[Philippine's human rights violations] A Thousand Little Deaths Growing Up Under Martial Law in the Philippines #5/152

It was located in the San Agustin neighborhood, an area sandwiched between the center of town and pointed north to the city of Angeles.

The school building had been quite bare when we moved in that early September in 1972. It smelled of fresh concrete, paint, creosote, and various industrial odors from building materials. All the desks and chairs were also new. I remember how much more comfortable these felt compared to the ones we used at the old school, many of which were already there when my mother and her sisters attended in the 1940s and 50s.

Attending the first few weeks was not a pleasant experience. Most of the side roads feeding off from the main highway were unpaved, and dusty during the dry season, but muddy and full of potholes at the onset of the monsoon rains. The dust from these roads and from the empty rice and sugar fields, after the harvest, was whipped up by blustery winds that began in earnest after the monsoon ended sometime in October. The school, being the only building on this side of the street for miles, served as a funnel for the post-monsoon winds, which blustered into our classrooms, blowing doors shut and rattling glass casement windows. If we happened to be walking along the hallways, the winds fluttered our starched and ironed pleated skirts, flapping these up and over our undergarments—we found this somewhat problematic as convent school girls are taught to be modest in all manner of dress. At the time, there was only one male teacher in the school and we naively worried about him seeing us in what we perceived as a red-face moment.

As Annabel and I continued conversing, we found we knew a few Kolasas in common. Then we gossiped about the teachers—our favorites—and the ones we wanted to avoid. This was beginning to feel normal. But was it?The office was large enough for the two of us to settle our cots at some distance from each other. As we chatted, we decided to push the cots closer together in order to hear each other better. It was then that I noticed the color of the room. It bothered me.