Experience

In my mind, Cotabato City has almost become synonymous with danger. There are bombings and terrorism. Bombed buses and building are on the news bearing the name Cotabato. It has a gloomy face inside my head. Stories of priests and nuns martyred for their faith by fundamentalist Muslims in that part of mindanao tend to darken all the more this gloomy pictures that I have. Yet, I have never really been to Cotabato which leaves all my pre-conceptions of that city all hearsays.

These thoughts of Cotabato City occupied me until my family planned a visit to my father’s baptismal Godmother when my father became Catholic from being an Aglipayan. She is a Dominican Sister assigned in a hospital managed and owned by their congregation in Cotabato.

It was a 3-hour bus ride from Koronadal City with 15 minute bus stops at every terminal from Tacurong City and municipalities of Isulan and Sharif Aguak. It was a very smooth ride far from my conceptions of checkpoints managed by armies searching for rebels with the brink of an encounter between them just in hand. But, it was very different. No checkpoints only terminals, safe terminals and routes.

We arrived at Cotabato City around 10:30 in the morning and headed to the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena’s convent to pay our visit. The convent is just around the hospital they manage. I did not expect they also own a midwifery school and what surprised me is that those who patronise that school, such school managed and owned by a Catholic congregation, are young Muslim students. It was Saturday when we visited and the school is filled with students taking their NSTP with scarves in their heads.

Our next stop is to check in for a hotel room. We realized we become total strangers to such foreign city since my parents’ last visit was years ago. But, the people did not bring me back to my pre-conceptions instead proved me wrong with all that I thought about their city. People were actually ready to help giving directions which place is this and that and where to take ride.

Of course, in such a city where Muslim population dominates there is no religious destination which a Christian would interest to go instead mosques. So, what made our trip to Cotabato meaningful are the people. I met people of different creeds, not formal meeting, but on the streets and sidewalks, cabs and tricycles, stalls and restaurants experiencing their authentic way of dealing with people far from my pre-conception again of people divided due, not to their colour, but on their creed. I spoke with Bajao street kid not expecting a polite ‘Thank you’ as a sign of their gratitude. I spoke with a Muslim cab driver about the day’s fight of Manny Pacquiao. I spoke with a Christian waiter for the direction of the Lourdes Grotto. Everybody responded politely without showing indifference. Cotabato is an experience of people united though diverse.

From there I have realized the value of experience. From the language of people things are different when you yourself immerses to that fountain of reality. Language may symbolize such reality but the danger is when you fossilize it forever. I have fossilized Cotabato in relation to danger only when I melted it down again into a fresher way – a society of diversity in unity. It is actually a cradle of peaceful people very much immune to different cultures. A respectful people to whatever creed you may belong.

The problem of language confronts us everyday. It governs our daily relationships both strengthening it but mostly ruins it. We tend to express different symbols on our different experience but the connection that we could build on the other varies. So, we must realize we can never reduce everything to words. We may symbolize our experience of it but we must make it clear to the other that it is not everything that it is. We must not establish finitude. Let the other also experience it for himself. Often times we control for some other reasons without realizing that we suppress the value of experience.