Sewing Threads of a New Life
Contributed by Rosanna Javier, Operation Blessing Volunteer
MANDULOG, ILIGAN CITY - Old thin hands slid and caressed the new brown Singer sewing machine repeatedly.The hands belonged to fifty nine year old Maimonah Ibrahim, the oldest and most sought after dressmaker in Baranggay Mandulog, Iligan City. She looked over, touched, and tinkered the new Singer machine that Operation Blessing just gave her. She didn’t talk so much and just whispered that she lost her two sewing machines in ‘the flood’.
Maimonah’s daughters Arrminah (26) and Analiyah (27) looked on switching their eyes between the beautiful machine before them and their mother. “Parang makaiyak na kami nyan. Sobra talaga yang tulong nyo! Kung alam nyo lang kung anong nangyari sa amin,” Arminah spoke in between holding tears back. “Na surpresa talaga kami. Hindi ako makapaniwala’, Arminah asserts. Arrminah and Analiyah spilled their flood story one wave after another, as if trying to keep up with the swift pace by which December 16’s flood changed the course of their lives and 848 other families in their baranggay.
Marilog River swelled, overflowed and turned to rampaging waters that swept over Purok 21 where the Ibrahims lived by the riverbanks. The Ibrahims house had an underground but the water level quickly rose shooting for the roof. Their cousins, nephews and nieces all swam to have Maimonah and her eight children out of the house. Their father, seventy eight year old Macaombao Ibrahim made sure all his children were safe before he sought his own. In a matter of minutes and seconds, the Ibrahims lost all they had including Maimonah’s electric and manual sewing machines. Their beloved patriarch Macaombao disappeared all too quickly. All eighteen houses in Purok 21 were totally destroyed and gone. Only the newly built mosque stood Sendong’s wrath. Thirty three died in the village, most of the bodies, including that of the old man, are still missing to this day.
Against this backdrop, the Ibrahim sisters recalled happy memories of their father. ‘Farmer po ang tatay namin, pero magaling din pos yang tumahi ng mga pantalon!”, Arrminah beams. “Ang totoo po nyan, lahat po kami sa pamilya nagtatahi. Liwat ho kami sa nanay at tatay namin. Kayo po yang bigay nyo, malaking matutulong nyan sa amin”, added Analiyah. The sisters were not taught how to sew, they just ‘caught the skill’ by observing their mother.
All that are left are memories of stories they have sewn with their father around. Government construction of a new home for the Ibrahims are already under way. Hands are again busy.. busy sewing lives back to pieces and on to a new life woven in the assurance that there’s a bigger Hand still in control.
