Visible at the foreground of the newly constructed school building in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte were cluttered marks of the burned school premises left by the pillage of the outlaws last 18 August 2008. Perhaps, what is a more disturbing sight was the children cleaning the mess in apparently salvaging still useable items from the rubble.
The P4.5 million 3-room building recently provided by the US military forces to help in the school reconstruction (also in MindaNews) obviously was still a far cry from replacing the facilities that were lost. As if telegraphing my thoughts as I surveyed the area, local authorities strongly manifested for additional classrooms for the students, and the school principal intimated having to hold temporary office at the teachers' lodging room.
Definitely, it will take some time for government to attend to this predicament considering the many contesting priorities it has to face. While we are thankful for the support of our allied countries, we can not always rely on that help especially so that the mess was on our own doing as a people.
It is difficult to understand why, in several instances, we destroy what took us much time and with a great deal of resources to build: for those things we planned and built as we thought it mattered for our future.
The act of burning school buildings only shows that those terrorists would rather have ignorant people within their midst than learned people. It is easier to manipulate ignorant people to follow their so called twisted ideology. - MJ
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