Inquirer features A-Book-Saya project in Its Hari Raya Puasa Issue

I’m so honored by the Philippine Inquirer’s support for our book-donation project. The front-page news article was beautifully written by my esteemed colleague Ceres. I think nobody could have written it better than Ceres. I hope you will enjoy reading a glimpse of my family’s life.

Christian-Muslim couple’s dream

They show the way to peace
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:08:00 10/01/2008

MANILA, Philippines—This marriage between a Christian man and a Muslim woman works.
This is what Armand Nocum and Annora Sahia wish the Christians and Muslims in Mindanao, some of whom have difficulty living together, can learn from.
And now the couple want not only to show how they live together in harmony, but also hope to go beyond themselves and reach out to war-torn communities in one simple way—through books.
Specifically through the Books-4-Guns project, also known as the A-Book-Saya Group, which suggests the joy and enlightenment a book can bring to children who have known only strife.
But before the books there was food. And food, as people may well know, is a great pacifier, bonder, uniter—the way to go to assuage hunger and appease anger as well.
Armand, an ex-seminarian and a former reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Annora, a Tausug Muslim and a nurse, own the Satti Grill House. It is a small budget eatery in Ermita, Manila, and it serves food of Malaysian and Arabic origin indigenized by the predominantly Muslim communities of Zamboanga and Sulu.
The word “satti” is derived from the Southeast Asian “sate” or “satay.” The eatery Satti is also the name of a dish.
Satti’s bottled peanut sauce is now undergoing fine-tuning by the Department of Science and Technology. (The couple also have a stall at the SM Fairview Food Court plus other income-generating endeavors.)
Books, not guns
Armand grew up in Zamboanga City, and Annora, in Sulu.
“We plan to flood Mindanao with books and magazines, both old and new, in order to open the eyes of young Christians and Muslims there to the reality that they have a better future if they pick up a book rather than a gun,” he said, adding:
“We had a common childhood experience of seeing many guns, but we remember books to be very rare. It’s like you weren’t a full human being if you didn’t own a gun.
“If the books can stop even only one or two potential terrorists from bombing civilians, that would be fulfillment enough for us.”
Armand and Annora spoke with one voice: “What do we do to children who grew up thinking that the future depends on how they handle their guns? What do we do to children of war who grew up with guns, and not books? Kill them all?”
A variety of books have already been donated, Armand said.
These will be examined and classified, but he wishes that there were more books suited for the children of indigenous communities in Mindanao. (There are some available now, written and designed by writers and artists from such communities, courtesy of Pamulaan, but they are not easy and cheap to produce.)
Christian, Muslim weddings
Armand recalled seeing the fair Annora for the first time when he was a reporter for a Zamboanga paper.
Annora was then a student at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Zamboanga.
He wooed her, but marriage was not immediate. She left for Kuwait while he moved to Manila and joined the Inquirer.
For the two of them, religion was not a big issue, but for some relatives it was. To make a long story short, when Annora came home in 1995, the two decided to tie the knot.
They had a Christian wedding (with Fr. Angel Calvo, a Claretian, officiating) and later a Muslim wedding (with an ustadz presiding) on Oct. 7, 1995.
Calvo, a Spanish Catholic missionary and known peace advocate, assured the couple it was all right for them to be husband and wife.
