The Cakes' Adventures

Para sa Filipino Family namin

2009-10-26T14:22:00.004+08:00

I am writing this entry from the Peace Corps Office in Manila. Tomorrow we leave for the US & we are not sure when we will be back in the Philippines. The past few days have brought quite a few unexpected challenges due to issues beyond our control.

To all of our friends, family, and maybe even strangers reading this from abroad, we want you to know that we are well & will write more soon.

Sa lahat ng mga Filipinos who have welcomed us into your lives throughout the past two years, words will never be enough to express how grateful we are for your generosity and love. miraming miraming salamat po. Mahirap talaga ito, pero ayos lang kami :) and we will never forget our Filipino family! Baka makabalik kami bagong pasko, baka hindi... pero basta babalik kami dito sa inyong lugar. We have so much to say pero di po kami marunong magsabi sa inyong lahat...

Pagdumating kami dito sa Pilipinas, hindi kami marunong mag-Tagalog, magluto ng kanin, kain sa kamay-kamay lang, magbili ng mga saging (hilaw? Hinog? Lakatan, saba, pula... aroy naman!) at syempre hindi kami marunong magsakay sa mga kalabaw o magmatay ng mga manok, kambing, at lahat ng ibang masarap na hayop! Nagturo nyo kami tungkol sa buhay nyo, at mas mayaman na kami kasi nakilala na tayo. Naginvite nyo kami sa mga outings nyo sa dagat at sa ilog (oh sarap maligo!) Nagkutohan nyo ako when I was super kawawa... the list is never-ending!

Aroy, mahirap nga alis gan ito, pero pagisip kami tungkol sa Pilipinas, grabe talaga ang mga ngiti namin because of you! Grabe laki ang Filipino family namin!

Matamang salamat po.
Pasenya na po, kawawa ang Tagalog ko ngayon... pero mahirap din magsalita sa English. Oh no! wala kaming language.

Ingat kayo lagi

Still going strong

2009-10-05T11:59:00.008+08:00

We are alive and well. Thanks for all the well-wishes and check-ins, but the typhoon that hit Manila did not cause any damage here. It did however cause lots of damage in Manila and hopefully emily and i will head there to help with some of the relief effort.

But to prove Emily and I are A-OK here is a picture of us having some coffee this morning (and just to show what we look like these days)

So much to say, we haven't blogged in quite awhile so I'll do my best to fill everyone in on the happenings here.

Most of the volunteers who arrived with us have headed home since our two years is now officially over. It is sad to see them go and has made us realize we have a whole year to go!! Luckily we get to head home this October-December to see friends and family! Very excited for that.

Recently a co-worker invited us out to see their "land" out in the rural barangay of Irawan. She warned us it is very malayo (far) and that magdaan tayo sa ilog or we will have to walk through the river to get there. She was right! it was quite a hike, but very well worth it. When we finally arrived there we all settled into the small pool at the bottom of the gently flowing waterfall for an great afternoon. here are some pics.

Jon playing the drums on the coconuts drying out near their house before we hiked to waterfall.

Jon enjoying a shot with the guys

Emily cooling off with the girls

Time to eat!

Jon courageously defending the group from the docile water buffalo

Another exciting happening was the finishing (well, almost) of my grant project. This was the constructing of new classrooms for a school with disabilities. We were about 90% complete when the US Ambassador to the Philippines happened to be passing through and asked to stop by and see our project. Everyone at the school was so incredibly excited for the honor of hosting the US Ambassador. She only came by for about 30 minutes but i could see it was the most memorable day yet for the center. We prepared for her visit for nearly a week, practicing what we would do, always making little changes here and there. The day of her visit we all anxiously paced awaiting her arrival...soon the motorcade was within site and everyone jumped to their places. Myself and Pastor Mon had the honors of explaining the goals and mission of the center and then giving a brief tour to the Ambassador....after a quick snack and a photo-op she was off to her next destination. As the motorcade pulled away from school you could feel the anxiety leave the people as literally everyone let out a genuine cheer of joy....it was great to be apart of that. Here are a few pics:

Jon giving an opening speech

Showing her the classrooms....not quite finished/painted...

