A Minute

I say, not everything has been said about Maguindanao.

Really? You’ve been to Maguindanao?

Yes, I have. Two Christmases ago. 2008.

Scary shit, man! How was it there?

It was great. The scenery was really unique, to say the least.

Do you have pictures?

Nah, we forgot to bring our camera.

Too bad. You might have had the chance to shoot something cool! Like Ampatuan’s mansion!

Haha! No, there’s not much of those there.

What’s there? Dead bodies?

Haha! No… Well, I didn’t see any.

I mean, they say this Ampatuan’s been a bigshot for a long time and he’s been doing these murders since like forever.

Yeah, I heard that, too. Sledge hammer?

Yeah! The teacher he beat up with a sledge hammer! Fuckin’ crazy, man!

The nerve. We weren’t really supposed to go. We went there by accident.

Got kidnapped? Haha!

We were supposed to go to GenSan but we didn’t make the right turn. We were going for Pacquiao’s mansion and more tuna. We came from Davao.

Haha! How could you make a wrong turn to a different province? Crazy shit, man.

You see, there were no signs there, no street lights, but the road was good. Too good that we thought we were still on the right way to GenSan.

Really? No signs?

Yeah, that’s Mindanao for you. They don’t even have transmission lines like the ones you see in NLEX. The tall electric posts which are shaped like a girl’s dress, they don’t have that there.

No electricity? Fuckin’ natives, man. Haha!

There’s electricity, but it’s hard to get.

No fun! So, what else is there aside from hard-to-get electricity? Haha!

Well, there’s one Jollibee for the whole city with its dashboard menu plastered with huge black letters, screaming, “WITH PORK” for every burger they sell.

Muslims?

Yeah, they’re allergic or something. Like they’ll go to hell.

Well, it’s hell to live without pork.

Yeah. And most of their gasoline stations only sold Diesel.

Oh shit! So, if you’re on something else, you’re done for?

Yeah. And instead of your usual church, there were mosques.

With the moon and star?

Yeah. Like for every five kilometers, a mosque. And for every two kilometers, a military checkpoint.

Scary shit, man.

But there were no soldiers guarding anyway. You just had to zip through them.

So what’s the use?

Nothing, just for formality’s sake. They said a “war” was going on there. And there were waiting sheds there in the middle of nowhere with “US AID” painted on them.

US AID? Bomb shelters?

Even the schools had the US AID logo painted on them. It’s like some US assistance program.

Cool! Any Americans?

Didn’t see any. It’s nice there, though. Look around you and you’ll see something amazing.

Yeah, mosques, checkpoints, guns, and dead people, eh?

Not really. But one thing I found really amazing there were their rice fields.

We have that here, too. Rice fields. Hectares and hectares in Pampanga and Tarlac and Tagaytay.

Yeah, but they had it different there.

Why?

Everywhere you looked, all you saw were rich, green rice fields.

Same thing in Pampanga?

Even better. It wasn’t as hot there as it is in Pampanga. It’s like a sea of green. Like God only had a green Crayola that day, and colored the fields like he was a kindergarten kid. With strokes spilling over, up and down, left and right.

God grew cheap on those Muslims, eh? Got too lazy to get some other color, eh?

I don’t know, but it was all green. Like you were on a boat, but instead of the sea, you were on land. Green land. You’ll get choked with it. Like water. ‘Cause everywhere I turned, to the mountains, to the flatlands, the color was green.

What’s gotten into your mind? Green-minded now, eh?

Nothing. I guess I just understood why those farmers kept going MILF, Abu Sayaff shit and all.

Haha! Planning to join them already?

No, it’s just amazing. You see, maybe those lands won’t be as green if they only watered it with water. Maybe that’s where their pigs went. Spilling pig meat and blood to fatten the land. Cool, eh?

Freaky shit, those Muslim farmers are, eh?

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