Basilan Badjaos now beggars in Ipil

[GLT]

Basilan Badjaos now beggars in Ipil
By JOSEPH ARNEL DELIVERIO Sibugay Express and VERA Files
Posted at 08/02/2010 12:48 AM | Updated as of 08/02/2010 12:48 AM

Ipil, Zamboanga Sibugay—They fled Basilan to escape the menace of sea
bandits, only to live more difficult lives here—as beggars.

Seven impoverished Badjao families have made the streets of Ipil their
home after fleeing Maluso town in Basilan to avoid what they said was
harassment and terrorism by sea pirates and poachers.

They have been fending off hunger by begging alms from residents at
the junction of the roads leading to Pagadian, Dipolog and Zamboanga
cities.

Mendicant Badjaos have become a constant picture in the cities of
Mindanao, but it is only now that they have reached such big numbers
here in the southwestern side of the island.

A nomadic tribe mostly found in the coastal areas of Zamboanga
Peninsula, Basilan, Tawi-tawi and Sulu, Badjaos are known as sea
gypsies who make their living as fishermen.

The Badjaos are also known to be gentle people who would rather leave
a place than confront trouble, especially with anyone not belonging to
their tribe.

In 2006, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and
Itinerant People listed the Badjaos as the poorest among the country’s
nomadic tribes.

The council also said, “In the entire Philippines, there are no other
people who are as collectively and individually poor as the Badjaos—
without exception. Certainly none could be poorer.”

Badjao fisherman Ayde Nasayri said they left Basilan a month ago after
his father and brother failed to return from fishing, and were
presumed to have been killed by bandits.

“They take away your fishing boats; if you refuse, they will kill
you,” he said in the Tausug dialect.

Nasayri said he was the last of his clan to flee Maluso and join his
relatives in Ipil, bringing along his pregnant wife and children.

His relatives have been around Ipil for three weeks. They now number
25 individuals, most of them women and children.

The busy intersection is where they cook meals, sleep and engage in
other activities a normal family would do, except that they don’t have
walls and roofs over their heads.

They stay under a tree and a dilapidated billboard that shade them
from the heat of the sun. At night, they sleep on cardboards on top of
the cold pavement just outside closed business shops.

They take baths, do laundry and attend to personal necessities at the
nearby Sanito River in the east side of town.

The seven families are all his extended kin, Nasayri said. They
decided to flee Basilan for fear of the bandits but more so because
they could no longer make a living out of fishing when bandits also
took away their fishing boats, he added.

The families first fled to Zamboanga City but decided to proceed here
when they could not get much help because people there do not give
alms, Nasayri’s mother said. Zamboanga City has an anti-mendicancy
ordinance.

The Badjao beggars, including their little children, go from store to
store, person to person around Ipil’s business center and nearby
residences, begging for money and food.

Asked where they would go in case local authorities drive them away,
they said they would proceed to the fishing town of Labason, Zamboanga
del Norte, where they hope they could go back to fishing.

Nasayri said he and his relatives got fed up with the bandits who have
been constantly making trouble in the seas of Basilan. His pregnant
wife almost got hit by bullets when the bandits attacked their homes,
he added.

Nasari said they beg because it is the only way to survive.

“We don’t steal anyway,” he said, adding the assurance that they will
not be in Ipil for long.

(VERA Files is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at
current issues. Vera is Latin for “true.”)


Courtesy ABS CBN