She was on a visit to Mindanao’s poorest communities with two women companions, Lilly Wirz and Anna Rosa Gersbach when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo hobnobbed with the world’s richest and most powerful people at the world economic summit in Davos, Switzerland in January, this year.
Monica Baumann with Misfi and NGO workers during the updating of Theresa Ladeli projects in different parts of Mindanao
Baumann said she was inspired by Mother Theresa’s work with the poor in Calcutta, India and decided to name her group after her. But she said that aside from Mother Theresa’s love for the poor, their comparison with the saint ended there.
For she said, Mother Theresa was concerned only in helping the sick and the dying. Baumann said that in the 16 years that she kept coming back to the Philippines, she discovered that politics, and economics and culture are intricately interwoven they’re almost impossible to separate.
Sanchez pointed out that some political and economic forces are keeping most people poor in the Philippines. “We could never separate politics from the poverty and suffering that we experience,” she said.
For instance, Baumann was shocked to hear about government soldiers closing down some of the cooperatives they helped build in depressed areas.
One of them, a multi-purpose sari-sari store in Hinandayan barangay in Nasipit town in Agusan del Sur was ordered closed last year upon suspicion that the cooperative was financed by the Communist New People’s Army (NPA), said Virna Laojan, executive director of the Mindanao Farmers’ Resource Center (MFRC).
But this was something that the Philippine Army denied. How can we close something, when it’s not within our jurisdiction? Lt. Col. Eric Vinoya told Davao Today.
Monika and Anna Rosa Gersbach in a light moment with Misfi staffs.
In January, an enraged Baumann, however, recalled facing the 8th IB commander, who even questioned her motives for helping the poor.
“It’s something that we don’t understand,” said Lily. “We got no word from the government for the work we do and now, this is what we get.”
Baumann said she is planning to write a letter to the European Union (EU), to tell them of the harassments that their small projects in the Philippines have been getting. “Sometimes, you have to open your mouth to say something for the people who can’t say anything,” she said.
She said that she was amazed by the enthusiasm shown by the NGO workers, who are young and dedicated. Some of the lumad para-teachers even have to walk as long as four hours a day just to teach the lumads basic letters and numbers. “For every project, they keep on learning,” she said.
“We want to help the lumads, to tell them they have to protect our earth because no one is doing it anymore,” she said.
She expressed alarm over the coming in of more banana plantations and mining companies in Mindanao. She said only very few people are left taking care of the environment, but whose initiatives are also being destroyed.
She said that her first impression of the Philippines, when she first set foot here 16 years ago, was that the place was so beautiful but the people were poor.
Up to the last day of their month-long stay in the Philippines, the three Swiss women couldn’t take their minds off the poor Mindanao communities they’ve befriended.
“After all I have experienced these six weeks, I do not go back home the same woman as I was before,” Anna Rosa said, “I go home, half-Swiss and half-Filipina (not only because my skin has become darker by the sun), and this half part will always want to come back to you again.” (Germelina Lacorte/davaotoday.com)
Indigenous Peoples, Poverty
