By Jerome Alburo, SVD

I was serving in Madagascar as an assistant priest at St. Tamaro Parish in the country’s north when I took a vacation to my home country, the Philippines, in December 2020. This was in the middle of the pandemic, and as with many situations during the pandemic, things did not go as planned.

I was about to make my return trip to Madagascar in March 2021. I didn’t get farther than the Philippine airport. I was held there and told Filipinos were still banned from entering Madagascar because of the high number of COVID cases in our country.

I was a missionary without a mission, but not for long. With the consent of my superior in Madagascar, I was temporarily assigned as a guest priest at St. Isidore the Farmer Parish in the Philippines South Province.

The parish is made up of 28 mini-chapels: 27 are on land while one is in the middle of the Agusan Marsh. St. Peter’s chapel is in Loreto, Agusan del Sur. The residents are Manobo families. They are the indigenous people in the province. The place is popularly known as the Manobo floating community. Also called the Agusan Marsh Panlabuhan Floating Village, it is a tourist attraction.

I celebrated Mass with them during the feast of St. Peter, which is the congregation’s feast day, and it was a memorable journey. It took an hour traveling by pump boat from Poblacion to Sitio Panlabuhan.

A great silence fell as we entered the marshland. One would hear the whistling of the wind, the chirping of the birds and the splashing of the water. One would also notice small floating houses built on raft-like bamboo foundations and with roofs made of tin or coconut leaves.

During the hot season, parts of the marshland turn to hard soil. This makes fishing a difficult livelihood, so people prefer farming along the riversides. But when the rainy season comes, the land turns muddy and wet, and fish can be seen just outside the doorsteps of the floating houses.

Sadly, the water level in the marshland has become unpredictable. People transfer their houses from one place to another depending on the season or the level of the water.

This is also true of our mini-chapel. It has always been movable and transferrable! The community is made up of 50 families. In this time of pandemic, we visit them to bring spiritual hope and encouragement and also rice.

What I admire about these people is their love of peace, their strong sense of community, their camaraderie and their unwavering faith. Their love, care and respect for the environment is apparent in their belief that Magbabaja (the creator) favored them by giving them the gift of nature, which allows them to get their food and resources free.

As a Divine Word missionary, I am inspired by the Manobos’ faith, hope and resiliency. The joy and smiles on their faces whenever a priest visits renews my spirit of mission. As missionaries, we are called to actively spread the Divine Word and to positively make a difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters, whether in cities, mountains, valleys, seas or even marshlands.