Saturday, November 10, 2007 Maxey: P100, and a nylon rope By Ram Maxey Bar None
SHE was 12 years old (other reports say 11) and in Grade VI at the Ma-a Elementary School, Davao City, when Mariannet L. Amper tied a nylon rope around her neck and hanged herself in their house last November 2. How odd. Or did she intentionally pick All Souls' Day in which to separate her soul from her body? We can only wonder.
It's so hard to understand why some people take their own lives. But a 12-year-old girl committing suicide? It's beyond understanding. Mariannet was no ordinary 12-year-old girl, although what she had in common along with hundreds of thousands of Filipino kids was that she belonged to a very poor family. In fact the hovel she called "home" has neither electricity nor running water.
Mariannet was different from the others in that she kept a diary in which she occasionally jotted down her frustrations, like the countless times she was absent from school because she had no money for transportation or "baon". She had simple girlie wants, like having a new pair of shoes or a school bag. She did want to own a bicycle so she would not need fare money anymore in going to school.
Then one day she needed 100 pesos for a school project that she had to submit in class on November 5. Her parents told her they did not have the money. That may have been the last straw. This time she wanted just one thing more: a length of nylon rope.
It makes you wonder. How many more Mariannets are out there somewhere who have been dreaming the same dreams, feeling the same frustrations and wanting to end it all for all we know? There must be many, only they are not as desperate as Mariannet had become to end their lives courtesy of a nylon rope, or a knife or a gun or jumping off a tall building or throwing themselves in the path of a speeding vehicle.
And how many more teachers out there are so mindless as to require their poor pupils to submit projects costing one hundred pesos, which to many poorest of the poor parents already constitutes a fortune? If there are 40 pupils in Mariannet's class, P4,000 is a hefty sum. You wonder just what sort of a project her teacher had in mind that would cost 100 pesos per pupil.
This angle is worth investigating. In our educational system it is quite commonplace for teachers to require their pupils to cough up various amounts for some so-called "projects". For instance, why did Mariannet's school project have to cost her exactly P100 and not P97.00 or P103.50? Why the round number? Get the drift?
I ask that question because it was that school project costing P100 that was likely the last straw in a list of frustrations for her. Something snapped in the young girl's mind at that juncture. Her personal problems were just too much to handle for one so young, so full of dreams.
A government official was heard saying that Mariannet's suicide is an "isolated case". Maybe, but her being very poor is certainly NOT an isolated case. There are potential Mariannets still out there.