“I was a Claretian seminarian,” Armand said. “Fr. Rhoel Gallardo, who was kidnapped and killed by the Abu Sayyaf, was my fellow seminarian.”
Pain-filled years
Not too long after the wedding, Annora left again for Kuwait, where she worked as an operating-room nurse. “I wanted to earn a little more,” she said.
She did not know she was pregnant when she left. Their elder daughter, Arizza Ann, now 13, was born in Kuwait.
Annora came home with the baby but left again shortly. Armand continued to work as a reporter. Arizza was left in the care of Armand’s brother and sister-in-law.
“Those were pain-filled years,” Armand recalled. “I lived in a rented, rat-infested room and went to work in a beat-up motorcycle. But those years of saving up paid off.”
After a total of five years in Kuwait, Annora came home to stay. Their second daughter, Ashia Marie, was born eight years ago.
Ashia studies at Holy Spirit School, a school run by Catholic nuns, in Fairview, Quezon City. Arizza also studied there and graduated valedictorian. She is now enrolled at Philippine Science High School.
It will be up to his daughters to choose their religion when they come of age, Armand said. For now, they are exposed to the Christian and Muslim faiths as practiced respectively by their father and mother.
Peace and unity
Early in the marriage, Annora, with her good business instinct and Armand backing her all the way, started a car exchange business that expanded in no time.
Armand stayed on in journalism until 2006.
With their small businesses thriving, the couple now want to spend their energies on something else—peace and unity.
“Through food, we can break down the wall of bias that some of us Christians have put up,” Armand said.
“Muslim food appreciation may bring respect of the Muslim religion, culture and norms. We are happy that in our food outlets, Christians and Muslims are coming together to break bread daily,” he said.
However, Armand said with a sigh, “the recent outbreak of war in parts of Mindanao has shown us that we should do more than offer food.”
This is why, Armand said, he and Annora decided on the Books-4-Guns project and adopted the A-Book-Saya catchphrase to counter the damage that the Abu Sayyaf was doing to the image of Muslims in general.
Jolted out of comfort zone
The book project had long been there, but he did not push it hard enough, Armand admitted.
“Then the MILF-MOA brouhaha jolted me out of my comfort zone,” he said, referring to the scrapping in August of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had caused a resurgence of violence. “This time there is no turning back.”
Armand said he was “willing to sacrifice time, money and comfort” to keep the book project going—and thriving.
“When we stay silent we are contributing to the loss of innocence, dreams and hopes of the Muslim and Christian children being marched off to war as child soldiers,” he said.
“Today they may appear distant and fragile, like toy soldiers, but 10 years from now, these children will become deadly bombers and make us pay for our indifference and neglect of their miserable lives in Mindanao.”
The systems and structures of the project have yet to be put up, but Armand hopes that things will fall into place with the help of like-minded citizens in Mindanao and elsewhere.
“I nurtured this dream for more than 20 years,” he said. “Annora and I hope to show young Muslims that we care for them. We want to saturate schools and day-care centers in Zamboanga, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi with books in order to make young Muslims realize that there is greater hope in knowledge than in the barrel of a gun.”
(Book donations may be brought to the Satti Grill House on M.H. del Pilar Street in Manila or at the SM Fairview Food Court in Quezon City. Those who wish to help may contact 932-3609, 339-3732, 0922-8169510, zamboyo66@yahoo.com or satisfaction.blogspot.com).

