PARADISE LOST: Nancy and the Maranaw Children (photo exhibit)

PARADISE LOST: Nancy and the Maranaw Children (photo exhibit)

PHOTO EXHIBIT -1960-1970

Some fifty years ago and beyond, Lanao was a haven of peace. Life was good and so simple then, when the lyrics of songs and the mountains came alive (remember the Sound of Music?)., and poets wrote a tribute rhyme to peace, beauty, love, and friendship. It was a time when one could bask in the moonlight until the wee hours of the morning without fear of being molested, not even by a ghost. It was the calm before the storm…

Unsurprisingly, Nancy fell in love with what used to be Paradise Lost in the mist of time. I remember seeing Nancy for the first time in 1964. She came to deliver a one-time lecture to our 6th-grade class at Marawi Pilot Elementary School. I saw her again a few months later at MSU Preparatory High School orientation classes for incoming freshmen. She later became our English teacher and adviser. We became real friends; I mean really close like an adopted family that now spans half a century. She met every member of my clan, and my family treated her like no stranger.

We trekked the mountains, walked the streams, and paddled across lakes and rivers. We slept on dirty floors and hiked long distances for sheer adventures. She took me and the two other kids to Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, for a month-long vacation while she and other Peace Corps volunteers conducted seminars for teachers in Tawi-Tawi. She bought us a small boat (canoe-like) that we paddled around the water channel between Bongao and Sangha. Unfortunately, it was stolen barely a week after we bought it.

She volunteered twice in the US Peace Corps, and when she could no longer stay in the Organization, she applied to teach at Dansalan College, where she remained for several more years. As soon as she left in 1970, if I remember correctly, turbulent political storms hit the country that eventually led to the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. The Muslim provinces in the South of the Philippines were especially hard hit. Christians in Marawi City had to run for their lives many of whom were not only my classmates; they were our neighbors and childhood friends. Life was never the same again.

When she came for a visit last February 2012, more than forty years after she left, we could not even bring her to ‘Tamparan’ across the lake where she lived for a few years as a teacher. When my cousins brought her to Dansalan College during the 3 days she stayed in Marawi for a visit, they had to provide surreptitiously armed escorts. They were scared to death that armed gangs would snatch her for ransom, which has become the order of the day in the land that used to be a “haven of tranquility.”

She and her company stayed with my brother at MSU for 3 days and 3 days in Manila with my family. Although I have just returned to KSA after my leave, I just have to find a way to go back to Manila. It is one favor I have to do for myself. The 3 days she stayed were short, but it was enough to establish rapport with my family. I found it a real surprise that my children banded with her like she was no stranger, although I have not really told my children the history of our past :-)

Thanks to today’s fantastic tech, one of the priceless mementos she kept was more than 800 slides she took during those years that recorded in living colors Lanao, the truly lost paradise. She had all the slides digitalized and recorded on a CD/DVD that she gave to us during her visit. We have this family group on Facebook where we post pictures of our parents. The one missing was a photo of our grandmother that no one seems to have kept. Surprisingly, Nancy had taken two pictures of her :-)

Disclaimer: If you are in these photos and do not like your photo to appear in them, please drop a comment, and I will remove it. Some of those in these photos are no longer with us. If you have a relative who passed away and does not like his/her photo to be in it, please drop a note, likewise, and I will remove it.

NLK

https://www.amazon.com/Nosca-Khalid/e/B01NA7APYQ