Fires & Friends

A few things have happened recently that I would like to relay. Among these are the burning down of our public market, and visits from some very close friends from home.

The other day I made a special trip to the market to capture, for us as well as for people at home, the aftermath of a disaster. We are usually pretty shy about taking pictures. While unfortunately we miss so many of the striking images that truly capture our experience here, it’s hard to justify taking a picture of something that is none of our business, especially if it involves another person’s misfortune. At the market on the day following the fire the electricity was out, so candles were the main light source. Most of the rubble had cooled enough that earlier in the day valuable scrap metal had been collected for sale, and now all that remained were children who were digging for any potential treasures buried beneath the ash. The market fire started around 5 in the morning & burned through half our market, devouring the entire dry goods section. This includes all of the clothes and textiles, DVD players, cell phones, & thousands of DVDs as well as all of the dried fish and cashews. The latter two are local products that are pretty expensive, and the thought of all of these goods going up in flames is devastating for a family, and an entire community.

here are before & after shots of a dried fish and cashew vendor's stall

Because many owners of the burned section are ethnic Badjao I'm going to go ahead & take this opportunity to explain, briefly and in an unbiased manner, a sensitive situation. Simply because part of our purpose in being here is to share information about the Philippines with people at home. In our community, the terms Badjao and Muslim are used synonymously to refer to the same group of sea-faring people from The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindonao (AARM). In the Philippines, many Badjao have been forced to flee their homes in the Tawi-Tawi islands because of on-going violence between the government and Abu Sayyef. In our city there seems to be a certain level of animosity towards the Badjao. Perhaps this is because many of them come to this city fleeing war so they have little if any money, and no livelihood other than fishing. Therefore they end up squatting in coastal settlements, built out over the water roughly like the ones in this picture. They are thus unable to avail of many public services, and sometimes end up forced to beg on the streets. I mention this only because this wave of migration & resulting hostility is a topic of interest to both of us, and because it is especially sad that the area burned was largely owned by a socially & economically marginalized group.

And on a happier note we recently got a chance to play w/some of our dearest friends. this is a picture of jon, emily & jenny heading to the trailhead of a jungle hike.

Long awaited & anticipated visits with friends arrive & are gone so suddenly. So many months of excitement and in a week you realize that its going to be another year or two before you see these dear friends again. Its tough. so a week after the fire Chris & Jenny Pringle-Conard arrived. Their visit was an amazing opportunity to share our life here w/friends from home. Like with any visitors we have a fun time explaining the bathroom habits we have grown accustomed to such as flushing the toilet w/a bucket, as well as bathing with a bucket & even doing laundry in said bucket. Since some readers might not be able to imagine this I will act out the dipper-bucket-bath for you here.


The week that they were in town just flew by. We were busy* the entire time. Lots of wandering around town, hiking in the jungle, cooking our favorite meals (jenny squeazing fresh coconut milk for our langka ginataan, or jackfruit in coconut milk) and of course having dance parties. So the morning they left, after we said good bye it hit both of us that their visit had ended. It had been so amazing, so refreshing to see old friends & to have bonding time, but it made us sad as well. Luckily another very good friend (who admittedly doesnt read our blog, but only looks at the pictures & since we haven't uploaded pictures of his visit yet he might not even realize we are talking about him so we can write whatever we want here...) Peter was on his way to visit.

This was nice because we wait in anticipation for so long for friends to arrive, and their one week visit just flies by. So while it was hard to see c & j leave, it is only now as Peter bords his plane for his flight home that we are beginning to wind down from the visits & realize that our burst of home will have to last us for the next year or so, as we have no other visitors planned. Spending time w/Peter was so refreshing. We stayed around our site and spent some time at the beach. We will write more about it once we upload those photos.



here are a few more photos from c & j's visit:

chris & jenny paddling through the mangroves

on a hike with Sherry, another pcv who just finished her service

*a very relative word as our normal pace of life might stun the heartbeat right out of anyone not used to ultimate slow-styled life.