New forum member from the Philippines

[tagalanao]

Hi,

Greetings from the Philippines!

I've long been lurking in this forum as an outsider, though not that often. Took me so long to decide to finally register coz I feel I don't fit in this very scholarly community. I'm no sword enthusiast/collector, just a lowly sword vendor (on ebay mostly). But recently, I found myself talking to a few of you here privately, so I figured I must join the forum as well. And Kai kept prodding me to join. So here I am.

I'm in a small city called Iligan, which used to be capital of Lanao del Norte province. The capital was moved elsewhere, but Iligan remains the business center for all of Lanao (Lanao del Sur included). Lanao is home of the Maranaos, or "people of the lake," one of the Muslim tribes in the southern island of Mindanao. Iligan is only an hour's drive away from Marawi, the capital of Lanao del Sur, and 1.5 hours away from Tugaya, where many of you know is home to Maranao swordsmiths.

I'm a journalist by profession. I used to write for a daily paper in Manila, but I can't tolerate the traffic, the floods and the rat race. My last assignment there was covering the Senate, which got me really bored. I decided to bring my family back to my hometown, and resumed my journalistic pursuits here. It was much more exciting work than Manila. But the low pay in the journalism industry in this country drove me to look for other sources income, and thus found ebay, and the Moro swords. I don't do journalism on a regular basis now, only on special assignments. I also do photography work on the side.

While I enjoy earning more on ebay, I also enjoy the readings I need to do so I could communicate well with my buyers, who usually are much more knowledgeable. And reading about Moro swords made me learn more about the history of my very own people. Unfortunately, there's not much reading materials available here. But I can see a lot of people here who know Mindanao a lot.

I'm no Maranao Moro though (how I wish I were), even though I'm living in a place that is traditionally Maranao. That's why I opted to use "tagalanao" instead for this forum, which is vernacular (for the Cebuano dialect) for "one who is from Lanao."

Hoping to an enjoyable stay in this forum.

Bobby T.

[mmontoro]

Hi Bobby and welcome. I have enjoyed your photography as a fascinating glimpse into a place most of us will never go.

Best,
Manny

[Spunjer]

welcome and kamusta po kayo, bobby t.!
we are not scholars here (well, i can assure you i'm i'm not) lol, but you will find some very, very knowledgeable members here. hang and ask around, wag kang mahiya!!! i'm sure with your unique position being in mindanao, we could learn a lot from you.

btw, do you still travel to gensan and deal with hajji nur?

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by mmontoro

Hi Bobby and welcome. I have enjoyed your photography as a fascinating glimpse into a place most of us will never go.

Manny, why not come to our place so I can show you around? If forum members would love to organize an educational visit to Tugaya, I'd love to show them around. But in the meantime, hope these pictures will do ...

http://www.pbase.com/timonera/tugaya

Bob

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by Spunjer

welcome and kamusta po kayo, bobby t.!
we are not scholars here (well, i can assure you i'm i'm not) lol, but you will find some very, very knowledgeable members here. hang and ask around, wag kang mahiya!!! i'm sure with your unique position being in mindanao, we could learn a lot from you.

btw, do you still travel to gensan and deal with hajji nur?

Spunjer,

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I don't purposely travel to GenSan to meet Haji Noor. That's 11 hours drive away! But I'm frequent in the Davao / GenSan / Sarangani area for journalistic and other pursuits, so I get to meet him often. Sometimes, he sends me blades more than I could handle. :-) But lately, I go to Marawi almost every week to meet another Cadi who's as prolific as Noor.

Bob

[Bill]

Hi Bobby, Have enjoyed your site & bookmarked it some time ago. Great photos, good to see you posted the link for everyone to enjoy. Don't be shy about posting more photos here, especially smithing. Thanks Bill

[engar]

Hi Bobby,
Welcome to this forum and thanks for the amazing pics.
Regards from Spain.

[Ferguson]

Welcome Bobby T. Great to have you here.

Steve Ferguson

[Andrew]

Welcome, Bobby!

