Tears of joy

Mohammad Mambatawan (center, front), chairperson of the Muslim-Manobo United Farmers' Association in the remote village of Chua in Bagumbayan, Sultan Kudarat and a former Moro National Liberation Front(MNLF) commander, receives the symbolic key to the development of his village from AMORE Central Mindanao Manager Recto Doctor as Bagumbayan Mayor Felipe Allaga (L) and other Chua residents look on. The event was the turnover of the AMORE projects in Chua to MMUFA and the Bagumbayan municipal government. AMORE energized Chua in January 2005 with an 8-kW microhydro power system and also established an agrimill, a spring-fed, Level 2 potable water system (funded by the Embassy of Japan), and a high-value vegetable farm in the village, apart from electrifying the local school to power ABS-CBN e-Media distance education facilities and organizing the community to sustain the systems, including their watershed. Earlier, Mambatawan tearfully recalled how, during the height of conflicts between the Moro National Liberation Front and the government military forces, he and his co-villagers cowered in fear whenever an airplane passed over their village, thinking that it would drop a bomb. Those days are over with the development that AMORE introduced in their village, he said.