SEVENTEEN years ago, I went to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, with a university colleague, to extend technical assistance to a young Malaysian medical doctor who joined the operations research training on malaria prevention and control, which our team conducted for some Southeast Asian participants, under the auspices of ACT Malaria and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Western Pacific. The Malaysian medical doctor was married to a Filipina who converted to Islam, and whose parents migrated to Sabah. He introduced us to his country's well-supported health system, particularly its malaria program. We joined a brief city tour, saw some awesome mosques, a beautiful university campus and a night market where we bought cultured pearl necklaces and very good, strong coffee. We also went to the foothills of Mount Kota Kinabalu, a popular destination for tourists and mountaineers. On our way back to the city, there was a long traffic jam because all vehicles were patiently waiting for a big turtle to cross the highway!

In a private conversation with my colleague, I expressed my disappointment about losing Sabah to Malaysia because I was under the impression then that our country and the late Sulu Sultan's heirs no longer laid claims over this place. To my knowledge, the Sabah issue did not hog the headlines after the EDSA revolt because the national leaders appeared to have placed this matter on the back burner. Malaysia also began repatriating several thousand undocumented Filipinos from Sabah at the turn of this millennium, so this reinforced my notion that this state was no longer ours to claim. Honestly, I did not realize then that the Sabah issue was a continuing saga that spans about a century and a half.