Peace. Nobody said it would be easy.
For starters, waking up early on a cool Sunday morning is no simple task. But there the volunteers were at 6:00 am in the morning, standing in front of the People Power monument, 1,500 strong and ready to take on what would be a record-breaking peace mural for Project EDSA’s Lakbay Para Sa Kapayapaan Sa EDSA. For this inaugural leg’s 8-hour painting debacle, each volunteer needed to bring one paintbrush, clean plastic cups for the paint, and bucket loads of positive energy. And boy, did they bring it in spades.
There to lead them was a sleep-deprived horde of artists led by Dolphins Love Freedom, project managers from AAI, the AFP and MMDA, and secretariat committee volunteers from iVolunteer Philippines. These people labored night and day to ensure that this first leg of Project EDSA’s peace mural would go off without a hitch. It wouldn’t be so easy.
After listening to the organization leaders remind them of the message of peace they were all there to relay to the nation, the volunteers were raring to go. The sun was ready too, as it beat down on everyone early and continuously. Despite the high temperature, for the first few hours everything hummed along.
Painters had adjourned to their assigned wall sections and began splashing color onto Camp Aguinaldo’s wall. They ran up and down along EDSA carrying cups of various paints, a flurry of excited little rainbows darting by the road. Hundreds of hands dipped their brushes and dabbed, flicked, and flitted across the cement walls. Colorful life appeared in spots and strokes, a brilliant picture still trying to put itself together: Large doves fly by signs of peace; a soldier taking a flower from a civilian captures a scene that occurred decades ago at that very spot; women weave long red and blue waves – a representation of peace – that undulate throughout the different paintings, tying the pieces together.
Also unifying these works of art were the volunteers: teachers, students, young professionals, government employees, parents, grandparents, children, military men, PWD’s, accomplished artists, and first-time painters – all advocating peace, a thriving assembly as multihued as the swatches of paint they were using.
Amidst the sweltering heat though, these volunteers were drying up as quickly as the paint. Enter the roaming peddlers of water and pastel – a halal meal of meat and rice wrapped in a banana leaf, popular in many parts of Mindanao. These organizers buzzed around singing offers of this lunchtime treat like bees pollinating everything they pass. Once again energized, people laughed with one another, shouted words of encouragement back and forth, and shared stories and paint. It was a lovely concert of vocal vigor. The rushing cars and loud buses could do nothing but serve as soft accompaniments to the chorus of this very animated paint crew. For a day the Peace Clap was EDSA’s rhythm and cheers for kapayapaan were once again its hymn.
By midday however, things got worn out. Arms were slightly tired, voices a little strained. Paintbrushes became frayed and were rendered ineffective, and not many plastic cups remained pristine. The once seemingly unlimited cans of paint appeared more and more finite. The number of volunteers dwindled and the rest of Camp Aguinaldo’s blank wall loomed.
But apparently, enthusiasm is one inexhaustible resource, because somehow this paint crew outlasted all other supplies that day. More volunteers trickled in and took up their posts. Water was mixed with paint; hands were used as brushes; pants and shirts served as towels to wipe paint on. Ingenuity and passion fueled them to the finish. In the end, it was only the 4:30 pm rain that forced everyone to stop building their beacon of love and harmony, and by that time most of the good work was done.
Still, nobody said it would be easy… Still people might look at this artwork and say “So they created a mural for peace. What does that do? What lasting mark does it create?” At the end of this project’s first leg, what was there? Well, there was a whole family clad in orange, spending Sunday teaching each other the true value of community and kinship. There was a squad of uniformed soldiers taking time off to draw symbols of their dreams of peace. Entirely unbidden, a complete stranger brought a sleepless artist a freshly opened can of ice cold Red Bull. Young painters jumped up and down giddily when given an opportunity to improvise a small part of one section of the mural. They immediately began collaborating and attempting to unite their visions into one symbol.
There was a group of ladies lifted onto men’s shoulders to finish their artwork on higher portions of Camp Aguinaldo’s wall. There was the Philippine rowing team, soldiers themselves, carrying a few of the PWD’s over ledges to get them closer to their cement canvas. Let’s not forget the 11 year-old boy, who gave a moving speech on peace and then proceeded to paint different sections of the wall from the beginning of the morning until the first few drops of late afternoon rain. His smile was so youthful and exuberant, so ever-present and infectious that volunteers still smile remembering him.
At day’s end what was there but two things: a wall made vibrant and a team of hundreds of people with streaks of colors all over their bodies like veins pumping shades of devotion. As the raindrops fell to conclude Leg 1, there the volunteers stood: a blend of sweat, road smog, water-based paint, and broad grins; slightly sunburnt faces lined with greens and blues; knees coated by the browns and grays of soil and dust; fingers soaked in black, red, and yellow, tired from caressing love into the mural. There they shone… the brotherhood of paint.
The goal is to color a wall with a message of peace, but the deeper purpose is to paint peace within people. The mural provides a visual reminder of a nation’s desire for kapayapaan, while the volunteers can realize this peace in the world – living, breathing portraits of brotherhood that can reach people everyday of their lives. It’s not going to be easy. This was simply the first leg of a single step to achieve peace. So, join us and help the movement for the next few Saturdays. LET’S GET SOME PAINT ON YOU.
Lakbay para sa Kapayapaan sa Edsa 