Lipa City”•A young mother of two, Nashiba Radia’s famaily left Marawi City in 2017 to escape the siege there to faraway Lemery, carrying her two young children Mohammad Reihan and Hafizah Radia, and whatever it was that they could pick-fold-and-pack of their household belongings.
At their tender age, the young siblings, now five and four years old, again had to experience being among thousands of internally displaced persons, as the family had to move”•again”•from Lemery town to this city, after the eruption of Taal Volcano triggered massive evacuation on Jan. 12.
Minus their “Abi” (father) who would have to stay more often tending makeshift stalls for fellow Maranao Muslims, some generous relatives have shared a roof of shelter for the Radias in San Nicolas here.
The Bangsamoro humanitarian team led by lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo spotted the kids wearing protective masks in their mom’s tow. They were rushing to a queue of residents receiving packages of emergency relief assistance from Moro volunteers working on the discharge and distribution of goods from a panel truck in Barangay Sabang here.
Nashiba Radia, 23, says in times when there was hardly anything that the family earned from her husband’s stall- tending for Maranao vendors, the family survives mostly on generosity of those sending in relief goods for displaced families like them.
“Because our package of assistance also included N95 masks, we gifted them with these masks and they were just too happy to wear it,” said Sinarimbo, a spokesperson for BARMM Chief Minister Al Hadj Murad Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, and head of BARMM-READi.
“I have a strong connection with these IDPs as I also volunteered with my family for over a month in Marawi City during the siege in 2017, helping organize rescue and relief missions during the early days of the crisis and stayed there when everyone were leaving the city. I also find resonance in their plight as I was also an IDP kid during the martial law years,” he added.
Sinarimbo, also BARMM’s interior and local government minister, said the regional leadership advocates volunteerism among its workers and to the Moro people in general.
Myrna Jo Henry, press facilitator for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence (READi), said the region’s humanitarian team initially delivered about two-thirds of the region’s relief goods to Lipa City Incident Command Post (ICP).
She said the other one-third was delivered to displaced Moro families, mostly housed in relatives’ residences, and the rest sheltered at the Youth Cultural and Sports Complex here.
Leo Tadejapo Jr., chief of Lipa City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO), received Friday from Minister Sinarimbo 1,000 boxes of the BARMM relief goods.
Henry said emergency officials have reported a “continuing influx” of evacuees from neighboring areas to this city, as has also been witnessed by the Bangsamoro team.
Evelyn Estorquia, BARMM-READi supervising head, said some emergency operations workers on duty had shared rounded-off figures, showing Lipa City has become a second home to some 6,000 families or around 30,000 individuals who have since fled the Taal Volcano eruption.
Henry said each package consisted of 20 kilograms of assorted food and non-food items, including well-milled upland rice of the Denorado variety, canned goods, coffee, sugar, tea, and a separate package containing masks, boxes of hygiene kit and malong, a sewn-and-worn individual blanket for men and women.
Taal evacuees hardly knew that the READi volunteers were mostly former combatants of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) undergoing the process of decommissioning. Discharging and carrying of truckloads of goods in the distribution of relief assistance formed part of the process of reintegrating them and their families into the mainstream society.
Sinarimbo said humanitarian missions and the Bang samoro Tabang convergent services in BARMM areas have been an enriching experience for BARMM-READi workers, including him, in the field of volunteerism.