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The question that's often asked is, where is the Badjao village or home land? To this we simply say that the Badjao village is in the southern Philippines, on a little stretch of beach on Sarangani Bay, which is just a few miles south of General Santos.
The Badjao are among the displaced people in the Philippines. Displaced by wars and the death of their traditional fishing culture. There homeland has been taken away from them and their culture is gradually slipping away.
Badjao means "man of the seas" and by tradition, the people are sea nomads, traveling by boat from one island to the other in search of fishing harvest.
Traditionally, they're a seafaring people originating from the Samal Tribe on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines and it needs to be observed that very few people outside of Badjao speak their tribal language.
They spend most, even all of their time on their boats, thus they're often referred to as Sea Gypsies, which is however a loose description given to many unrelated ethnic groups. For example the Badjao isn't related to the Mogen People or the Sea Gypsies of Surin Island, Thailand.
The Badjao people are mostly Moslem, the main religion in Mindanao and their families earn thier living almost exclusively from fishing, diving for pearls and harvesting sea products. Some Badjao families have 10-12 children, thereby making poverty inevitable for them.
When the Badjao came to Mindanao's southern coast several centuries ago they built bamboo and nipa huts about three meters above the water level stretching to the sea and these high structures were meant to prevent them during high tides and also for safety against strangers.
The Badjao's long journey for safer environment started in the1970s, at the time when the Moro secessionists war was raging. They thereby headed north reaching Manila Bay in the 1990s and a group of Badjao built a village along the shore, this time not with bamboos and nipa again but with wood scraps, rice sacks and cartons.
They are regarded as war refugees, this is so because over the past several years, they've been caught in several crossfires between the Muslim seperatists and the Christian-backed government in Manila. Economically, they've been victims of over fishing by other groups that are using everything from dynamite to high-tech fishing trawlers.
At present the Badjao have reached as far north of Manila and even beyond and many have become land dwellers, making their living by begging for arms in major cities like Manila, Cebu and many others.
For more information about the Badjao, you can visit any of these websites below. Though we don't totally endorse them, but they're given for research purposes.
Or you can watch this Badjao movie on Youtube. Please note that this movie is not the production of BMT or its affiliate, but t was done by Tabong Sugbo, one of the agencies reaching the Badjao people and we feel it's going to bless you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnSiwpY8A9o
 A very poor Badjao woman earning income as a house
help in one of the major cities in the Philippines.
Picture from: www.knoke.com/badjao
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