After cholera outbreak, Mindanao town gets up with mountain biking tilt

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Organizers expect the Mindanao-wide mountain biking contest in Alamada over the weekend to boost the town’s investment climate, dampened by a recent cholera outbreak that killed eight and affected some 400 others.

Alamada is popular for its scenic Asik-Asik waterfalls and vast cornfields on rolling terrains surrounding the municipal center, home to mixed Christian, Muslim and non-Moro indigenous settlers thriving mainly on farming as source of income.

The biking race, participated by close to a hundred bikers from 16 sports groups from different parts of Mindanao, was one of the highlights of the forthcoming 100th founding anniversary of the province on September 1.

Competing bikers were given extensive orientation on the eco-tourism prospects of Alamada, a bustling hinterland agricultural town in the first district of North Cotabato.

“These bikers will surely tell their families and friends about the economic prospects of Alamada and how good governance, by the provincial government, has been helping the province rise as a major center for commerce and trade in Region 12,” said Leoginildo Calibara, former vice mayor of Alamada.

Calibara was the provincial government’s designated focal person for the mountain biking competition, in connection with the North Cotabato “Kalivungan Festival, which will cap off the September 1 centennial founding anniversary of the province.

Kalivungan is a generic term, in dialects of most non-Moro hinterland indigenous groups in Central Mindanao, which may mean either as a special gathering, or a banquet, or a tribal conclave, where participants are to discuss issues and concerns besetting their communities.

The biking competition in Alamada, dubbed as Centennial Eco-Tourism Mountain Bike Fun Ride 2014, was also intended to show participants from outside of North Cotabato that there is fragile peace now in the province, as a result of the Mindanao peace process.

North Cotabato, which covers 17 towns and all of the 40 barangays in its capital, Kidapawan City, was badly affected by a spate of hostilities between government forces and secessionist Moro rebels from 2000 to 2008.

Alamada Mayor Virginia Concepcion said her administration was delighted with the provincial government’s decision to hold the biking event in their municipality.

Alamada hogged the headlines three months ago when three local farming enclaves were hit by a cholera outbreak, which caused the deaths of eight residents and the hospitalization of some 400 others.