Rally time: 04:00 AM. Our group started the day early on our fourth day of ganging together for adventures in ZamPenBaSulTa. We were done with Tawi–Tawi, and then came the time we would breeze through the landmass of Zamboanga Peninsula. Our main destination for that day would be roughly around seven hours from Zamboanga City assuming we would not stop or we would not hit a snag, but not stopping is not really a thing when touring, is it?

So we hit the road at 04:30 AM. It did not actually take long for our first stop to grab breakfast along the way. Point proven. Three and a half hours since we left the hotel in Zamboanga City, we reached our first official stop in the youngest of the three Zamboanga Provinces and the second one in our itinerary.

Prominently standing in the middle of a rotunda, the Ipil Rotunda Obelisk has the characteristics typical of obelisks, accentuated by a sculpted fountain and a small garden at its base. On its body, it has Baybayin script on two opposite sides spelling out the name of the province with the official logo at the lower part, and bas-relief images on the other two sides.

Apart from being the marker that denotes the position of Zamboanga Sibugay as the geographical middle province of Zamboanga Peninsula, it is also a memorial to a dark history of a not-so-distant past.

04 April 1995. Around 200 heavily armed members of the Abu Sayyaf Group stormed the town of Ipil, then still part of Zamboanga del Sur. The terror group opened fire to civilians, robbed homes and banks, and burned the town center to the ground. 30 were taken as hostages and 53 were killed in what would eventually be called as the 1995 Ipil Massacre.

Ipil would eventually be named the capital municipality of the then newly established Province of Zamboanga Sibugay. The Ipil Rotunda Obelisk would then be inaugurated in 2015, 20 years after the tragic event, not only to mark the central part of Zamboanga Peninsula, but also as a memento to lives lost to the conflicts of the past.

The Renegade Duo with the Ipil Rotunda Obelisk at the background.

It only took us eight minutes to appreciate the obelisk entirely, since apart from taking photos, there was nothing else much to do given that the landmark stands in the middle of a busy intersection. Eight minutes was more than enough though for us not only to appreciate the architectural aesthetics of the obelisk but to understand better what a tall spire in the middle of the road could mean for a people once devastated by senseless acts of terror.

The obelisk is not the only thing that is standing proud and tall. The spirit of the Sibugaynon stands with the obelisk as a magnificent testament to their resilience as a people who after a dark chapter in their past was able to rise through the ashes, quite literally. While the obelisk may stand as a poignant reminder of a painful history, it may also show how high the future can be for the strong and hardwearing spirits of the people of Zamboanga Sibugay.