REACHING THE BADJAO PEOPLE IN THE PHILIPPINES

REACHING THE BADJAO PEOPLE IN THE PHILIPPINES
By: Success Kanayo Uchime
Kingdom Missions Outreach International Inc.

The Lord Jesus Christ is really doing great things in our ministry here in the Philippines. He has opened our eyes to to see the great need amongst the neglected people of Badjao.

The Badjao people are daily crying out, "Come over and help us," hence the mission needs among the people are enormous just to say the lest. And we had no other option than to respond to this divine vision, having been fully convinced that the Lord wants us to be there.

In actual fact our work started there way back in 2007, when I came here in the Philippines for a kind of survey to "spy the land," and know what the Lord would want me do!

Then, I worked among the Badjao leaving in the Barangay Lo-oc, just at the foot of the Lapulapu bridge, in Mandaue city. Then coming back in 2008 with my whole family (my wife and four kids), the Lord started to remind me of my unfinished assignment among the Badjao.

Then flowing with that anointing, I've to start-off again by setting up what's today known and called, the Badjao Missionary Team (BMT), a ministry under Kingdom Missions Outreach International Inc., and the Lord is using the Team mightily to affect the lives of these forgotten people - the Badjao peoples group!

The question that's often asked is, where is the Badjao village or home land? To this we simply say that the Badjao village is in the southern Philippines, on a little stretch of beach on Sarangani Bay, which is just a few miles south of General Santos.

The Badjao are among the displaced people in the Philippines as a result of wars and the death of their traditional fishing culture. There homelands has been taken away from them and their culture is gradally slipping away.

Badjao means "man of the seas" and by tradition, the people are sea nomads, traveling by boat from one island to the other in search of fishing harvest.

Traditionally, they're a seafaring people originating from the Samal Tribe on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines and it needs to be observed that very few people outside of Badjao speak their tribal language.

They spend most, even all of their time on their boats, thus they're often referred to as Sea Gypsies, which is however a loose description given to many unrelated ethnic groups. For example the Badjao isn't related to the Mogen People or the Sea Gypsies of Surin Island, Thailand.

The Badjao people are mainly Moslem, the main religion in Mindanao and their families earn their living almost exclusively from fishing, diving for pearls and harvesting sea products. Some Badjao families have 10-12 children, thereby making poverty inevitable for them.

When the Badjao came to Mindanao's southern coast several centuries ago they built bamboo and nipa huts about three meters above the water level stretching to the sea and these high structures were meant to prevent them during high tides and also for safety against strangers.

The Badjao's long journey for safer environment started in the1970s, at the time when the Moro secessionist’s war was raging. They thereby headed north reaching Manila Bay in the 1990s and a group of Badjao built a village along the shore, this time not with bamboos and nipa again but with wood scraps, rice sacks and cartons.

They are regarded as war refugees; this is so because over the past several years, they've been caught in several crossfire’s between the Muslim separatists and the Christian-backed government in Manila. Economically, they've been victims of over fishing by other groups that are using everything from dynamite to high-tech fishing trawlers.

At present the Badjao have reached as far north of Manila and even beyond and many have become land dwellers, making their living by begging for arms in major cities like Manila, Cebu and many others.

For more information about the Badjao, you can visit the Badjao Missionary Team website by clicking on this link below: http://sites.google.com/site/badjaomissionaryteam/

And to support this our project, you can do so by donating online now by clicking on this link: www.kmointer.webs.com/giveyourdonation.htm

May God bless you as you respond to our clarion call for support!

Yours In Missions,
Apostle Success Kanayo Uchime
Kingdom Missions Outreach International Inc.
+63 9089857499, +63 9283901971, +63 9324712532
www.kmointer.webs.com or www.seamist.org/uchime