‘MY MOTHER was a tamla.’
This was Romeo’s prudent reply when asked what fueled his fervent passion in promoting the basic literacy program of Loreto, Agusan del Sur. Romeo Pascual, one of seven children, is a Manobo who grew up in Loreto. His father reached high school and his mother, well, never went to school.
Thus, when Romeo’s mother participated in activities that required her name, she would ask someone to write it for her and she’d seal it with her thumbmark or tamla. Romeo said he once saw his nanay longingly look at one document with her thumbmark, showed him the paper, and asked if the printed name was indeed hers.
In 1996, the mayor of Loreto, Herminio Reyes, himself a Manobo, allotted P301,000 for a literacy program called Lamdag ka sa Kaugmaong Lumadnon sa Loreto. Every year from 1996 to 2005, 10 public school teachers were hired to serve the barangays of Loreto.
Among the first students were the datus in hopes that theywould persuade others to educate themselves. But Loreto was heavily occupied by the leftist New People’s Army and public gatherings would sometimes be suspected as party education or indoctrination sessions of either the NPA or the military supporters.
The first classes were held in the houses of the datus but the number eventually swelled too big for the tiny private dwellings. Because there was yet no construction budget from DepEd, Romeo called on the community to build makeshift structures on a meager budget.
In Marang, a one-room school was put up--- with wide anahaw leaves for walls, nipa for the roof, and Loreto’s ochre loam for floors. The men gathered the bark of ilang-ilang trees, pleated and dried it under the sun until it was good enough to serve as a blackboard. The women and children in turn carefully selected stones from the river to use as substitute for chalk. The children wrote on recycled sheets of paper or on ilang-ilang barks too.
After teaching the opinion leaders some functional literacy, Romeo and the team of para-teachers consulted the community about putting up formal schools and presented this to the local government and DepEd. Since then, 15 formal schools have been put up in Loreto and the number is increasing.
Recently, Kapda, has been given a school building and a well-built adult literacy by the provincial government. A non-government organization based in Trento, the Caraga Heart and Mind Foundation, has also put up a modest junior high school. With these schools, daily life at Kapda has centered upon sending off its children to school.
Early mornings are about feeding and making them presentable. In the afternoon, there’s more feeding and talking about what has been learned in school and what needs to be reviewed for the next day or the following weeks. Older children can be seen looking for available light to share battered books with other kids.
The excitement for learning has minimized talks about conflicts of magahats, vice, or even producing more children. Romeo once remarked that maybe if a government spent more for education there would be less money to waste on wars. The rhythm of life in Kapda has indeed taken a new cadence with learning new ideas.
Meanwhile, in another Loreto town, the mother of Romeo Pascual leads a small group of elderly women fill in forms for the 4P’s program. Nanay, 77 years old, who was once a tamla can now read, do math, sign AND write her name. In between putting up schools, Romeo went home to painstakingly teach his own Nanay how to read and write. And her name, Wenifreda, is the sweetest word she has ever read next to her son’s whom she calls ‘Romeo, my life.’