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- Sep 30, 2011
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LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Seven months pregnant, Widad Batabor was bleeding profusely when she left Marawi City on her 28th birthday. It was May 23, the day President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao, after the Islamic State-inspired Maute group took over sections of the city on the same day.
“I just wanted to save my baby before the bombings get worse,” said Batabor five months after the attack, with four-month-old baby Bakwit in her arms.
Batabor remembered how she left home that day. Except for the intermittent sounds of gunfire, she thought her neighborhood was quiet. But as she went out, she discovered that the streets were crammed with residents leaving their houses — elderly people in wheelchairs, pregnant women and children on their feet, and a long queue of stranded cars.
It took hours to reach Saguiaran town, six kilometers away, where, along with the rest of the evacuees, they had a stopover before Batabor’s family proceeded to a relative’s house in Iligan City. “It felt like 10 years for me,” she said, recalling the 10-hour trip to Iligan City.
Barely a month later, Batabor gave birth by caesarean section to a son she nicknamed “Baby Bakwit.” The baby came a month ahead of the expected due date. Batabor blamed her premature delivery on the trauma she went through as an evacuee. Her hospital bills, which ran up to P90,000 ($1,760), drained her savings, which could have been used as start-up capital.
Batabor was just one among hundreds of women from Marawi who gave birth during the evacuation. She was a home-based evacuee (meaning those evacuees who took refuge in the homes of relatives), who made up 80 percent of at least 350,000 displaced residents from Marawi City and neighboring towns.
In Saguiaran town, about 32 kilometers from where Batabor sought refuge in her relative’s house in Iligan City, 108 women evacuees gave birth at the evacuation center from May 23 to June 30. All the deliveries were normal, but the harsh living conditions at the evacuation site posed risks to the health of mothers and babies alike.
The Mothers Who Fled Marawi
To rebuild with nothing.
“I just wanted to save my baby before the bombings get worse,” said Batabor five months after the attack, with four-month-old baby Bakwit in her arms.
Batabor remembered how she left home that day. Except for the intermittent sounds of gunfire, she thought her neighborhood was quiet. But as she went out, she discovered that the streets were crammed with residents leaving their houses — elderly people in wheelchairs, pregnant women and children on their feet, and a long queue of stranded cars.
It took hours to reach Saguiaran town, six kilometers away, where, along with the rest of the evacuees, they had a stopover before Batabor’s family proceeded to a relative’s house in Iligan City. “It felt like 10 years for me,” she said, recalling the 10-hour trip to Iligan City.
Barely a month later, Batabor gave birth by caesarean section to a son she nicknamed “Baby Bakwit.” The baby came a month ahead of the expected due date. Batabor blamed her premature delivery on the trauma she went through as an evacuee. Her hospital bills, which ran up to P90,000 ($1,760), drained her savings, which could have been used as start-up capital.
Batabor was just one among hundreds of women from Marawi who gave birth during the evacuation. She was a home-based evacuee (meaning those evacuees who took refuge in the homes of relatives), who made up 80 percent of at least 350,000 displaced residents from Marawi City and neighboring towns.
In Saguiaran town, about 32 kilometers from where Batabor sought refuge in her relative’s house in Iligan City, 108 women evacuees gave birth at the evacuation center from May 23 to June 30. All the deliveries were normal, but the harsh living conditions at the evacuation site posed risks to the health of mothers and babies alike.
The Mothers Who Fled Marawi
To rebuild with nothing.
