The Story of Marimar
by Pathways — Jose Hernan Pineda
In February 2023, a team from the Education Pathways to Peace in Mindanao (Pathways) program, a 9-year peace and education cooperation between the governments of Australia and the Philippines, was visiting its literacy and numeracy project areas in the pondohans of Sitangkai, Tawi-Tawi when they found a young mother and her 2 young children squatting on the floor inside a learning centre and trying to read letters written on cheap brown poster paper. The pondohans are houses on stilts erected over shallow waters in the isolated parts of Sitangkai in Tawi-Tawi, which is found in the Sulu archipelago. Most residents here belong to the Badjau and Tausug ethnic groups, who were either socially and economically excluded or fleeing the violence in their home provinces. People here make a living through seaweed farming and fishing as they, being so geographically isolated, hardly rely on the government to survive. Sitangkai itself started as a pondohan many centuries ago. Originally, the first Sama-Badjau settlers in the municipality established the place as a temporary trading post. When it grew as a popular trading centre, the settlers developed the place into what is now regarded as the ‘Venice of the South’, referencing the famous Italian city.
‘I want my children to learn,’ the young mother, who said her name was Marimar, responded shyly when asked about her business inside the learning centre. ‘However, I also want to learn, that’s why I join this class,’ she added. Then, she narrated why she was so eager to learn and why she brought her children to the learning centre.
Marimar Gaddim Ummoh was born in Sitangkai, but like most Badjau people, she doesn’t know her date of birth. Her relatives, however, estimated that she must be in her thirties. Named after the lead female character in the popular Mexican television soap opera in the 1990s, Marimar said she is the youngest among 24 siblings, all of whom have never received formal education. She said her parents didn’t see education as important and their priority was for their children to learn practical life skills like fishing and seaweed farming. Growing up, Marimar also thought that education was only for the Tausugs, the dominant ethnic groups in Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi, as none of her Badjau peers ever went to school. The Badjau kids who attempted to study eventually quit due to bullying and other forms of social discrimination. Marimar, however, confessed that she did feel envious of other children who went to school because she believed she would look prettier in their school uniform. Whatever hope she had about going to school one day totally vanished when both her parents fell ill, which resulted in her mother losing her eyesight and her father’s immobility.
When she got married and had 2 children, now aged 4 and 8, Marimar worried they might grow up like she did — illiterate and without employable skills, shortchanged and taken advantage of by unscrupulous traders in business transactions, and treated as outcasts. ‘I don’t want my sons to be ignorant and to be ridiculed by other people. I don’t want them to be like me,’ she said in her native Sama language. However, poverty and the lack of sustainable income are threatening to make Marimar’s educational dream for her children unattainable. Considering that their place of residence is too far from the nearest school, taking her boys to and from school on boat rides would be costly and, at times, very dangerous due to high tidal waves.
Hope beaconed to Marimar, however, when in March 2022, Pathways started a literacy and numeracy project in 5 pondohans in Sitangkai in partnership with Tarbilang Foundation, Inc., a local development-oriented non-government organisation based in the capital of Bongao. The pilot areas included her community, Pondohan Sibangal in Barangay Larap. The project established a learning centre, deployed a learning facilitator, and provided funds for teaching and learning materials in each pilot area. Marimar lost no time in registering her sons when she learned about the project. She also prepared them every morning and brought them to the learning centre to ensure that they didn’t miss a single class. At home, her 2 sons often asked for her help in their lessons. Realising she was incapable of understanding her sons’ homework because she couldn’t read nor write, she decided that she, too, needed to learn. From then on, she started to sit in as a ‘student’ in the learning centre and, in the process, learned how to read and write letters and simple words, as well as read, write, and compute small numbers. Aside from Marimar, some parents who also brought and waited for their children at the learning centre also claimed they were learning from the lessons.
Looking at the developments in her pondohan because of the project, Marimar said she hopes the project would continue. Her wish may someday be granted. A representative from the Ministry of Basic, Higher and Technical Education of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao joined the Pathways team during the visit. He saw the positive impact the project was making in the communities and remarked that the pondohans deserve to have formal learning sites.
There may yet be more opportunities ahead for those in Marimar’s community to have better access to quality education and, thus, uplift their collective dignity as a people. That’s something to look forward to indeed.