[nechesh]

Hi Bobby, welcome to the forum. I believe we had some communication a while back when your auctions first started showing up on eBay.
As one photojournalist to another, my sincerest compliments on your photography. It is a great photo essay on modern traditional craft in the Philippines. I hope you have found someone to sell it to. Have you considered trying one of the big boys like National Geographic. I can't attest to your writing skills yet, but your photography is up to their standards.

[kai]

Hi Bob,

Welcome!

Now, please post those Kampilan pics!

Regards,
Kai

[Battara]

Mabuhay Bob! Glad you finally took the plunge. Now you can swim in the murky waters with the rest of us. Your insights and experience can teach us more than you know. Please share more pictures and knowledge with the rest of us "scholars"( ).

[punal]

Hey Bob! is that you?
Finally, you've made it!!!

I welcome you my friend!

I'm looking forward to see more
lovely photos from you.

Now, post those Kampilan pics!!!



"spousal Sec."

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by nechesh

Hi Bobby, welcome to the forum. I believe we had some communication a while back when your auctions first started showing up on eBay.
As one photojournalist to another, my sincerest compliments on your photography. It is a great photo essay on modern traditional craft in the Philippines. I hope you have found someone to sell it to. Have you considered trying one of the big boys like National Geographic. I can't attest to your writing skills yet, but your photography is up to their standards.

nechesh,

i'm just a third rate writer in a third world country, as you'll soon find out in my posts. my writings appear good only in the newspapers and magazines coz i have good editors.

national geographic, wow! that's beyond my dreams. but how i wish!

yeah, we talked about 2 years ago, i guess.

bob

[nechesh]

You gotta dream bobby, you gotta dream!

[mmontoro]

Bobby,

Thanks for the offer of hospitality and the link. I would love to take you up on it one day.

Salamat,
Manny

[rasdan]

Hi Tagalanao,

Welcome!!

I wish u the best in the forum and in life. Really nice photography u got there. Thanks for sharing the photos and i agree with nechesh, u have a high skill in photography.

Regards,
Rasdan

[MABAGANI]

Welcome Bobby T, its been a long time since we communicated so its good to find you hear. A great friend of mine is from Marawi and some day I'll make it out there again to the majestic sites, perhaps cross paths with you on the way. btw Lake Lanao is at a high elevation and enjoys a cooler climate also worth checking out the museum at MSU Mindanao State University.

[wilked aka Khun Deng]

Welcome Bobby, I enetered the forum much as you have after much lurking and studying, It has fired a passion in me that I didn't know I had.

Iligan you say, we still fly supplies in there for our guys on the ground in Marawi. Just returned from 7 months in the Philippines and was lucky enough to get to Mindanao twice. First time to Marawi and a smaller town on the east coast of Lake Lanao called Tampuran. The second time all the way down in Lanao Del Sur in a little town called Malibang.

At a function in the Town of Tampuran I was talking to HRH The Sultan of Butic Nash Adur and he told me there was an American living near there that was trying to write a history of Mindanao. I have a contact to some professor there I'll try and dig up and send you.

Loved the photos- phenominal. Probably a smart choice to get out of the journalism field also considering your geography.

Favorite memory of those trips (besides the people) was flying over (helo) what we thought were birds but soon realized was a school of flying fish in the middle of Lake Lanao

Again Welcome
Dan

[rahman]

Thanks for the photos. I'm delighted to see the traditional handicarafts still being produced, and with good quality. Don't see that kind of quality nowadays.

[zamboanga]

bobby,

welcome to the forum.

i wish the other lurkers who are also based in mindanao will join us here.

for the benefit of all here is a simple road map of mindanao.

when i was still with the government, i took several trips from zamboanga to iligan via public bus. travel time was over 14 hours.

general tip for blade hunting: maranao and maguindanao pieces are found starting from iligan city going to the east. tausug, samal, and yakan pieces are found in areas west of iligan city, starting in the city of pagadian going south.

carlo

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by MABAGANI

Welcome Bobby T, its been a long time since we communicated so its good to find you hear. A great friend of mine is from Marawi and some day I'll make it out there again to the majestic sites, perhaps cross paths with you on the way. btw Lake Lanao is at a high elevation and enjoys a cooler climate also worth checking out the museum at MSU Mindanao State University.