A look at our classrooms from the outside

Each of the teachers has a big box like this to store all their new materials in

Since then things have been very busy for jon and emily...although for different reasons. Jon is busying tying to finish up projects before heading back to the US for a vacation and Emily is busying trying to get some last second Palawan site seeing in before heading back to the US...she had quite the bike tour of the area.

Jon has been busy giving trainings to many of the urban barangays on how to conduct a diversion program with youth offenders. Its been going pretty well, but is especially rewarding since this is a follow through on the planning done at his community consultation recommendations given last April... so far no construction yet on the proposed buildings, but supposedly the funding is still there...we'll see.

Another opportune project jon is trying to get started is based on the "Second Harvest" concept. Puerto Princessa has a pretty large hotel and service industry, so we are aiming to collect their excess or wasted prepared foods for the purpose of feeding children in need of special protection who are housed at our centers. I've got all the information I need to get started and hopefully will begin trying to get the restaurants involved.

Only two weeks till we head back to the US!!! Can't wait to see everybody.... hopefully we'll be able to update while we're in the US as well so our friends here in the Philippines can see our trip home.

the story of island life

2009-07-14T14:41:00.015+08:00

Liberated toes

The permeable houses that remind us
sometimes it is hard to know
where inside begins & outside ends

goats nibbling back the rioting jungle

The sea brezes that make
everything windblown seem
alive with salty madness

the holy quiet
of dropping a hook & line
into the deep blue

sucking on fleshy fruit seeds
while sorting the
oceans freshly entangled booty

island laughter

the warm sea during monsoons
fruit bats at dusk
the thud of a coconut falling

the noise of a birds wings
fluttering away at the door
that opens all the way back
to a moment of simplicity

Bicycle riding vegetable dealers
water buffalo riding girls
banana stands

lazy saturday mornings
dominated with badminton
and coloring
with the neighborhood kids

Mutya ng Pawikan

2009-07-14T14:14:00.005+08:00

The above picture was taken with the winner of the "Mutya ng Pawikan" pageant (loosely, and less poetically translated as "miss pearl of the sea turtle" pageant) at the first ever Pista ng Pawikan (sea turtle fiesta). She is wearing her outfit from the "Recycled Wear" contest. It is made of newspaper. My favorite in recycled wear was the girl who made a dress out of old CDs. it was beautiful. The other Americans in the picture are other PCVs who came to help out w/the event. It was a two day long environmental education event focusing on sea turtles & the marine environment. A sort of celebration of natural resources in honor of World Turtle Day. The theory being that people need to be aware that their resources are unique & something worth appreciating before they can learn to respect them, only after which there is a chance they will be willing to conserve/sustainably manage them.

I organized the event as a sort of introduction to coastal/marine ecology & conservation in the community. The next stage is teaching environmental science in the grade schools & training high school teachers in how to integrate environmental topics into their science curriculum. Hopefully by the start of next nesting season (beginning in December) we will have established a volunteer Bantay-Pawikan ("protector of the sea turtles"). They will be in charge of nest monitoring & continuing the environmental education program when I leave in a year.

The Fiesta was a two day long environmental education event focusing on sea turtles & the marine environment. The event included a film showing (The Lorax and BBCs Blue Planet – it is always interesting showing communities who depend so heavily on the sea what it actually looks like down there. Though they know where the fish are, and some dive using wooden framed goggles, wooden flippers, and spear guns, but most have never seen a coral reef), information booths, face painting, sea turtle mask making, an environmental treasure hunt (which involved out-of-school youth planting trees, picking up trash, writing environmentally themed poems etc), an attempt at a coastal clean up, and a riverbank rehabilitation project (planting native vitivir grasses on a steep riverbank).

The highlight of course was the pageant, which was one of the most entertaining spectacles of which I have ever been a part. No public event is complete without some awkward gesture by the foreigners, which came during an extended intermission when we were (without warning) called on stage to entertain. Filipinos are great at impromptu spotlight sessions, and after being here two years I’m pretty much immune to this type of awkwardness so we hopped up on stage and began singing “Buhay Kubo,” a favorite Filipino children’s song. Luckily everyone in the audience knew the words and sang along with us.

