The Nevergirl’s Fact-Finding Diaries: The Road to Kanangga

I was 19 when, armed with the biggest enthusiasm this side of the equator, I went with friends on a fact-finding mission to Kanangga. We went there to investigate a murder - several cold-blooded murders, in fact - but I did not know this then; and so I went, feeding the delusion that by going, I was fulfilling every young journalist’s dream of being where the action is. I was seeing parallelisms between  Molly Moore and myself, only she covered the Persian Gulf War while I was going to Kanangga, Leyte in a yellow shirt and matching shorts.

I thought I would not survive the first night. We were housed at a center, and there were mosquitoes everywhere. It was my first fact-finding mission, you see, and while I knew we were going to a province, I had no idea it was that kind of province. I expected the touristy kind, the one where you could ring for room service or at least buy bottled water from a sari-sari store. It was not that kind of province. There were hills everywhere, and nary a sari-sari in sight. Fearful of the mosquitoes and the dark, I ditched the small, dinghy quarters assigned to us, and slept on a duyan swinging from a tree just outside the shelter.

Minutes later, L was hissing into my ear. “Get down! Quickly!”

“Wha-huh?”

“Hawa diha! There are plain-clothed soldiers down there. You make an easy target.”

In my naivete, I saw nothing wrong with being watched by soldiers, or sleeping on a duyan; but L seemed alarmed, and not wanting to upset her further, I went back to where the darkness and the bugs waited.

The next day, my education began. We walked to the site where the killing took place. The journey took three hours on foot. We passed by huts, carabaos, and children keeping house. Another hour was spent going up a mountain where there was no trail, where we had to walk barefoot because feet provided better traction than slippers or shoes, and physically push our way past grass that were almost as tall as we are. We held on to roots and trees, and made use of walking sticks to keep from slipping. By then, the glamour of the trip had worn off, and far from feeling Moore-esque, I was beginning to see myself as a prisoner of war, forced to march through desolate jungles.

We reached the site by lunchtime. I felt physically sick at the sight we stumbled upon: a bedraggled hut, a bullet-riddled shirt, slippers missing pairs, charred stones and wood, dried blood.

“One of the victims had been pregnant,” said one woman.

“Yes, and I heard tell there where children killed, too.”

I hunkered down on a rock, stunned, confused, hungry. Around me, people took photos, documented where they found bullets and casings, drew sketches of the area, made a map to the site, interviewed the guide. It was my first brush with violent death, up-close, and I had no idea it would be so vivid and terrifying.

On the way back, no one spoke. It was almost as if what we had seen robbed us of words. I overheard the organizers plotting out the next day’s schedule: exhumation of the bodies that were buried nearby. Hours back, curiousity - if nothing else- would have prompted me to tag along. I’d had enough of death, however, and nothing, not curiousity or wild horses, could have dragged me to the exhumation the next day.

To be continued (because this is a depressing post and the writer lost steam)…