Here's a virtual tour of the Aga Khan Museum at the Mindanao State University campus in Marawi, to those who haven't gone there yet. There's also a museum at the Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro (1.5 hours away from Iligan, opposite side of Marawi, where Mabagani once taught, though in a different university) with Moro weapons.

[tagalanao]

Dan,

Wow, your troops in Marawi! I did see a few of them last month, when US Embassy folks asked me to use some of my pictures for a photo exhibit on Muslim Life at the King Faisal Mosque compound also inside the Mindanao State University campus. There were some US soldiers, too.

You got the names of towns wrong. Must be difficult for an American ear to get the spellings right. Hehe ... It's Tamparan, not Tampuran. Malabang, not Malibang (and don't ever say you're going to Malibang, coz you'll hear everybody laugh!). Butig, not Butic. This used to be site of a big camp of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), next only in size to the central headquarters in Matanog in Maguindanao. I've visited the camp a few times doing journalistic work.

I've ridden on a helo, too, crossing Lake Lanao. This was during the war in Lanao in 2000, as I actively covered it for a Manila paper as the hostilities started in the town of Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte, just 15 minutes from my home. We could feel the ground shaking when Air Force planes drop bombs in Moro rebel strongholds.

AFAIK, American troops were actively involved in Lanao in the early 1900s, led by Pershing. I heard there was fierce fighting in the coastal town of Bayang in Lake Lanao, similar in scale as those in Bud Dajo and Bud Bagsak of Sulu.

Bobby T.

Originally Posted by wilked aka Khun Deng

Iligan you say, we still fly supplies in there for our guys on the ground in Marawi. Just returned from 7 months in the Philippines and was lucky enough to get to Mindanao twice. First time to Marawi and a smaller town on the east coast of Lake Lanao called Tampuran. The second time all the way down in Lanao Del Sur in a little town called Malibang.

At a function in the Town of Tampuran I was talking to HRH The Sultan of Butic Nash Adur and he told me there was an American living near there that was trying to write a history of Mindanao. I have a contact to some professor there I'll try and dig up and send you.

Loved the photos- phenominal. Probably a smart choice to get out of the journalism field also considering your geography.

Favorite memory of those trips (besides the people) was flying over (helo) what we thought were birds but soon realized was a school of flying fish in the middle of Lake Lanao

Again Welcome
Dan

[Spunjer]

bobby,

thanks for the pics!!! love that sarimanok! just wondering tho; did you take those pictures of moro weapons inside the museum? if so do you have close-ups of those sandatas. would be nice if you can post them as well .

as you can see, the majority of us can just dream of being there. maybe the next time i'm there we can hook up? once again, i truly appreciate you finally becoming a member of this forum.

also, thanks for that little bit of history...

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by zamboanga

for the benefit of all here is a simple road map of mindanao. when i was still with the government, i took several trips from zamboanga to iligan via public bus. travel time was over 14 hours.

Carlo, I love driving all over Mindanao, especially now coz most of the roads are paved (except the way to your Zamboanga). Most of those highways in the map, I've driven them all, except to Zamboanga, of course. My wife has forced me to avoid the buses, especially starting the late 1990s when bus bombings became more frequent. October last year, for a photo assignment in the Zambo-Basilan-Tawitawi area, I tried the Iligan-Zamboanga bus, leaving Iligan at 1a.m. It was torture! I promised myself never to take that trip again until the roads are paved. On my way back home, I tried my usual route - fly from Zambo to Cebu, then take the boat to Iligan, or Cagayan de Oro.

Coz of the picture I've acquired driving all over Mindanao through the years, I've started work on this Mindanao photo gallery ...

www.thelandofpromise.com

... in the hope that I can sell prints. But I haven't updated it yet in 2 years, and couldn't get the time to put shopping carts.

