I have an inactive account at WAYN before. I resuscitated it when several friends sent invitations.

At first it was fun uploading videos and photos and updating profile details.

I was motivated to keep on sharing more videos and photos especially when more WAYN members keep on giving their comments and reactions. Most of them requested to be part of my profile’s list of friends.

But one day, when I uploaded one of my videos, I received a notice that WAYN has to remove my video due to its “offensive” content.

I was really wondering why my material was offensive when I was just sharing what is the reality in Mindanao.

WAYN is more on travelogue but not all journeys are good. Since I am a journalist, I am just sharing my encounters during my numerous travels and to make people aware of some situations here in Mindanao.

With the pull-out of my video, I decided to withdraw my account from WAYN. I am just quite curious that WAYN publishes and considers with taste those semi-porno materials but not my material regarding war against terror.

I really want to kill my son’s nanny.

She’s been so inept in her tasks.

Her only duty is to keep a close eye on Kenjo.

Kenjo being a very higher active boy requires close monitoring.

That is whenever I am away.

Two days ago I went for coverage to Basilan.

Due to bad weather to our destination, military officials decided to cancel the trip.

I went home quite lighthearted.

But soon as I got out from the car, I immediately noticed the huge lump on my son’s forehead.

I asked the nanny what happened.

She said she didn’t know, because she was inside her room.

I asked my son what’s the cause of the lump.

He told me he fell on a cemented floor while catching a ball.

No one was around with him when the incident happened.

The nanny was inside the room for reasons she only knows.

I feel that my heart beats faster.

I want to slap her face and shove it to the ground.

Really I want to kill her.

I went to my mother’s house inquiring further.

She said the nanny was not around and she’s not culpable for my son’s clumsiness.

I told my mother that I didn’t hire a nanny to spend her time inside the room.

I am paying her monthly P2,500 or about 60 USD.

I know it’s not much but for Filipino standard, she enjoys better pay than the others.

Aside from her wage, she enjoys free meals, bathroom needs and toiletries and clothing.

If not for my son getting well with her “katangahan” I would have dismissed her long ago.

She has already committed so many mistakes which I just ignored for humanitarian reasons.

There was once my son’s feet were seriously bruised when a litro of Coca Cola fell on his toes.

My son once mistook this rat killer’s candy as edible because she placed the poison under the table.

I went home sometime seeing my son’s back full of bruises.

But all you hear from the nanny “I don’t know.”

Since Kenjo is turning 6 years old this October, I am decided to let go the nanny end of this May.

Its enough, I can still handle the situation taking care of my son.

I prepared some schedules for my son especially when school opens this June.

That would mean working outside his school with my notebook.

Well have to content eating fast-food for lunch time and decent meal at dinner.

Much as I wanted to kill the nanny, I decided to forgive her.

But forgiveness means losing her job with me.

I can no longer handle a dumb person inside my abode.

It is summer yet we experience heavy downpour oftentimes at night.

Early dawn’s drizzles refreshes our day and a great season for creepy creatures crawling on trees, twigs, leaves and stems.

One fine morning my son Kenjo had a very early biking session in our backyard.

But he stumbled over a pile of gravel and his bike hit a Guavano tree.

Several brown tiny pellets and creepy green “worms” fell on him.

“Mamaa! Come here! Look! There are many green worms at Guavano tree!”

Well I am thankful to the creepy green earthlings because Kenjo forgot his painful arms and legs.

So we decided to inspect the leaves and discovered more than three dozens not just worms but caterpillars.

I told Kenjo that when its the season for caterpillars, birds are also on its hatching stage and there will be more food for the birdlings.

But Kenjo is excited to witness the transformation of ugly and creepy caterpillars into beautiful and colorful butterflies.

“I hope birds will not discover this tree,” says Kenjo who has some other plans to protect the caterpillars.

Later I saw him bringing more old newspapers coupled with a basket of laundry clips and his going towards the Guavano tree.

“You are up to something little boy, care to share with Mama?”

“Hmmm… just want to cover the tree so birds will not eat the caterpillars.”

So its time to explain to Kenjo the food cycle yet I know he only digested some of what I am sharing as he tried to cover the lower portion of the tree.

“Kenjo if you are going to cover the tree, it will die so with all the caterpillars there, they need sunlight to survive that aided their growth and they need the green leaves to store more food before they hide themselves in a cocoon.”

I showed to him the leaves they have eaten and the brown “tiny pellets” manure they excreted to produce more silk for cocoon.

“A couple of them will get lucky to become butterfly, so right now, lets leave their fate to nature.”

Kenjo was somehow convince.

The next day Kenjo visited the tree and shouted again “Mama there’s no more caterpillars!.”

Caterpillars are gone except for little brownish worms, “but I showed him great number of cocoons.”

“They are already hiding.”

“Probably they heard my warnings yesterday,” Kenjo claims feeling more like a hero to the caterpillars.

This is always the question of my son Kenjo whenever we watched television programs.

It is the same question raised by my nephews Darryl and Darren — sons of my youngest brother Joel.

Their questions emanated from series of anti-terrorism ads on television.

In the Philippines, maybe particularly here in Mindanao, there are series of advertisements funded and conceptualized by the USAID or United States Agency for International Development and the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program.

