When Death Becomes Mundane

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In my bi-weekly phone call with Mom yesterday I found myself enumerating the things we have done in the office in the last couple of weeks: we prepared for the State of the Nation mobilization, visited Licuan Baay again, documented an extra judicial killing in Kalinga (a province a few hours away) and monitored two encounters between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the New Peoples Army to make sure that the Geneva Convention rights of the 8 killed rebels were respected. I could hear myself as if I was outside of my own body talking about these deaths as if they were part of a normal daily routine.

Sometimes we experience changes without realizing it. And when I wasn't paying attention I became accustomed to the death toll here. Like often happens, I am not sure if I am wholly comfortable with this new situation. I don't know how I feel about the fact that I don't feel. However, when I arrived in the country my emotions became almost raw because I felt for everything around me. That was also not healthy. In fact, it was probably worse then putting yourself at an emotional distance. But I also don't want to go back to the place I was in in university, when I could separate myself entirely from the situations I was learning about. Feeling has become to important to me in my work.

Now that I am aware of this new space I have spent the last few hours rolling it around inside me, thinking about it, feeling, testing and trying to discern what is really going on inside me. I think that after my emotionally overwhelming reaction to the Fact Finding Mission a few months ago my body just shut the gates a little bit. However, I realized that I can open them if I want. I was able to open the gates and feel for the family of the man in Kalinga. and I was able to see the shame in growing up in a country that offers you the options of death in poverty or death as a subversive in the mountains. I am thankfully still human.

And to think about it rationally. It probably is a good thing that I can face the deaths, the sadness of things around me but not connected to me, with a little bit of distance. There are enough things that are close to me that I will have to, and do, feel for; feel fear and sadness and despair. I visited Licuan Baay again last week. It was my fourth time in the community and I was greeted by my host mother with fresh sticky rice, a hug and a "welcome home". The people of Licuan Baay are close to me, and they are currently facing increased militarization, surveillance, intimidation and threats to their personal safety. One community leader is already under unofficial house arrest and my host father has been apprehended and interrogated; their only crime is exerting their democratic and constitutionally mandated rights. I have come home from the community feeling more worried about my friends and family then I was last time I left. Maybe our minds and our bodies are more proactive then we think. I fear for the people I love and so my body has closed its sensors to the ones I don't know, making their death's mundane to me, so that I can keep working, and so that I don't die crying.

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Photos

Planting Rice
My host mother could see me taking this picture on my way to their rice field house. She laughed knowing that I was taking the picture because I have never seen rice planting before, without knowing that the men planting were soldiers. A few of the soldiers posted in Licuan Baay are from the region and so know how to plant rice. So if the residents ask they will help. If they are going to be around, you might as well put them to work, eh?