Originally Posted by zamboanga

general tip for blade hunting: maranao and maguindanao pieces are found starting from iligan city going to the east. tausug, samal, and yakan pieces are found in areas west of iligan city, starting in the city of pagadian going south.

Wow, I didn't know that! Next time I'd be in Pagadian, I'll look for blade shops there. In Iligan, you can't find old blades, only recently made ones from Tugaya. In Marawi, not much old blades, too.

Bob

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by Spunjer

thanks for the pics!!! love that sarimanok! just wondering tho; did you take those pictures of moro weapons inside the museum? if so do you have close-ups of those sandatas. would be nice if you can post them as well .

I can't take good closeups coz there's separating me and the blades.

Originally Posted by Spunjer

as you can see, the majority of us can just dream of being there. maybe the next time i'm there we can hook up? once again, i truly appreciate you finally becoming a member of this forum.

also, thanks for that little bit of history...

Yeah, sure! Whoever comes here and wants to go to Marawi / Tugaya, I can show you around. As long as you're adventurous and willing to take some risks.

If you open Cato's book, I personally know some of the people mentioned in the Preface. Jam Maridul is a Tausug who studied at the Mindanao State University in Marawi at the same time I was in college at MSU's Iligan campus. Cesar Padilla is publisher of the Mindanao Scoop, a weekly paper in Iligan that I edited from 1998-2003. Al Quirante, I accompanied him in coverages to Marawi when I was starting out in journalism in the late '80s fresh from college. He taught in Marawi in the 60s and 70s, I think, and thus fluent in the Maranao dialect.

Maybe if I were here in Iligan when Cato visited Lanao, I may be in his Preface, too. I started as a journalist here in Lanao in '87 until '92, then moved to Manila to write for a daily paper (if you heard about the Philippine Daily Inquirer) and to be with my wife, who was taking her residency and fellowship at a hospital in Manila. We came home in '97, and I resumed covering Lanao.

BobT

[Battara]

Love the pictures, Bob, especially of the museum goodies. Are there closeups of the kampilans?

[wilked aka Khun Deng]

Welcome Bobby, I enetered the forum much as you have after much lurking and studying, It has fired a passion in me that I didn't know I had.

Iligan you say, we still fly supplies in there for our guys on the ground in Marawi. Just returned from 7 months in the Philippines and was lucky enough to get to Mindanao twice. First time to Marawi and a smaller town on the east coast of Lake Lanao called Tampuran. The second time all the way down in Lanao Del Sur in a little town called Malibang.

At a function in the Town of Tampuran I was talking to HRH The Sultan of Butic Nash Adur and he told me there was an American living near there that was trying to write a history of Mindanao. I have a contact to some professor there I'll try and dig up and send you.

Loved the photos- phenominal. Probably a smart choice to get out of the journalism field also considering your geography.

Favorite memory of those trips (besides the people) was flying over (helo) what we thought were birds but soon realized was a school of flying fish in the middle of Lake Lanao

Again Welcome
Dan

[tagalanao]

Originally Posted by Battara

Love the pictures, Bob, especially of the museum goodies. Are there closeups of the kampilans?

Sorry, didn't take closeups, coz of the glass. Even if I did, I knew I won't be happy with the results. My photographer mind was working more than my interest in swords.

Bob

[MABAGANI]

Originally Posted by tagalanao

AFAIK, American troops were actively involved in Lanao in the early 1900s, led by Pershing. I heard there was fierce fighting in the coastal town of Bayang in Lake Lanao, similar in scale as those in Bud Dajo and Bud Bagsak of Sulu.

The Battle of Bayang May 1902 marked the first of the large scale campaigns by the American forces in Mindanao near the so-called end of the Philippine-American War. During the hundred year anniversary I heard there were talks of rebuilding the old forts to commemorate the event.
After my stay, part of my exhibit ended up at Capitol University in Cagayan de Oro, if you get a chance to visit, there's old photographs and a chronicle of the fighting throughout the occupation.
Can you post a nice pic of the lake overlooking the MSU campus?