“The BADJAO, Stereotyped as LOW Class Among the Filipinos”
Written by Ma’am Raisa Tomindug Alip Marohombsar
Submitted at Medium.com
I made this essay to give credit to the Badjaos, one of the poorest minority tribes in the Southern part of Mindanao. They are deprived many times of their basic rights in terms of education, and normal social participation in the flow of economic, educational, political, and religious activities because of ignorance.
Low class according to McMillan dictionary.com (2021–2022) is people who have the lowest social status in society. The term low class is synonymous with “underclass” which is described also as the lowest social class in society, comprising people who are the poorest and have the least power. This description is lawfully or legally tagged to Badjaos as riffraff of the places where they loiter all day long. Riffraff is an insulting or humorous word for people of a low social class. (McMillandictionary.com, 2021–2022).
Badjaos are part of the minority groups who were living a life that is considered very difficult and miserable in finding their own consistent means of livelihood as others rely mostly on the little coins given to them by those who have hearts and fear of Karma or people who consciously put their shoes on their status as hungry beggars on the streets, bringing with them their newly born babies or little kids to attract hearts to pity their plights.
According to the historical explanation of Badjao.com, regardless of their origin, the Badjao have been driven to near extinction due to the exploitation by the neighboring dominant tribes like the Tausog, the Yakans, and even the Christians, disease, starvation, and apparent inability to cope with the social changes, they are sometimes referred to also as a “vanishing tribe.” At present, estimates place their number at about 40,000 in the Philippines.
The Badjaos are peace-loving people, often to a fault. They would endure all forms of hardship, inconvenience, and lost opportunities only to avoid getting into trouble, especially with people not of their own tribe. Hence, they prefer to live in peace by themselves at the coastal fringes of population centers, mangrove areas, coves, and islets. With the huge logs that they once used to carve into houseboats becoming scarce (and expensive), their mobile dwellings have since evolved into shanties on stilts–literally a ramshackle ensemble of poles, palm fronds, and if the family is better off, some pieces of miss-cut planks.
Their tribe members are getting smaller in number as what the statistics told us that they are now standing only as 40,000 because probably of hard standards of life. The unfair treatment they receive from society, especially the government in concerns is obviously a sign of social injustice on their part. These people according to the researchers, are peace-loving and are happy to the ways of the simplicity of life. “They would endure all forms of hardship, inconvenience, and lost opportunities only to avoid getting into trouble, especially with people not of their own tribe”, as explained by Natulla (2015).
In other words, they understood, that they needed to live in isolation as protection for their survival from the world where the supremacy of oppressive “rich and strong ones”, can not cage them into brutal treatment. Having this mentality, if we may say, wrong psychology of struggling with the real stream kind of life and living, aggrandizes more their opportunity for change to educational or school participation and other extreme helping aid or aegis to support them mentally, emotionally, socially, economically and techno-materially. Political participation has been misused by others through political manipulation during political elections as their votes may be bought as high as P500.00 or lower than this.
These people are very obnoxious in the eyes of some hard-hearted individuals and government officials of the land because of their appearance as nuisance persistent beggars. The government has to study the very roots of the problem regarding why they are like that. There are so many government subsidies like that of 4Ps who, supposedly, must be members of the subsidiaries so that at least they can have something to defray their problems on their livelihood sustenance. These people’s main life if I am not wrong or excuse me if I am becoming biased with my words, is simply meant to earn from begging for simple foods to eat. They can not stay on a certain space of any land anywhere in the different cities or provinces because they do not have land of their own origin to claim except for the sea yonder which agricultural productions are impossible to produce except for the sea species which they could sell or barter to the land dwellers.
But regardless of their situation, is in that somber state, since they are still Filipinos and under the roof of Filipino families, the government must find ways and means to resolve at large their social, economic, educational, and spiritual problems as our brethren of the Republic of the Philippines. They must be dragged to schools. They must be supported in the aspect of teaching them how to catch fish and gain footholds of decent jobs so that many people will allow them to partake as workers of their businesses. They are also people like us who suffer a lot from the condemnation of those who are high from them. Even if they want to join in the social activities in any barangay, yet, they can do so because of the laws and ordinances that they can not even understand, or the law itself cannot benefit and support them. Beyond that spectrum, people must feel their hearts. For the sake of humanity and good Samaritans, be conscious enough to feel their predicament. Am sure they never choose to be like that. If they could ask God to choose whom to be raised by genealogy, they would never choose their tribe.
We all agree with the idea, that education is strong weaponry to be freed from the shackle of poverty. If they can be recognized as less to say “people only people” who need a lot of educational and governmental subsidies and support to indigent groups, then the Bill of Rights’ script and stipulation must be rightfully granted to them without prejudice and belittlement.
Thus, challenging the researchers, and project workers for social amelioration, why not focus and give a chance to this group, the Badjaos by helping them to partake in the educational, social stream of works and activities so that their impoverished condition will somehow be resolved little by little in a gradual basis until the time that some educated and mentally trained among them will lead them properly, healthily, intellectually and progressively to a good life. Then, they will be stopped from social-economic-educational discrimination.
