ZAMBOANGA CITY – Some five barangays located in ground zero of the so-called September 2013 Zamboanga Siege that saw fierce fighting between government troops and a few hundred rebels of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) still try to pick up the pieces they had left.
One of these barangays is Mariki, which lies at the outermost edge of conflict zone, and was the hardest hit in the siege, with all of its hundreds of houses on stilts razed to the sea.
Fast forward five years later, the government, through the National Housing Authority (NHA), has built some 642 hardiplex houses in stilts, with wooden floors and G.I. sheets roofing.
According to 65-year old barangay captain Palma M. Hasim, some 1,945 of the community’s over 6,000 families that lived there before the war have returned to live in the houses or have built one on their own resources.
Along with the houses, the NHA also built concrete 2.5-meter wide boardwalks through the center of the village and along its perimeters, including narrower wooden walkways in between the rows of houses.
It was, in fact, one of those walkways that recently collapsed while a Zamboanga City mayor and two other Congressmen were inspecting the village and fell ingloriously into the littered seawater below.
“Normality has somewhat returned to my barangay”, Hasim, who has been barangay captain since 2010, said. “I could have run again in the coming elections, but I am too old already. My younger sister is instead running unopposed.”
This passing-down of village power from generation to generation is typical in a tradition-clad culture of Muslim communities. All of its residents are Muslims.
“There are still hundreds of Badjao families who were displaced and then resettled in other coastal barangays in the city who want to return here,” she laments.
The shallow sea beneath the community makes it much easier for typical Badjao fishermen to ply their bancas out to and from the nearby sea right up to their houses.
The returnees operate sari-sari stores, while others go out to the sea daily to catch fish, usually just enough for their family’s daily food need.
Other residents are employed, while some run small businesses elsewhere in the city.
Only one NGO-supported livelihood seems to exist in the village, a sewing shop funded by Australian Aid.
The local Zamboanga-Basilan Integrated Development Alliance, Inc. (ZABIDA) regularly conducts relief and humanitarian activities, Hasim said, which include feeding programs and day-care classes of children.
The considerable reduction of Mariki’s population has also resulted in a much-reduced Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) for Mariki, she said.
“Our personnel’s allowances are now smaller than before.”
The elementary school was re-opened in 2015, but a part of its damaged classrooms has yet to be repaired.
Its health center was also burned, and a corner of the barangay office now serves as a health center.
The southern boundary of Mariki is lined with mangroves, and Hasim hopes to build an eco-tourism facility there that could serve as livelihood source for her constituents.
But before these dreams could happen, the village needs more basic utilities. It does not have piped-in potable water, and residents fetch water from the nearby barangay of Rio Hondo. There is no power supply, and houses rely on solar power donated by the government.
Hasim is still awaiting the establishment of a police outpost there, although the military has a permanent checkpoint in its center. Included in the wish list, of couse, is a new health center building and the repair of the school building.
Hasim said her constituents are badly in need of livelihood opportunities within Mariki as well.
She recalls that during the first five days of the siege, she remained in the barangay hall to assist her constituents to seek safety and relief, amid flying bombs and bullets and their burning houses.
Mariki, a young barangay which was officially proclaimed as a village only in 1987, grew out of a “policy of attraction” program of the Marcos government, when hundreds of MNLF leaders and members were enticed to “return to the fold of the law” after the signing of the 1974 Tripoli Agreement.
Since 1975, many rebel returnees were resettled in Mariki, in a village then called “Sahaya”, which was formerly a sitio of the old Rio Hondo barangay.
Hence it is somewhat ironic that the village was burned down in an MNLF attack in 2013. Yet the fact that it is now rising again shows that its former rebel families are resilient and their cause for peace will never perish.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1038116
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