Zamboanga's First Christian - Muslim Peace Library Rising

Dear Friends,

Assalamu Alaykum (Peace Be With You)!

As you can see in the picture, the library you inspired us to build is now in full construction swing. It is projected to be half-completed by the end of this month, just in time for the scheduled April 6 soft opening.

By then, it would be an unpainted, incomplete, largely bare yet a proud building and a repository of the dreams and hopes of our poor Christians and Muslims brethren down South.

In this regard, we are inviting you to join us for the soft opening ceremony in Manicahan, a barrio 24 kilometers East of Zamboanga City. Please confirm your intention to join us for the blessing of the Kristiyano-Islam (Kris) Peace Library. This blessing will be officiated by a local priest and a Muslim Imam.

Other activities include a computer lecture and the testing out of the computers by children who will probably do so for the first time in their lives—just imagine the surge of emotions as we see their faces light when they this thing called computer for the first time in their lives!

There will also be a book-reading session with Abu Sayyaf kids and the giving of books, toys and slightly used school supplies to children who will be visiting the library for the first time. In this regard, we hope you could help us source out those toys or other stuff that you think will help entice the children to visit the library regularly this summer.

We are trying to arrange for a press conference but this early we doubt if this is possible given the fact that many reporters would then be out for their Holy Week vacation.

Due to limited resources, we can only provide you with transport to and from the airport and accommodation in our humble ancestral home in Manicahan, which is relatively peaceful. We’ll also accompany you to ensure your safety should you want to stay in the city longer.

We hope you understand our limited resources, given the fact that even if half completed, the library would already cost about P350,000. As of today, donors–mostly friends and clients of our public relations and litigation PR firm—have only given us a total of P158,000. Well, you can easily guess where the rest of the construction cost is coming from.

We now realize that it may have been foolhardy for us to rush into building a library so fast without first putting up a formal foundation or getting donors to produce the money first. But we have no regrets, we’ll just have to bite the bullet and count on God/Allah to bless our businesses so we can see through the completion of the library.

Anyway, as many of you have probably experienced already, giving is not really giving until it hurts. We are just beginning to experience this now but it’s all worth it. But should you not be able to join us in the soft opening, there is still time for you all to catch up in July when we shall have formally completed the library.

By then, we plan to hold a medical and dental mission, display and sale of unique Muslim arts and craft done by the kids and their parents; and other activities to help bring smiles into the faces of war-torn children in Zamboanga City.

Regards and God Bless.

Armand and Annora Nocum
A-Book-Saya Group

A MESSAGE TO MY MUSLIM RELATIVES

``Why Fix It if It Ain’t Broke?’’
This was my wife Ann’s reply when she first heard about the ruckus relative to the controversial Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) deal.
Take that from a fiercely-proud Tausug who stood pat in retaining her religion even after marrying me – a Catholic who once studied to become a priest. We were married in Christian and Muslim rites.
Ann’s view is that things are already okay, with Christians and Muslims living and co-existing happily in and out of the ambit of the Autonmous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Well, Ann is not entirely happy about things happening in areas under ARMM, but she feels that things are bearable for Muslims under ARMM and as well as for Muslims living in Christian-dominated areas that opted to be outside of ARMM.
Until the BJE midnight express came to town like a thief in the night.
Now, things that were working well are turning haywire. Good ties and respect built between divergent cultures and religions are again becoming shaky and unstable. Greed for power and money is making enemies of Muslim and Christian friends and neighbors.
Thus, at these uncertain times, I would like to send out an appeal to my relative Muslims – by affinity, that is – to keep calm and not allow themselves to be used as pawns by politicians who have repeatedly fooled them on the idea of autonomy.
Our beloved Muslim brethren should be wary of politicians who promise them a government of heaven but give them a life of hell. This has already happened with tragic results in the ARMM.
Since its inception, I have yet to hear any of Ann’s relatives, friends and acquaintance in their hometown in Sulu speak anything good about ARMM. All the stories about the ARMM are horror stories – hospitals with no doctors, funds and facilities; schools with no teachers, salaries, books and equipment; roads uncompleted or substandard; and pubic service going to near-zero level.
Ann’s relatives are testimonies of how bad things are under ARMM: one suffered a stroke on the way to a Zamboanga City hospital because Sulu hospitals could not give her treatment; another could not get her retirement money for years now because ARMM officials were asking her commissions; others left the province for Zamboanga because they cannot find work there; and many others came here in Manila to seek a better life.
Amid all these wanton poverty, greed and corruption in ARMM, you have their officials driving the flashiest cars and building the most opulent houses in Zamboanga City. There is even a place there now that’s called ``millionaires’ row’’ because they are teeming with mansions of ARMM’s rich and famous.
So, this is the ARMM they are forcing some of us to join. This is the Eden, the Paradise they are dangling before the eyes of our relative Muslims.
This time, I would like to caution our Muslim relatives not to be fooled again. Even if they now call it BJE, one thing remains – only the powerful and rich Muslim will benefit from it with the poor Muslims getting poorer.
If the Arroyo Government and the MILF are really serious in getting us to join ARMM, then they should immediately work hard to improve public service in the ARMM areas, ignite economic growth there, institute accountability for corrupt officials; and show it to be a Heaven on Earth.
They must turn ARMM into an ideal state with rich coffers generated locally and from rich Muslim countries; teeming with reliable and working hospitals, schools and roads; and led by honest and sincere public servants who not only fear the law, but Allah’s wrath towards the corrupt and the heartless.
If that happens, then count me in to lead my relative Christians and Muslims to lead the campaign to be included in that kind of ARMM.
Unless that happens, this is message I leave to Esperon and the MILF: Lucut petate y also balutan y deja kanamon con paz. (read more about Nocumment at www.sattisfaction.blogspot.com)

(30)