While I would definitely say the event was a success (literally everyone in the three surrounding communities was present), there were a few major shockers, such as the contestant who beat a beautifully constructed sea turtle effigy to bits & then walked off stage crying as part of the talent portion. Or during the question and answer portion when another contestant answered the question "Why are sea turtles important to our community?" by toasting the crowd with "Because their eggs are the most delicious! Cheers!"

Hey, at least it got people thinking about sea turtles...

Building Updates

2009-05-09T14:20:00.009+08:00

Here are a few more pictures of the progress. Unfortunately rainy season started a little bit early this year and it has slowed us down a bit, but other than that there have been no other major concerns yet! (i'm not sure why its underlining all of my typing, but I can't figure out how to make it stop...sorry).

Here the guys are working on the roof and beginning to build the outer walls.

As rain comes and goes the guys hide under the roof to try to stay dry.

Bayanihan. Neighbors and friends come by to help put up a new bamboo fence.

Outside walls and window jambs are up and in place.

A view from the other side

Here we see the plywood walls that face towards the inside of the compound.

Pastor Mon putting together a door for the new rooms!

Here we can see the concrete has been laid for the new floors

A masonry guy works to smooth over the walls so they look nice. (tough to see it in this dark picture, but to the right is nice and finished while to the left is still exposed hollow block)

All in all everything is looking good. Still have a ways to go with putting in the electrical stuff, tiles, interior walls, and others....but no complaints. I've been doing my best to help out, but find it has been much easier for them to do what they do best and stay out of the way. They did let me stack a few hollow blocks for the walls, but later when we went back and check it out we noticed I had laid one a little off line with the others. Although I was able to fix it I pretty much banned myself after that....

The center recently hosted a "medical mission" in which doctors from metro manila and around the Philippines gave a free two day medical consultation to those who cannot afford a doctor. At the mission the doctors did eye checkups and gave out free glasses with prescriptions, did dental check-ups and pulled lots of teeth (not sure if they did anything besides that with the dental), checked basic health and gave advice or free medicines, and also...my favorite, gave free circumcisions to all the local boys (if they wanted it of course). Boys here don't get circumcised until their teenage years or "as a right of passage" to manhood...as they would say. I don't quite get it, but I really felt for the line of 13 and 14 year old boys who fearfully sat outside the door where the procedure was performed. Ouch! The nurses even asked me if I wanted to watch a procedure, but unfortunately I had to go to soon...They said it takes nearly 30 minutes!!! How on earth is that?? Just get it over with already! Apparently, back in the day (or even sometimes for those who still aren't lucky enough to run into a free medical mission) this procedure was done by local person with a VERY sharp Bolo or Machete. The person gave it one quick slice then the boy ran into the ocean while sucking on some kind of leaf. When they get out of the water they spit their saliva in the leaf and use it as a bandage for their recently chopped manhood....Ouch.

Really though, it was great to see Filipinos doing this kind of service (the overall medical mission...not just the circumcision) for their own country.

Construction Pictures

2009-05-07T17:05:00.010+08:00

Here are a few pictures of what the ongoing construction looks like at the center. The construction is being done by Pastor Mon, Jun, a husband of one of the teachers, a father of one of the students, and from time to time a random assortment of other family/community members donating there time and skills to the project. The tradition of volunteering your time to those in your community who need your help is called Bayanihan here in the Philippines. It is similar to what I would imagine is a "barn raising". I'll do my best to explain what is going on and what the purpsose of the constuction is though, it seems a bit hard to do through these pictures.

Here we start clearing out the area where construction will be taking place.

A good chunk of walls and materials have been removed and intial preperations are being made to start building.

In the foreground is the cement mix while the man kneeling is pouring in the concrete for one of the posts.

Wooden framing for walls quickly goes up.

Kids help by priming some of the metal.

Roofing and wall structures are going up for the extension portion.

Finishing up some measurements for the roof.

Hollow blocks are laid and filled with cement as the outside walls begin to be placed

Jon helps make a few measurements.

