“Teacher your house is not just a school center, it’s our new health center too” said a happy mother to Teacher M. Teacher M is a cheerful mother who volunteered to teach the children in her small community. She holds classes for over 40 children in her small canteen. Their community is composed of two small long houses that are built at the back of a construction site, so the people have to walked about over a kilometer to buy sell anything.
Recently, there was a tragedy in the community. A 2 year old boy died because of asthma . For the past few days, the boy had fever and had difficulty in breathing. The mother, who never went to school, asked a neighborhood what to do. Then other neighbors told her “just boiled the skin of the trunk of the some-named tree and let your boy drink it, surely the “ampos” (asthma) will relieve”. This people are “Yakans”, one of the Philippines Muslim tribes. They are very low in literacy and also very loyal to what their ancestors believe. For example, they do not wear shoes and slippers because these things bring shame to their god and they just belong to people outside their world. As a result most of the children in their community are thin but have big stomachs, indicating malnutrition and worms.
So the mother of the boy did what the neighbors said. After few days of letting her boy drink the skin of the trunk, the boy got no relief.. So she brought him to the clinic because he was getting worse and weaker. Unfortunately, it was Malaysia Independence Day and clinics were closed. So she went home and tried to do things that could help relieve his difficulty in breathing. But at 12 midnight the boy passed away, then a heavy rain started to fall.
Early next morning, when Teacher M heard the news she went to comfort the mother. After that she called me “Teacher please come and bring all your stuff for health teaching”. So I asked “why”, but she said “just come”. So I brought all my notes that I had since my college years. As I arrived they told me the sad news. They thought that if only the mother knew what to do she could have her boy alive. Teacher M told me to do health teaching, ways to take care of their children in times of sickness. We held the health teaching in her small canteen with over 10 mothers carrying their babies for they thought a doctor was coming. I overheard Teacher M telling them “I’m sorry she’s not a doctor but they’re here because she and her friends want to help us in all they can do”. They smiled and nodded their heads. From that time onwards we spent a sweet time togeher. After teaching, Teacher Josephine helped me to take their blood pressures and we advised them to eat healthy foods and to help clean and take care of their environment and how to avoid sickness like asthma.
Afterwards, when the mothers were saying thank you and good byes, one mom told the teachers “We Yakans, we never went to school when we are young because our parents are very strong to the beliefs of our ancestors. But we really appreciate people like you who are willing to help us. Not just our children learning how to read and write. Now we are also learning how to take good care of them.”
