Back to Bongao, the boom town

BONGAO, Tawi-Tawi (MindaNews) – After a few months lull, I was finally back in Bongao, the boom town, in Tawi- Tawi province, proverbially referred to as the land far, far away. These days it takes less than an hour to reach the capital town from Zamboanga City. Flights are daily and fully-booked most of the time.

Tawi-Tawi? Where is that? I was once asked this by a kababayan working in a duty-free shop at Melbourne airport. My best response was an analogy. Do you know Batanes Islands? “Nasa tabi ng Batanes ang Tawi-Tawi?”. “No, ang gusto ko lang sabihin ay kung pinaka-norte ng Pilipinas ang Batanes, ang Tawi-Tawi naman ang pinaka-south nito”, I explained. “Oh I see, so nasa ilalim pala ng Mindanao?”. She added, “parte pa ba ng Pilipinas ito?”

Tawi-Tawi used to be the southern part of Sulu until it was separated to become another province, with Batu-Batu as its original capital town in 1973. Its creation is based on the clamor of the majority and largely pacifist Sama-Bajaw population for their own self-governance.

Its original capital Batu-Batu is set in a cove on the eastern part of the mainland also called Tawi-Tawi and to the Sama-Bajaw locals as “Tana Mehe,” the big island. The local name conjures magnanimity as the main island is a great provider for the people when food becomes scarce in their small insular communities. Over the years, its magnanimity created a unique land-based lifestyle – Sama Daleya, Sama engaging in upland farming, like wild rice varieties cultivating native fruits and veggies, and harvesting from the rich wildlife, from eggs of the native Tabon chicken to medicinal herbs - atypical for a cultural group largely associated with the marine world.

Tana Mehe is also home to sacred spots called “tampat” where pre-Islamic rituals are practiced to appease the spirit world, the mystical home of “kaomboan” or ancestors. As such, it conjures safety from major natural and man-made calamities, such as big storms and refuge during colonial invasions from the Spaniards to the Americans and the Japanese.

However, after the Jolocaust of 1974, it was feared that Batu-Batu was highly vulnerable to be captured by the MNLF forces. The security decision was to transfer it to remote Bongao island at the southern tip of the mainland archipelago and to be constructed on a hill top. So, it is today.

Bongao’s metamorphosis started as a backwater village along the Aguada Bay. The Bongao Channel, the strait between Bongao and Sanga-Sanga islands, and the so-called “Tawi-Tawi Beach,” a wide coastal expanse of fine sands and coral reefs on the southern end of Bongao Island was enough source of daily seafood variety. No one goes hungry here as long as one is industrious and diligent enough to scour the rich coastal zones for one’s preferred seafood. Back then these coasts were communal property, all have access. But there are unwritten rules, such as to take only what you and your family need, to leave certain spaces for these species to regenerate and prosper, and as always, to be grateful to the bounty of the sea. Having a grateful heart is part of the old rituals.

Bongao was traditionally ruled by the Halun chieftains. The famous one of the same clan became a local president and donated generously for roads, for the provincial hospital, for the main campus of the Mindanao State University in the province, and for several public elementary and high schools.

Just as in “Tawi-Tawi beach,” a love song was composed by an American serviceman who fell in love with a local princess, here too in Bongao is where my father first laid his eyes on my mother aboard a school float. Back then there was still reservation on cross-cultural marriage. The Tausug women do not really favor their sons marrying “tao south”. TO BE CONTINUED. (Noor Saada is a Tausug of mixed ancestry – born in Jolo, Sulu, grew up in Tawi-tawi, studied in Zamboanga and worked in Davao, Makati and Cotabato. He is a development worker and peace advocate, former Assistant Regional Secretary of the Department of Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, currently working as an independent consultant and is a member of an Insider Mediation group that aims to promote intra-Moro dialogue).