My Visit At Cotabato City

It’s been a while that I was not updating my page here because of limited access of the internet and busy days. That is why my first post for this year was about my visit at Cotabato City. Have you been to Cotabato areas? It’s not in my wildest desire to visit that place and I know that nobody longs to stay there for a lifetime because of the situations that the place is experiencing. But when your job calls and there’s no way to refuse it then you must be brave enough to face any untoward incidents that might happen along the way. Last September 7 to 9, 2013 I was requested to be part of the recruitment team to conduct the scholarship and entrance examinations to some schools located at Sultan Kudarat and Cotabato areas. Without any second thought I said yes to the request. But going there was not that excited as the usual feeling when you go to other places. Instead, I and my other companions were praying that we can reached our destination safely. We arrived at our first stop which was at Kidapawan City. Thanks to God, I had a good sleep during the night. Our second stop was at Cotabato City, we arrived at around 6:00pm, and again we are so thankful to God for keeping us safe despite of the heavy rain along the way. We took our rest at Diamond Hotel and woke up early to start our travel going to Lebak and Sultan Kudarat. It was my first time to be in this place and the place where I don’t want to go back. Though the road was cemented but you will feel dizzy because of the crooked road, very far, all you can see was mountains and some armed men along the road and at some checkpoint areas which made us scared because we don't know if those armed men were true army or rebels. And as we went back to Davao City, we took the way at Shariff Aguak Maguindanao- as many people said -the not so safe road to pass by because of the many ambushes and bombing along the road. We also passed the road where the Maguidanao massacre happened three years ago. Imagine how scary it was to be passing that place. Thanks again to God we were able to passed the road smoothly and arrived to Davao safely.