A river runs through it -1

The symbolic bridge of trust and cooperation

was turned into a real bridge-- the footbridge

linking barrio Bobong to Kauyonan town across

the treacehrous Muleta River.

THEY call it the river of death, and every day

grade-two pupil Ronnie Ostria would swim across it

to go to school.

The Muleta River is picturesque: crystal-clear,

robust and swift as it snakes through a hidden

gorge in the mountain town of Kitaotao, Bukidnon

on its way south to Cotabato. But its beauty is

deceiving.

"Sudden flash floods have claimed many lives in the

river," warns Kitaotao Mayor Godifreda R. Gumahin.

"Once, a sick person from across the river was

being taken to the hospital. The patient and the

one carrying him were swept away by the river's

strong currents. They both drowned."

From Ronnie's home in barrio Bobong (population

442) on the edge of Kitaotao, the Kauyonan

Elementary School is up a cliff on the other side of

the river, while the Masimag Elementary School

(not to mention the New Nongnongan High School)

is eight kilometers away through a muddy trail.

"At first my father would swim with me across the

river on my way to school. When he felt I could

manage to swim on my own, he left me to swim on

my own," says Ronnie.

At six o'clock in the morning, when Bobong would

still be blanketed by mist, Ronnie would begin a

scary trek down a steep foot trail to the river bank

where he would shed his clothes. He would

carefully fold his shirt and shorts, and hold these

aloft on his right hand while his naked little body

navigates its way across the mercilessly cold

water.

Hoisting himself up on the opposite bank, Ronnie

would use his crinkled hands to wipe the droplets

of water from his body, and then, shivering, he

would put on his clothes again. Up he would go on

another two kilometers of steep mountain trail in

time for his 7:30 a.m. class.

Upon reaching his classroom, he would snatch his

notebooks and tattered books from under his chair

and do whatever assignments he can manage to

finish before the teacher arrives.

"I cannot study at home because I leave all my

stuff in school so they won't get wet when I cross

the river," Ronnie smiles ruefully.

Ronnie is only one of the barrio's schoolchildren

who have to go through this river-crossing ordeal.

Francisca N. Buton, a community leader in Bobong

whom everyone calls Nanay Francing, says up to

40 children study across the river. "It's no joke,"

sighs the 49-year-old ex-brangay council member

and resident midwife.

Gambling with life

Perhaps because schoolchildren associate going to

school with hardship, and because they make

certain sacrifices that hamper, instead of

facilitate, their education, it is not surprising that

many Bobong residents have not finished

elementary school.

As Mayor Gumahin attests, "most of them have not

gone beyond the primary grades".

Still, they are luckier than others.

A father and son crossing the river on the way to

school were dragged by strong currents. The boy

drowned. The father, who survived, went mad.

"Going to school here means to gamble [with] your

life," Nanay Francing laments.

It isn't just schoolchildren who suffer the vagaries

of the Muleta River.

Aside from the time "wasted" on accompanying

their children to school, and fetching them at the

end of the day, the adults of barrio Bobong rue the

opportunities wasted on them.

Theirs is an otherwise fertile land. All around

Bobong are rubber plantations, fields of sugarcane,

an endless sea of rice and corn. But most Bobong

residents have somehow lost the enthusiasm and

energy to till the barrio's 480 hectares of fecund

earth.

"How can we bring our harvest across the river to

the market?" Nanay Francing asks.

There is only one jeepney that goes to Bobong,

and it comes just once a week, on Fridays, which

is market day in Masimag in the neighboring town

of Don Carlos. The jeepney takes the barrio folk to

the market without their having to cross the river.

The jeepney arrives in Bobong at seven o'clock in

the morning and leaves for Masimag after an hour.

At 11 a.m. Bobong folk begin boarding the same

jeepney at the Masimag market for the return trip

to Bobong at 12 noon.

For Bobong folk who have to pay P10, one-way,

this is an expensive and not really feasible

arrangement.

But, as Mayor Gumahin says,"Let's face it, Bobong

is isolated".

"Its indigenous people have limited sources of

income. It's a depressed community," he adds.

Nisa Andriano, 27, Bobong's barangay secretary,

reports that the 82 households in Bobong barely

manage to put together P2,500 a month.

Instead of tilling the land, the men and women of

Bobong hire themselves out as agricultural

laborers. Many work in sugarcane plantations.

Even women wield the espading, a long steel blade

with a curved tip for hooking and then slicing off

the base of the sugarcane.

But only the men undertake the hazardous and

very tiring job of hauling off the harvested

sugarcane pieces to the waiting trucks.

Each truck can carry as much as 11 tons of

sugarcane. The laborers are paid P90 per ton for

both harvesting and hauling off the sugarcane. The

total amount - say, P90 multiplied by 11 tons, or

P990 per truck - is then divided among the number

of laborers working on that particular harvest.

It adds up to a meager income for such

backbreaking and physically dangerous work. The

sugarcane stumps are sharp and wounds are

unavoidable. And laborers have to provide for their

own meals.