting.
Khalid said she wanted the conflict to end soon so that she could continue studying in Marawi until she became a doctor. “Marawi is a beautiful place. I miss my classmates,” she said.
But Baguinda no longer wants to return to Amai Pakpak Central Elementary School in Marawi. “I will finish my studies here,” he said. —GABRIEL CARDINOZA