When Kenjo was about four years old, he will run around in fear, shouting for help soon as he heard the thriller audio of the US ads, then photos of different faces of suspected bandits flashed on tv coupled with the thrilling and fearful sounds.

When he got hold of several leaflets and flyers provided by the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines, a US military force based in Zamboanga City, Kenjo discovered that those faces repeatedly flashed on screen are the same faces at the leaflets.

“Is this how terrorist looks like?” was his first question then.

“Is terrorist looks like us? Are they humans?” Kenjo’s next question.

Then there’s transformation or should I say development on the US government’s anti-terrorism ads.

Flashes of diaries, journals, blood and wrecked structures were used as images for the ads that generated more fears among children including my nephews.

Then came loud sounds of blasts and voice-over of a female narrating her hopes and dreams, but terror acts snatched away all her dreams when shrapnel hit her body.

Then comes a boy using different Moro’s dialect of Mindanao as tool to communicate with the audiences and tele-viewers reaching out for mercy and help in order to crash terrorism as it has stolen his sight including his parents.

Now most of the ads, they used actors wearing Muslim garbs as either informants or grateful for Americans’ intervention such as providing them water in exchange for peace in the community.

“Mama is it right to say that terrorists are Muslims?”

This question from a five year old mind stirred my already disturbed being.

“No Kenjo, Muslims are not terrorists.”

“But why would that ads conveying something that Muslims are terrorists?”

I told Kenjo that whoever conceptualized that kind of material is not really culturally sensitive and they dont have such right to come out with ideas that way.

As a way to explain him that every ads is deceiving, I likened the ads to a shampoo.

“Look at Mama’s long hair, I keep buying this shampoo hoping to make hair shiny, but is it shining?”

“No Mama, it’s the same thick black hair but its dull.”

“So the shampoo ads is the same as that of anti-terrorism ads, very deceiving with no consideration whoever is watching the television.”

One time, my two nephews Darryl and Darren watched tv on our house along with Kenjo.

Then again this commercial flashed and my eldest nephew Darryl got so mad of something.

“What’s that? What are you two arguing there?”

Darren told his kuya Darryl to convince their father to baptize them into Christians.

“Darren said that Muslims are bad that we are terrorists.”

As you know, my brother Joel is a Muslim convert and all his sons are Islamized.

The truth is that we, the six siblings are product of inter-marriage between a Christian father and a Muslim mother.

But relationship is perfect between my parents when it comes to faith.

I am a free thinker, my next brother Delio embraced Iglesia ni Kristo though he was a Catholic, next to him Jose is a Catholic, my brother Jimmy is now planning to embrace Islam, Joel is a Balik Islam, my sister like me are free spirits.

There was no fight and violent arguments in the family regarding our spirituality.

But I observed with the disturbing ads compliments by the US government, it has started creating conflicts within my family.

My son is trying to understand the fight between his two Kuyas but as what I have explained earlier, Kenjo informed the duo that “its a deceiving ads, dont believe that, our parents know better for us.”

In my backyard I have several ornamental plants. I got these shrubs from my past coverage in Basilan and Sulu. What I did was to cut some twigs, wrapped it with moist paper until I reached home and put it in a mini nursery (actually three little clay pots with garden soil and homemade compost). In a couple of weeks these little wilted shrubs turned into sturdy tiny little twigs. Now they are all bearing flowers. In between breaks (beating deadlines for my editors) I make sure to get a snapshot of each blooms. Sometimes before I leave the house for coverage or attending workshops in the morning, I make sure to check my plants. Whenever I reach home, I will pay a brief visit to my little garden and find out how all my ornamental plants are doing, were they’ve been watered by my son’s Nanny and if not, after finishing my stories, I will do the watering myself. I usually bring my son to the garden, especially if some of the leaves became hosts to caterpillars. We took some shots from caterpillars down to cocooning itself then into a beautiful butterfly. My son Kenjo learns to appreciate the art of greening the surrounding. At this time he values the fallen dried leaves that could be use for compost and not to burn and add more carbon to the environment. Kenjo adores Al Gore after watching his presentation over the HBO about the global warming. My mother hated my mini garden which according to her I am creating a mini forest that houses snakes and other wild and creepy creatures. Sometimes we argued about cutting off my tree-likes Hibiscus and Bougainvillas. Some of its twigs are used by birds for nesting and its wonderful to see different birds using my plants as their homes.

I am a journalist covering all sorts of conflict in Mindanao but most often I take some breaks to appreciate the wonders and beauty of our nature.

Where war is an ordinary situation in some areas of Sulu and Basilan (area of coverage), it is wise to see the other side of the coin to maintain sanity.

There’s beauty in all aspects, it just requires a couple of minutes for a break to adore what is within our surroundings.

As a solo mother raising a young fine and intelligent boy, I have to be more than a superwoman.

Editors from Mindanao and Manila demand a great deal about stories while my son Kenjo keeps reminding me that I have some obligations to attend to his growing needs.

So in the pages of Scatterthoughts, I will bring you to a journey of how it is like to be a mother of a child , keeping our home and at the same time beating all deadlines for my stories.