It's all worth it!

It was all worth going to all the recipient schools of the iSchools project in Caraga from the community mobilization conducted first week of October this year, especially in Lawigan National High School in Barangay Lawigan, Bislig City.

Lawigan was the first stop of our planned mobilization. Together with our project manager Mr. Jaymer Jayoma, our training coordinator Engr. Alex Demetillo and me, we reached the areas I never envisioned to visit in my lifetime. We may have been completely drained and physically exhausted, isolated from our families for a week, but the happiness and the huge smiles the project brings to the members of the community especially the students of the schools was all that mattered for me that week.

The mobilization was the first major step of engaging the schools principals, their teachers, students, the officers and members of the PTA, the barangay and municipal officials, and their respective congressmen into the implementation of the project in their area.

Lawigan National High School is situated south east of Bislig City, about 22 kilometers away from the city. Bislig is a fourth class city in the province of Surigao del Sur in Mindanao and is approximately 158 kilometers southeast of Butuan City

Off we go to Bgy. Lawigan
Spirits were high as this was the first trip planned for the mobilization and the first trip I have to make to Surigao del Sur. While I am from Mindanao, I never had the chance to go to Surigao del Sur while I was younger. Surigao is considered as one of the secluded provinces of the south and not one tourist spot is present in the area.

The team left at 4AM on September 26 from Butuan City to make sure we get to the school earlier than scheduled. I used to bring my own car in going to the different cities in Mindanao for my family’s comfort but this time, we were advised to take the regular bus instead as the roads are not still covered with cement. True enough, about 15 to 20 kilometers only of the road going to Bislig has been cemented yet. What could have been just a 3-hour trip, the journey was extended for another two hours. It would have been better for travelers if the buses going to Bislig are equipped with an air-condition system but not one bus travels to the place with such system.

The bus going to Bislig has an interval of two hours. This means that people on the road have the chance to ride any given bus going to Bislig every two hours only. It was no longer a surprise that the bus has to get in every passenger every time we pass someone along the road. We seem to have been packed like sardines inside the bus, sprinkled with limestone dust, and heated by the scorching heat of the sun.

The team arrived 930AM in Bislig City and proceeded to Barangay Lawigan. It was another difficult trip going to the outskirt barangay as only small jeeps and single motorcycles can make their way up to the place. Though it was only a 22-kilometer road stretch from the city to Lawigan, it took us over an hour to reach the school. The rough, jagged and uphill road going to the school prevents every vehicle to speed up.

Surigao del Sur is known to be the logging capital province of the south with the presence of the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines operating for few decades already processing lumber to produce papers. Different types of old and preserved trees can be identified along the sides of the road to Lawigan. It is in the place going to Lawigan that one has to shout to the other side of the mountain to call for a neighbor’s attention.

Figure 1.0: Not so fast. Members of the iSchools team are working to start the engine back before they reach Lawigan.

Conducting the mobilization proper
The warm welcome by Mrs. Josequita Iral, the principal, in the front gate of the school and the faculties of Lawigan National High School gave us a sigh of relief reaching their place away from harm. The team started the mobilization immediately and acknowledged the presence of the schools stakeholders. We saw the delight of every stakeholder as our project manager announced what the CICT – iSchools project will be providing to the school: 21 computers, an LCD projector, one-free internet connection and a series of trainings for the development of the faculties and the computer lab.

I could not remember how many people I shook hands with thanking us for considering Lawigan as a recipient to the project this year. I felt the huge impact of the project to them. “This time, our students have no longer to imagine pressing keys on cardboard box boxes as keyboards. They no longer have to see pictures and prototypes of monitors in carton boxes now that this project is here”, Mrs. Iral said after the mobilization.

I witnessed first hand how the students were disadvantaged and underprivileged of the chance to use and even touch computers since its existence. While it was difficult to believe, this may all be true to schools in the far-flung barangays in the countryside.

We were like supermen to the rescue to the students that we ourselves never have to be, and that I never wished for. But I was humbled on that experience. We left the school with a more mission-oriented view for the project: working for the welfare of the students who waits to get hold of what I considered mankind’s greatest invention, the computers.

Indeed, it’s all worth the pain we labored for the community mobilization.

Figure 2: Tired and hungry.

Students in an elementary school in far-flung Barangay Lawigan, Bislig City have to endure an hour-long walk every time they go to school and go home. Fortunately, the NORMISIST iSchools team passed by and allowed them to ride the vehicle. Engr. Alex Demetillo shares his food with the kids. The team has just completed its mobilization in Lawigan National High School on September 26, 2007 and also is going back home to Butuan City.