There are just but a few royalties in Mindanao, the biggest and the most powerful is the one with lines traceable from the royals of Johore. There is also another royal group, whose features are not arabic but rather malays. The faces of the MILF leaders are very malays. They are the earlier Maguindanaos who controls the other side of the Liguasan Marsh. The other one settles in the plains of the now Cotabato City. The seat of the earlier sultanate is approximately thesame as the present capital of Sultan Kudarat.
There is another royal blood in Cotabato who settled in Kidapawan. They are of the Kiram Family, thesame Kiram of the Sultanate of Sulu. It is unfortunate that the one who live in Kidapawan lost their way. Most of their properties are now beyond their control, although large tracts of lands are still left specially in Lanao Provinces. It is very sad to see the once considered land mark of Kidapawan lost to economic invasion. Their once prominent house known to Cotabatenyos as the house of Sultan Omar Kiram is now replace by the building of a hardware store.
And where are they now? It is nice that the wife of the Sultan is still allive, a healthy 92 years old. She came home from Australia to find the ancestral home of her children now torn into pieces. Her children are now all over the globe, it is sad the she now has nowhere to live.
Of course she can stay all her live in a hotel, but a hotel is not a home. Every descent filipinos would like to live in a home. Not a home for the aged, but a home where children laughs, where young children cry, where children sleep and dream of big things to come. This is perhaps the very reason why she choose to stay in somebody’s house, where she could here kids giggling, laughing, and shouting.
But it is still a sad sight to see the once proud mother, now old and homeless.