NOTE on Big-Spending OFWS

Guess what? I am back in my beloved paper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, as a contributing writer. Although I'm in business now and had recently resigned as an investigative reporter, I have accepted the invitation of my friend Gerry Lirio to write for the Global Pinoy section of the Inquirer.
I have accepted the offer because I love writing and there is no pressure in this job -- I can write whenever I want and whatever I want to write. And like my businesses, the materials I write is developmental stuff and not the destructive type of writing I have gone fed up with. In this section you will read about positive news, accomplishments, commentaries or advises on how OFWs should lead their lives and spend their hard earned resources.
And so I am sharing to you my first feature that appeared in PDI recently. I hope my advice would be of help to all of you with friends or relatives who are OFWs. Feel free to share this feature with your friends because it also shows satti's humble beginnings ...


How my wife saved her earnings from Kuwait
By Armand NocumINQUIRER.netLast updated 03:41pm (Mla time) 10/29/2007
“LET’S KEEP THIS FAMILY together even if we have to sell taho.” This was the pledge my wife Ann Sahi-Nocum and I made when we decided that she would quit working as a nurse at the Al-Jahra Hospital in Kuwait in 1997.
That was the time our eldest child Arriza was growing up with my brother’s family in Zamboanga City and becoming more isolated from us day by day, having grown attached to her adopted family.
Born in Kuwait, Arriza was just two months old when Ann brought her to the family of my brother Joey and his wife Edel.We found the arrangement convenient because it allowed Ann to work for five years abroad.
And what a five-year ordeal it was! We were a family living in three corners of the globe — I in Manila, Ann in Kuwait and Arizza in Zamboanga City. To say they were pain-filled years for us is an understatement.
But was it all worth it?
Because we opted to live a frugal life, we earned the notoriety of being the “stingiest” in a clan with lots of spendthrift OFWs.
Saving up was not easy when most of your relatives expected you to give money on every occasion and every imaginable emergency situation.
While others gave out gold necklaces, watches, shoes and hundreds of dollars, we gave cheap perfume, chocolates and a few peso bills.
While other OFW families lived in rented condos and apartments, I stayed in a rat-infested rented room originally built as a dirty kitchen. While other OFWs were buying cars, I was reporting for work in my beat-up 175 cc DT Yamaha motorcycle.
It was a joke in the family that in her five years abroad, Ann only bought me a watch, a ring, a necklace, perfumes and three music compact discs. One couldn’t point then to any electronic appliance in the house brought home from Kuwait.
Fortunately, those days of sacrifices paid off. Ann has invested and prospered in the used-car business, with outlets in Zamboanga City, Quezon City and Edsa near Robinsons Galleria.
We now give our relatives gainful employment in the Satti Grill House food outlet we opened in SM-Fairview Food Court not long ago. And we are set to employ more with the opening of another Satti outlet on MH Del Pilar, Manila next month.
One-day millionaires
I still feel a twinge of pain whenever I read about surveys showing that many OFWs spend their money on frivolous things and continue to live like one-day millionaires.
It’s ironic that the OFW heroes who prop up the Philippine economy do not experience true and lasting economic uplift in their lives.
OFWs should be reminded that the more they engage in wanton spending, the longer they’re keeping themselves trapped in their overseas jobs.
What use is their money if, by the time they retire from their work abroad, they’re too old and debilitated to enjoy life? If they discover upon their return that their children had grown up and were living their own lives, virtual strangers to them? This was Ann’s and my biggest fear.
I have friends who return home with a jaw-dropping array of stereos, pianos, cameras and other gadgets, but after about three months, they start selling them, having run out of money. I have another friend, a teacher, who made it a habit to buy those gadgets at half the price. So guess who’s the wise one, the local teacher or OFW?
In my book, the worse crime we Filipinos inflict on our OFW relatives is turning them into milking cows. I have noted with amusement how many family members—including the extended ones—tend to become afflicted with some sickness after a relative lands a job abroad.
It seems salary grade abroad is inversely proportional to the health index of the family members they leave far behind. Feigned sickness, it seems, is a very effective way of making an OFW fork out money. That is depressing.
Say no to solicitations
OFWs and their families should learn to say no to unnecessary solicitations. If not, they should at least be careful in screening out requests for financial help to see whether they’re real, legitimate or a sham.
They’re not helping their relatives any if by being abroad, they have turned them to hopeless sloth living on their generosity.
In our case, we really tried to explain to our relatives that they have to cut us some slack as we start life anew, promising that when we do succeed with our plans, we would give them bigger and more meaningful help.
Again, we are the few lucky ones. There are many OFWs out there who return home broke, mangled, raped or in body bags. Those who survive serious ordeals return to poverty and find their families fallen apart or have forgotten them.
Apart from saving up, they should also work hard at making good investments in land or businesses to hasten and cushion their return. On Ann’s part, she had seen so many friends retire from work with lots of money; only to return abroad a year or two later because they ran out of money or their business investments had gone wrong.
Until now, when Ann looks at Arizza all grown up, she can’t help but wonder why a mother like her left Arizza to relatives at the tender age of two months. Those exciting baby years when she first smiled, uttered her first word and started taking her first baby steps are gone forever. We were not there to witness those baby milestones – and that’s that.
But all the pains of her OFW years only embolden us to do better in our businesses so that neither of us will have to go abroad for work again.
So, for OFWs still living the vida galante, it’s time to say the party’s over, and for serious savings to begin now.
Copyright 2007 INQUIRER.net. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

In case your curious, the picture above was taken at the Woodland Resort in Zamboanga City east Coast.