We were looking through the window from our side of the conference hall--- we looked like kids wanting to gate crash or something. Everybody in the training was doing just that as we waited for our morning session to start.

We were holding grassroots documentation and reporting training next door and the arrival of wedding guests drew our attention ---especially when traditional wedding songs and hymns began to play. Omar is from Mamasapano, a town in more rural Maguindanao. He works for a cooperative in Upi town in the new province of Shariff Kabunsuan. He described his town as a “conflict-affected” area. But he said, there, wars could not stop weddings.

It’s a day of celebration. Kalilang is Maguindanaoan word for celebration.

Omar said it is dominantly a Moro wedding mixed with cultural blends from the west. But he found it acceptable since “most rituals are now mixed; this being not an exemption”.

Kin of the couple came in traditional Moro attires but the master of ceremonies spoke in English and the operators played popular wedding music.

I think I heard Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” or another wedding march. And before the wedding processional music was played they filled the hall with a score of love songs like Celine Dion’s “Because You Love Me”, Norah Jones “Come Away with Me” and even Chris Brown’s “With You”.

The bride walked down the stairs of the hotel as the first notes came out, passing through the base of scaffoldings put up to renovate the hotel. She emerged at the aisle to the applause of family and wedding guests.

Her entrance, however, was shortly disrupted when a waiter carrying a case of Coca Cola soft drinks walked the aisle, too, ahead of her to serve drinks.

Then she walked straight and gracefully to the front where her older groom beams in pride. His eyes trained on her bride with her clean, scented, shiny and elegant get up, past a soiled and dark alley to the crowded hall.

It could have been an uncomfortable contrast.

People celebrate inside a hall as hotel staff and construction workers toil just outside the hall. People unite in marriage despite divisiveness surrounding them. Families pull off expensive wedding parties even with the rice crisis.

But I learned that the ceremony was an opportunity for the two Moro families to assert their resilience, their pride and their identity.

An anthropology professor from our team belted a quick lecture against purists claiming there is no such thing as a “pure” Moro wedding.

But people accepted the influences and infused it to their rituals –like this particular wedding.
In Mindanao, where locals over the centuries dealt with traders from China, Middle East and South Asia, Conquerors from Iberia to America and with settlers from the Visayas and Luzon; the influence in culture is glaring.

The difference produces diversity, which makes Mindanao a good venue for assertion of cultural identities and a healthy interaction of both differences and similarities.

I enjoyed attending a village social gathering last Saturday. It was a fellowship party for a new organization, one that sought to gather the professionals in our suburban village called Kalasungay.

Ours, now a village of at least 1,000 households, is home to Bukidnon's earliest recorded native settlements. Majority of the residents belong to either the Bukidnon or Higaonon tribes.

There is much pride in me to settle in this village, where I could trace history by recalling the family names of our neighbors.

When the Spaniards came in late 1800s, villagers have already developed this settlement as one of the biggest in Northern Mindanao, based on oral history as relayed by elders.

The official seal of the Barangay Council of Kalasungay is dated 1845, much older than the Province of Bukidnon (1917).

Much of the culture and traditions of the village are intact. The descendants of original settlers have remained in the village, though have inter-married with other tribes, including migrants from the rest of the country.

Most of the sets of barangay council seats in recent history were filled by the locals. Up to now, the locals head the village. There was pride-feeding that night when they cited that the village has a high sense of education; home of the greatest number of professionals among others.

There is much pride in me to settle in this village, where I could trace history by recalling the family names of your neighbors. One proof of a great sense of community here is that almost everybody could be linked as a relative.

I'm just one of those who married into the great cultural history of this village. Coming from villages where great divides among different peoples are clear, I am just amazed.

Speaking of amazement let me get back to that social gathering.

It was a gathering of villagers, mostly of indigenous descent who were able to finish a degree in college. At first, I frowned at the idea of being a part of a group exclusive for "professionals". It appeared elitist and out of sync amid calls for inclusion and cooperation ---unity in diversity.

But looking at the history of the village, I realized that some elders saw that the administration of village affairs was left to the uneducated; with the professionals racing to move out to other places "for greener pastures".

And so it was an issue in the last village elections: the professionals left the running of the affairs of the village to those who have less . It wasn't true to the fullest, but many professionals were hit by the truth.

Most professionals work in the city proper and come home only to rest. Only housewives, elderlies or retirees, out of school youth, "non-professionals" and the unemployed  were left to tend the barangay.

Kalasungay is home to almost every professional classification in the City of Malaybalay; "name it we have it" as one elder said during the socials. But just like in many villages around Mindanao, their direct community did not become direct beneficiaries of their expertise.

While this is probably one of the earliest settlements in this part of Mindanao, this village now lags in development because of many factors, probably including the professionals' neglect. The oldest, but as of the last time I checked, internet service providers, both broadband and dial up, wouldn't want to risk coming in. It's a village sidelined by time and change.

Having seen this sad reality, I set my mind in joining this pioneering group. Hoping that in common light we see more and wider participation of professionals in community work.

Of course, I have in mind that the group shouldn't focus only on organizational projects and activities but also integrative endeavors---at the purok (zone) level ---along with the non-professionals or the ordinary villagers so they say.

I see great responsibilities in this move to jump ship and join the group's collective desires for our heartland. And as it was a punishment for trying to be heroic, immediately, I was appointed to head the public affairs and information committee. I actually wanted to avoid more responsibilities, but I have no fear.

What profit does it make of me if I serve other communities and ignore my own?

Good Day Mindanao! Kalinaw!

The group was one of 12 from the Philippines that competed in various categories in the competition.  According to the competition's website, the group was conducted by Aldwin Curambao and Alvin E. Aviola.  

The other Mindanao-based group in the competition is the Xavier University Glee Club from Cagayan de Oro City.  Read the rest of the report on MindaNews.com.