Scuba diving and snorkeling off the southern coast

In the shallow waters by Talikud island, I try to remember to breathe slowly.  The divemaster floats above me, one hand always on my tank, the other in front of my mask, pointing - see the starfish?  the anemone?  the hidden urchin?  He waves a warning not to touch, and moves his own glove very close to a rock that, in a flurry of motion, turns into a surprisingly large fish.  He reminds me to equalize and we sink a little deeper, while a bright-purple crustacean, as long as my forearm, scuttles across the ocean floor.  I remember the warnings not to touch anything, but especially not anything too brightly-colored or too beautiful, while a stunningly pink, completely foreign animal waves gently from its coral habitation.  The sun has come out after the morning rains, and beams of white light shine through the shallow water as we slowly travel down the reefs.  Schools of tiny fish part around us while the larger creatures dive into dark shadows near the sand, and I am bug-eyed, watching it all.  When we surface, I pull off my mask and laugh.

Back on the boat, we chug our way around to another side of the island.  A school of flying fish pass by, bursting out of the water in a fleeting silver wave, bodies tiny and glistening in the sunlight, and we watch admiringly as we drop a new anchor.  Once we're settled in, and the flying fish have passed, I borrow ratty flippers and an old snorkel and jump into the comforting, warm water.  The water here is so shallow I have to work not to kick the coral when I tread water.  The sea is clear, blue, endless, and I swim over the reefs and marvel at the bright-blue sea stars and the forests of spikes.  I'm alone, a few other snorkelers visible only when I surface and look around, and I float so easily in this salty water that I feel like I could swim for hours.

But as I travel towards the island, the coral gets closer and closer to my mask until it fades away into sea grasses and patches of sand, and finally I stand, pull off my flippers, and walk onto a white-sand beach, littered with bits of coconut shells and dead coral, shaded by palm trees.  A few well-kept nipa huts stand on the far corner of the beach, fishing gear before them, but I don't see any inhabitants.  I stretch my arms up towards the sun, then I kneel in the sand, waves lapping at my waist, and stare out at the sea.

I dive back in the water, pushing myself back towards the boat, and reach the edge of the shallows - a coral-covered cliff that continues down into darkness.  As I float on top of the water, occasionally diving beneath to come face-to-face with a new kind of fish, I can see the real scuba divers as shadows, far below me, with bright-colored fins.  Columns of bubbles, glowing white in the water, rise from the deeps to mark their locations as they sink down along the cliff.

I circle the boat, and find myself above the spear fishermen, sitting perfectly still near the top edge of the cliffs, waiting.  They nod to acknowledge me, and I carefully paddle away, back to the shallow fields of coral, with their hiding fish and spiky dangers and the tiny, colorful spirals of fronds that vanish at a hint of movement towards them.  We've been on and in the water all day, and I am nowhere near tired of diving down to watch the life beneath the surface of the sea.

It's a hard life, huh?  Well, yes - just not for me.  On this trip, I'm with a woman's rights activist, one of my major contacts and a new friend, and another American student working as an intern for her group, and a whole slew of Germans and Filipinas working on issues of conflict resolution in Mindanao.  So between our conversations about colorful fish and arguments over dive equipment, we touch on issues that are currently tearing Mindanao apart - land disputes, religious conflict, the cycle of violence.  So oh, yes, life in these islands is hard.  Hard for the guerrillas in the mountains, I'm sure, and for the people who must live in fear of them, and for the soldiers always on high alert, and for all the families of the tens of thousands of dead.

But not for me, no.  Life is definitely not hard for me.  I pulled off my snorkel mask and wrote this in my journal on the prow of a boat slicing through sky-blue seas, beneath a warm sun, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  Unfair though it is, my life is good indeed.