Looking out from where the classrooms will be towards the extension. Window jambs, door jambs, plywood, and other materials lay on the floor.

I also had to include a picture of the girls and the lunch they provide everyday for the workers. Masarap!

More pictures to come soon. So much progress everyday.

Buildings, Work, Extensions and Fun

2009-05-06T12:14:00.009+08:00

Most everyone who reads this blog knows that nearly a year ago Jon posted a project on here and asked for everyone to help support it. Maybe you thought this project slipped through the cracks or never happened, but I am happy to report that the funding for the project came through (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU) in full mid-April, we received the funds at the end of April, and began purchasing construction materials the first week of May and are now well on our way to the construction of the resource center.

First, let me back track a little to catch anyone up on what I am talking about. Taw Kabui for a child is a local NGO that I work with as a secondary project. They are a center for children with disabilities, mainly autism, downs syndrome, or another form of developmental disorder. This organization had been established close to one year before I arrived (so now it is nearly three years old!). It was started by a nice couple, Solomon (Pastor Mon for short) and Ofelia Rosario (pic at right), through their church. The teachers are all volunteers with little experience who held their classes in make-shift classrooms in the open floor planned church area and in nipa huts to the side of the church. They had no real support material in their work. To say the very least they were putting all their heart into their work.

I wrote a grant with them to fund the building of a resource center and purchase materials for the teachers and students. As I mentioned above, we have finally begun this process (Thanks to all of you!). Below I will show a few pictures of the area we are working on before construction and then show some pictures of the on-going progress.

approaching the center

Front View of the Church area and nipas to the left

The entry way with the open church area to the right and nipas to the left.

These are the nipas that will be made into permanent classrooms and extended for more space for their resource.

Make shift classrooms in the open air church area.

A teacher teaches a song to her two students in one of the makeshift classrooms. The girl in uniform is a social work student from a local university doing a summer internship at the center.

A teacher working with a student in a nipa.

As most of you know we applied for our extension and it was approved. For now we will be staying through September 2010. We are very excited it worked out because we still have plenty of work to do. Emily has already posted info about the work she will be doing to create a sea turtle sanctionary, so its my turn to let everyone know I am busy at work myself....we don't get to spend the whole time diving in beautiful tubbataha or swimming with whale sharks off our bay (we did both this last month)!!!

The Philippines has only recently (2006) made a law prohibiting the detention of children with adults. Because of this their juvenille justice system is fairly undeveloped so far. A good portion of what I will be doing is related helping my city develop their programs and services related to it. Along with this I do other work related to "at-risk" youth or underserved youth. This has a lot to do with helping streets kids and kids who come from poor areas and don't have alot of opportunities. And of course I also have my side project there at Taw Kabui. Below are some details on what exactly I've been doing.

The bigger projects I have finished so far are... Created a psycho-social assessments for their CICL (children in conflict with the law--basically, kids who got arrested) clients. This is to help the social workers have a better understanding of how they can best serve the youth, what sorts of programs, counseling, or services they should provide to them. This project took me quite a long time, but has been very successful and I am glad to see all of the people in my office capable of doing this process on their own now. Along with that I helped organize a Life Skills program for some of their CICL clients based on the the intake assessments we created. My counterparts are begining to take over the implentation of this program so I would call it a success!

For the next year I have even more planned as I've really gotten into the swing of things. Right now I (along with another volunteer here) are conducting a situational analysis/case study/feasability study (not sure exactly what you'd call it, but we're doing it, ha!) about the current CICL process here in our city. From this we will give reccommendations and proposals for what programs and services would help this process. We already know that a glaring hole in the services here is the lack of a facility or "rehabilitation center" for CICL youths. The study isn't finished yet, but we plan to have our presentation of it by mid-June. At the presentation we hope to invite all of the community stake-holders as well as possible funders or outside supports (UNICEF, Shell Foundation, National Gov, etc) and kind of give them a sales pitch of what are the current needs in this area and how to address them. Hopefully this will result in a collaboration between all the parties to actually accomplishing all of the things we reccomend.

