Most remarkable of all, she did not show any fear of the widespread and threatening presence of the New People’s Army (NPA) in our area. Those years in the early ’70s the NPA rebels were visibly and cockily operating in and around Dicamay despite the military’s (supposedly) intensified operations against these rebels. Encounters between military and rebel troops were a common incident in our place; unfortunate civilians were often caught in the crossfires. Miss Mejia could have given up her teaching job and gone back to her parents or transferred to another school, but she opted to stay and continue teaching us. Her concern for her pupils surmounted fears for her safety in Dicamay. Even the entreaties of her parents could not persuade her to leave Dicamay. Her calling as a teacher, with God as her guide, I would assume, must have motivated her to accept the teaching job in our godforsaken barrio. I remember how she would remain calm when NPA soldiers barged into our classroom and endeavored to teach us their chants and the primer of the ideology they were fighting for. Even today I can still sing the revolutionary songs the rebel soldiers taught us. As soon as the rebels left our classroom, Miss Mejia, unruffled, preternaturally composed, resumed our interrupted lesson. After the declaration of martial law in 1972, when I was a Grade 2 pupil under Miss Mejia, the national government ordered us to vacate Dicamay, which it considered a heavily
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