30/09/2026
𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟑 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲
“In the course of the school year, the crisis took a different toll with numerous lockdowns. Even after the lockdown, the quarter I lived in was safe. A lot of shooting and kidnapping was still taking place, even in the university area. My parents asked me to pause with leaving the house to school. I didn’t go to school for some few weeks.
I decided that I will no longer go to school that year because there were days when I will go to school and classes will be cancelled because there was shooting in some particular areas. There were days I had to trek some long distances because there was shooting in this area, so cars and bikes stopped coming to a particular area, so I had to trek to get home. I was so tired with this repetitive pause and go back to school. I wasn’t concentrating. I found myself failing my Continuous Assessment. It was just the beginning of mid first semester.
When the next school year came, I was in a hurry to go back to school. I felt so guilty that I wasted an entire school year and that I was behind because some students still braved the odds and continued school, even students who were kidnapped. I went back to school the next school year, and I’ve been going despite the lockdowns, shooting, and kidnappings. A school year has never started normally in the Northwest and Southwest regions, but we still follow the curriculum of the other regions in the country and finish school at the same time as them.
This crisis has made me waste 2 school years at home. It has put me in situations of panic, anxiety, and fear several times.
This is just my story. Others have had it worse. Many young people have never had the opportunity to return back to school ever since the crisis began in 2016. Many have had their houses burnt down. Others have been sexually assaulted. Many of them have watched their parents, siblings, family members, neighbors, and friends killed in front of them.
It’s been 10 whole years of suffering, hatred, killing, poverty, and pain.🕊️”