Over the past year and a half I have already written the manual of operations for such a center/facility(how it will run, what staffing needs there will be and what they will do) and have also helped draw up what this building will look like (an actual architect made the final drawings...i just gave him my input). This center would house youths who have committed a serious offense immediately after the offense (rape, murder) to protect the complaintant as well as the offender from retaliation and to provide counseling and other immediate services. The majority of youth offenders are and should be released back to the custody of their family for other offenses. The city has social workers who are capable of running it, so it will be a matter or having some one fund the building as well as the city committing to pay the salaries of the staff...these are two things that will be hard to secure...but I am hopeful.

As well as the center, I plan to help implement a diversion program here. This is something that also already is existing in paper here, but not yet in reality. The people (actually one person for the entire city) who are responsible for overseeing the program simply do not have the resources to get it going. This is mainly do to the geographical size of the city we live in...just too big. I think I can train a "Diversion Officer" in each barangay who will then be responsible for supervising the youths in their local area and then reporting back to our office monthly. If I can get it started I think our office will have no problem fulfilling their responsibility of overseeing all of the diversion officers. For those youths who simply cannot comply to their diversion contracts or continual re-offenders, the planned rehabilitation center will also serve as a temporary home for them to get back on the right track in life.

The last thing related to CICL will be helping create a statistical database for their old records and help train them on how to keep it updated. This will be an ongoing, slow process...luckily they have Social Work interns periodically from the local university who will be more than happy to help me sift through several years worth of scattered paper files :-).

So much work...and only one more year?!?! If anyone has any questions or wants to know more about my work please feel free to ask or email. Sometimes its just hard to try to explain it here without making it to boring or detailed....

I will soon post some pictures of how the construction at the center is coming along. Thank you so much to all of those who helped make that happen.

"So, when are you guys coming home?"

2009-03-24T14:25:00.003+08:00

Last year my counterpart & I applied for a grant through the San Diego Peace Corps Association to start a Community Environmental Resource Center. The intention was twofold: to procure resources for the City Agriculture Office (my host agency) and other local environmental institutions such as universities w/biology & fisheries programs, and to increase inter-agency collaboration (through resource sharing.) The grant was approved & lots of great assessment manuals, resource identification guides, dvds, children's books etc. were acquired.

One of the books that we purchased is Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation by James R. Spotila. This book prompted a discussion on sea turtle conservation in our city & less than a week after receiving the materials I had organized a very informal sea turtle nest monitoring program. Four counterparts & I made the two-plus hour journey to a very rural community on the west coast of our island with nesting sea turtles (pawikan in Tagalog). We spent the afternoon wandering around town talking to everyone we saw about pawikan & learned that virtually 100% of the nests in the area were dug up by local kids & sold around the barangy for one peso each. We then spent the entire night walking the beaches trying to witness what I would consider a spiritual event.* Unfortunately it was already towards the end of the season & we only saw the labored path of one sea turtle who, according to the locals, was just scoping it out & would undoubtedly return the following night to nest. unfortunately we had pending obligations & couldn't stick around another night.

Up to this point jon & I had fluctuated between applying to extend & moving along on our nomadic journeys, with heavy leanings towards the latter, but this discovery changed that. Now there was this prospect of teaching environmental education throughout the community while ultimately working towards establishing a community-based sea turtle protection/hatchery project. There is so much potential & I'm only wishing I had realized it sooner!

So with this recent development as well as various aspects of jon's work shifting (which he will have to explain so I don't butcher it), we have realized that there is still so much work we can do here, maybe we could contribute more in this final year here than perhaps we have thus far. So to all of our friends & family at home who keep asking “when are coming home?” now I can offer an even more vague answer than the previous “oh... well... after a winter in Mongolia, some trekking in the Himalayas, and laboring to our hearts content on organic farms throughout southeast Asia…then if our nomadic spirits are content...”

Now I don't even know when we will begin on that adventure, much less move on from this one. We want to stay here & really dedicate ourselves for a final year. Now it’s just up to Peace Corps budgets & approvals & such. However the wind blows, it promises to be a grand adventure. In the meantime my counterparts & I are planning a week long Fiesta ng Pawikan (sea turtle fiesta.) This will involve the usual teaching, facilitating community forums, eating, singing, and no doubt poking a bit of fun at the silly white girl.

