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Friday, July 21, 2006
Wenceslao: In violence-torn land
By Bong O. Wenceslao
People living far from the war site in Lebanon may not feel the urgency of evacuating Filipino workers there. But war is brutal and when the bombs start falling fear becomes real and the urge to flee magnified. The situation becomes even more complex when you are in a foreign land and your country is located hundreds of kilometers away.
I had experiences of being in a violence-torn place, and one of these has not been pushed far from the subconscious. In one of the hinterland barangays of Cebu, we were awakened at dawn by the sounds of gunfire not too far away. It turned out armed men raided the central part of the village and shot it out with some of the farmers there.
Three people would die in the clash and before noon, most of the villagers had evacuated to the lowlands. We—I was with my girlfriend then---chose to stay put hoping it would encourage others not to flee. For our safety, we stayed for the night in a farm hut. It was eerie. Dogs in deserted houses howled. Every noise roused us from sleep.
The next day, it became increasingly apparent that staying put was not the better part of valor. Food supply dwindled and without the farmers the flow of information on where danger lurked stopped. That night, we left for another village, enduring the three-hour walk in difficult terrain with only the stars and a half-moon lighting our way.
It is good that government has started transporting some of the fleeing Filipino workers in Lebanon to Damascus in Syria, where they will be brought to Manila in a chartered plane. Israel’s incursion is only for the pursuit of Hezbollah guerrillas, thus we can assume that most of the 30,000 Filipino workers in Lebanon are still safe.
But effort to repatriate affected Filipino workers have been slow partly because of the country’s limited resources and partly because of skewed government priorities. As our leaders engage in a tug-of-war for power, the welfare of workers that are propping up our economy are naturally forgotten.
TEXTREAX. From texter AAU, an Oponganon: “Reading your column about priests’ worldly possessions reminded me of Opon’s Virgen sa Regla parish. A priest there bought an SUV and refused to support the needs of the acolytes, etc.”
Virgen sa Regla is one of the bigger parishes in Cebu and therefore is more financially stable compared with the others. It is precisely because of this that money flow should be monitored.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ 0915-9228651/my blog: cebuano. wordpress.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 21, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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