Philippine Elections: Heroism of a Teacher

MANILA, Philippines -- It was hard keeping track of the body count or the exact number of casualties during the campaign period and on Election Day itself. The Inquirer put at 147 the death toll since the election campaign began on Jan. 14, the Philippine National Police total is 143.

I know the number stands for individual lives with faces and names, and with a network of families, friends and colleagues grieving for them. But sometimes the tally and the list of names just seem to numb feelings because they are just numbers to those of us who do not know the victims personally. This is not to say they do not matter.

One case suddenly stood out of the rest though. It was the death of a teacher. She died with a poll watcher, their bodies found in a toilet where they had taken refuge after gunmen wearing bonnets set the schoolhouse ablaze.

Why should a teacher die this way?

The name of the high school teacher is Nellie Banaag and the local poll watcher is Leticia Ramos. Their names happen to be familiar Filipino names. They are Everyteacher, Everypollwatcher. Banaag is a common family name in Batangas province and there must be thousands of Leticia Ramoses in the Philippines, two former diplomats among them.

Several years ago, a teacher, Filomena Tatlonghari, who tried to protect the ballot, was also killed in Batangas. A school building is now named after her. I remember getting a call from a nun in Batangas and getting sketchy details on what happened. Tatlonghari’s name got into the news but she was only one of many. When the frenzy died down, she emerged as special. She was a teacher.

Now another teacher is killed and I feel a knife stabbing my heart. The way she and the poll watcher died was horrible. Those who killed them were without mercy, without conscience and I am tempted to say they deserve the same or even worse fate. But no, no one, not even the most loathsome of human beings deserves to die that way. That is, to be trapped, suffocated and burned in a violent rampage that was the handiwork of pitiless men. What did a teacher do to deserve this?

Two weeks ago, the media world celebrated World Press Freedom Day and remembered those who died in the line of duty -- 88 Filipino journalists since 1986, the year we were supposed to have regained our lost freedoms. Journalists being felled has become commonplace.

Nowadays, getting killed or murdered seems to be part of a journalist’s job description. But not a teacher’s. Journalists are out there, roaming like lone wolves so to speak, with no one to look after them or watch their backs for them while they challenge fate and demigods. We are supposed to live dangerously.

A teacher roams too, but with her mind, her heart. She takes her young students to worlds they never knew before. The physical dangers are supposed to be almost nil as long as they are in the confines of their classrooms. Alas, not anymore if you go by what have happened in US campuses, the massacre in Virginia Tech and Columbine High among them, which were the handiwork of students with diseased minds, spawned by a problematic society and genes gone awry because of it.

But a Filipino teacher watching at the polls, making sure that the conduct of the elections is peaceful, is not supposed to be in the crosshairs of a gun. She has no intention to grab power. In the case of Banaag, she was just doing her job. She even ran and hid to get out of harm’s way.

A photo shows Banaag’s young son, Galileo Jr., holding his beautiful mother’s photo. What does one say to this child now? That his mother is a hero? What would that mean to one who needs his mother more than the honors that would be heaped on her? And what does one say to Banaag’s husband? What does one say to her family, her friends and, of course, her students?

When a teacher is killed, I imagine a huge sheltering tree being felled. It comes down with a monumental thud, shaking the forest ground and making the other trees sway and tremble. So many living things are orphaned by the falling of one huge tree. The birds, insects, animals and plants that thrive on it and even the village beyond are affected by one tree’s falling.

A teacher is like a tree. Imagine the hundreds, even thousands, of students who will pass through her and learn from her, who will call her name and remember it the rest of their lives. There are teachers we remember so vividly and who remain part of the history of our souls.

And there are evil men who deprive a generation of learners from knowing one teacher who might have changed their lives, influenced their thinking or inspired them to be the best they could be. Because they burned the schoolhouse in Barangay Pinagbayanan in Taysan, Batangas.

But who were those men? Who sent them? They came before the break of dawn, at 3:20 a.m., when bodies were tired and sleep would have been the better option for those teachers who had spent a whole day making sure that voters exercised their rights. Evil came hooded and armed, snatched ballot boxes and poured gasoline on them and set them ablaze.

What was this supposed to accomplish?

Classes will open in a couple of weeks and there will be no more Mrs. Banaag for the students to greet, for her fellow teachers to spend pleasant moments with. Oh, if only she had stayed home, defied her superiors and refused to do her duty, she would still be alive. But no, she went out there, like many teachers like her, to quietly fulfill a duty.

She will not be forgotten.

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