Before leaving for the Philippines one of our closest friends gave us The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie. Certainly my favorite Rushdie that I have read, and easily w/in my top five fiction books, there was a line that I want to share:

“Among the great struggles of man – good/evil, reason/unreason etc. - there is also this mighty conflict between the fantasy of home & the fantasy of away, the dream of roots & the mirage of the journey.”

So as we say in the Philippines** Bahala na. Loose translation: hey, you did what you could/chose to do & now you have no control over this situation so why not take it easy, play it cool, b/c every little thing is gonna turn out all right & if it doesn't, there is really nothing you can do about it so why not sit back & try to enjoy the ride...

I have no clue when we are going to leave the Philippines. I have no idea when we are going to be in the states again, and this thing we call life: it has never been more curiously delicious.

*Just to give you some idea, the species of sea turtles nesting on these beaches were (according to the community) green sea turtles & hawksbills, both of which do not reach reproductive age until 35 – 40 years of age. This means that the destructive practices currently going on will not noticeably affect the amount of nesting turtles for at least that many years (if only 50% of eggs as opposed to 100% are harvested it will take twice as long for the local populations to collapse.) Each clutch or nest contains roughly 100-120 eggs. Under relatively healthy circumstances (i.e. no human interference) roughly two-thirds of these will hatch & then only half of these will survive to reproductive age. An entire category of creatures that have remained virtually unchanged for the past 200 million years (think dinosaurs) is being completely annihilated in just a few human generations. They are amazing creatures & I honestly believe even just a dash of environmental education & community organizing has great potential in this community.

**at least in the Tagalog speaking regions

Kasoy Season

2009-03-03T10:18:00.012+08:00

One of my favorite things about living where I live is that we are continually discovering new plants, fruits, trees, bugs, and birds. A few months ago I had a persistent cough that would wake me up in the middle of the night. So a good friend picked some native oregano (similar to the oregano in herb gardens at home, but the leaves are much thicker here) and told me to mash it up, mix it with a little honey and a shot of Tanduay, and I would be good to go. It worked.

Sometimes these discoveries aren't so positive. Like when I wake up with weird bites on my skin & walk around asking all my neighbors if they have any idea what did it. Then they describe some new bug that I didn't know existed but apparently lives in our mattress. Cool. I mind the critters I can see (like the not so tiny spiders that wander our home) less than the critters that are left to my much too vivid imagination. These critters are a blog entry on their own. But not this time…

During our first year it felt like every time we went to the market there would be some wild new fruit in season. Since its in season its cheap and plentiful so regardless of how it looks or smells we stock up for the week. This is usually pretty fun b/c the ladies selling the fruit like answering our questions. What color is it inside? How does it Taste? How do you know if it is ripe already? Where does it grow? Can you eat the peel? Are there seeds? Its a fun exchange, and I always enjoy talking about things that grow.

It will be so difficult for me to explain all these fruits to people in the states, but I'll try. My favorites are guyabano (which is super sweet and kind of milky with lots of black seeds.) langka (jackfruit), which is what juicy fruit’s flavor is apparently supposed to be like. They are huge, and grow on these trees that I can only describe as being left over from dinosaur days. They are so big in fact that they could never possibly ripen fully so you end up eating it as both a fruit (ripe) and a vegetable (unripe & cooked in coconut milk.) Then there are passionfruit, and oh, santols! Santols look like yellow peaches & taste like Mother Nature’s sour patch kids. The inside is fleshy & white. You just kind of suck on it, avoiding the seeds & the peel… Durian stinks to high heaven & looks like a brown extra prickly langka, but (according to jon and many many Filipinos) tastes pretty ok... By this point we can tell the difference among the 8 or 9 different kinds of bananas (the ones for cooking with fish, the red ones, the ones for constipation & the ones for its opposite of that, the ones that you coat in sugar & deep fry, the green ones...)

However, there is one elusive fruit. A fruit that never makes it to market b/c it is only edible for a day or two once it’s ripe. Most of these fruits just go to waste, which is a shame b/c the Provincial Agriculture Office here has come up with a list of about 20 uses for the fruit (from jams to candies to vinegars.)

The first time I saw a cashew tree (kasoy in Tagalog) I was amazed. In the states the only time I would eat cashews was when we would go to my grandma & grandpas house & they would have the tins of “fancy nuts.” I never thought about what made the nuts fancy, but the moment I saw my first kasoy tree I decided these certainly are some fancy nuts! Do you realize how much tree goes into a cashew?! So much tree, so much fruit, so much trouble for one little nut!

First of all this is what a kasoy fruit looks like. The kasoy is in the nut case hanging on the bottom of what is known as the “kasoy apple.” The kasoy apple is the fruit I had been seeking. Its only available to those who happen to be near the right tree at the right time. And yesterday I got lucky.

I was walking home from a meeting at the local university, nibbling on a sugar coated & fried sweet potato on a stick. It was a beautifully hot & sunny Saturday afternoon & while still a few hills away from our house I saw a few of our little girls. Surprised to see them this distance from the house I approached (they were way to into whatever it was they were doing, which seemed like running up to a fence and getting chased away by a dog, to notice me) I stopped behind them & realized they were gathering up fallen kasoy from the huge tree above. I looked up and the tree was covered in a balance of ripened kasoy apples. Excited to finally try a kasoy apple the girls & I headed back to my house where they set to work separating the fruit from the nut, cutting up the fruit, and squeezing out the excess juice. dipping it in salty vinegar. Its too hard to describe fruit tastes, but this had a simple and sweet flavor with the ever so slight drying effect of persimmons.

Then the girls set to work making a fire over which to roast the nuts. In my defense I would never let a bunch of little kids in the states play with big knifes and light fires in my yard, but this is the Philippines and kids wield bolos (machetes) with significantly better skill than jon or I… ok so that’s not saying much… The kids were the ones who taught us how to light fires with the local charcoal, although we had to draw the line w/their teaching when they kept insisting we needed to throw some plastic bags on the grill to really get the fire going...

So the girls got serious. They set to work building a fire, and roasting the nuts. It took a little bit to get the fire going & to be perfectly honest I was completely surprised at the success of their endeavor up to this point. They built a nice fire, roasted the kasoy in an old coffee-type tin w/holes poked in the bottom of it, using sticks of bamboo as potholders and stirrers. The cooking process took a good half hour, but they didn’t lose interest or patience & just kept on roasting.

Eventually they decided the nuts were roasted, dumped out their can, and divvied up the prize… A handful of burnt looking chunks. Although they only had a dozen nuts they set two aside for kuya jon & ate ems. Usually I wouldn’t take their food, but this I had to try. And I must say, it was the best fancy nut this mouth has ever tasted!

FROM HOME TO PRISON

2009-02-23T15:35:00.011+08:00

Last month I (Emily) took an all too brief trip home to the states to visit my family. I hadn’t been planning on making the trip during our two-ish years here in the Philippines, but for random reasons it just kind of fell into place. I think people were expecting me to be freaked out by things like the 800 different kinds of peanut butter in the huge grocery store or something, but it was all pretty much how I remembered it. Except people seem to drive faster than I remember & the highways are much wider. I did feel the economic changes that have occurred since we left. We read about them in the news & hear about the horrors of job hunting from other recently returned PCVs but seeing all the empty/out-of-business stores was a tangible effect I could grasp. After two weeks of more delicious than I remember dairy products & days filled with snow & games of Settlers of Catan I returned to my other home, rededicated to my work. As I rode home from the airport & felt the tropical sun warm my skin I couldn’t help but grow ecstatic about being back. The trip home was unbelievably positive for my soul in so so many ways. Its so difficult to communicate w/family via technology, and being with them, looking at their faces & talking to them was amazing. I feel like I returned so motivated to be here b/c I felt a stronger connection to everyone at home. I must admit, I really missed rice & fish & fruit while in the states, really though I don’t ever miss American food anymore while im here. Dairy is good, but I don’t crave it. I don’t crave hot showers or anything like that either (although while I was home I spent about half my time enjoying the temperature controlled running water...) but I do like my cold little bucket & lumpy bed. I’m happy to live where I live & I am not ready to leave yet, but spending time with my family really did re-energize my spirits & I am so very grateful for the opportunity to hug them again. As always the first noises i heard upon returning to my house were my little neighborhood girls running towards me.

Pretty soon after I came back jon & I took a trip to prison with some of his coworkers. That’s right, the local prison is a kind of tourist attraction. Its basically just a nice park separated from the highway by lots and lots of rice fields (that the prisoners tend) there were huge acacia trees, a big pavilion (picture above) & a nice cool irrigation chanel/river in which to swim. We played a few games such as “bring me” where the group is split into two teams. There is one facilitator who says things like “bring me an inmate” and the first group to run & find an inmate & bring it back to the facilitator gets a point. It was strange, there were lots of inmates just wandering around w/machetes. So we swam, chased turkeys, ate, and climbed huge trees... it was a glorious day in prison

We have both been keeping pretty busy with work. I thought we would be winding down projects now but new ones keep coming up. There are things I'll stumble upon (like a community where sea turtles nest, but all of the eggs are being eaten) & I just know that if I were to leave without doing some sort of conservation project in that community I will forever regret the missed opportunity. Through the end of the school year in March I will be continuing my environmental science classes at the local grade school. We talk about all sorts of things regarding ecology, conservation, biodiversity, resource management, the atmosphere etc. i love it. We also just established a Community Environmental Resource Center with a grant from the San Diego Peace Corps Association. Below is a photo of Emily with her 5th Grade Science Class

Jon has been working on teacher trainings at the school for kids with disabilities, and developing a manual of operations for CICL kids (children in conflict with the law) as well as keeping up w/his ongoing sessions w/kids at various centers or kids involved in various city programs.

Fiesta Na

2008-12-07T12:56:00.005+08:00

With September came the Christmas Season
October & November saw lots of rain & never-ending Christmas jingles
So what then, you may ask, happens in December?
Quite a bit of nothing (work-wise) & a whole lot of squid tacos I guess.

We celebrated Thanksgiving in a legitimately-deliciously-American manner. We recently had the great pleasure of getting to know a RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer) who now resides in our town. He was a PCV in Pakistan in the early 60s and now lives in our town, keeping very busy with a wide array of different development projects. Through this connection we were invited to a thanksgiving feast where we met even more RPCVs from the 60s. They talked about their experiences in the early days of the PC, complete with boot camp and a total lack of communication with the outside world for two years. Quite different than our own experiences today! We were able to talk a lot with other Americans living here, about their work as missionaries. It surprised me because I suppose I had always thought of missionaries in the Poisonwood Bible sense. That is, as moving to a remote area & trying to homogenize traditional cultures. However, most of the catholic missionaries we met described their work first & foremost in terms of tangible, helpful projects. Similar to things PCVs are doing, such as small business development and sustainable agriculture. The dinner was amazing (REAL cranberries, turkey, mashed potatoes ~ all those things that north Americans harvest this time of year but that are generally unavailable in the Philippines) and the company even better.

An hour long fireworks display on December 1 kicked off this year’s fiesta, starting a month-long, country-wide hiatus from work. The past two Mondays have been official holidays (Bonifacio day & something else that has to do with Fiesta) but it seems like everyday is an unofficial holiday. Nearly every night there are concerts, beauty pageants, plays, and contests. The city fiesta grounds are down by the baybay, a huge open area along the bay that fills up with a huge Christmas tree (522 feet) and a splattering of vendors selling your choice of a skewered marshmallow-hotdog-marshmallow combination, bulakalak (fried chicken intestines), or deep-fried flaming orange quail eggs all conveniently stabbed with a wooden stick for easy talking-walking-eating.

The provincial fairgrounds are held on the other side of town in the courtyards surrounding the capitol building. “The other side of town” really just means a 10 minute walk down the only major street in town, which at this time of year lined with gold streamers and an abundance of lechon (roasted pig that you can buy chunks of). There are booths set up at the capitol that sell everything from Japanese disposable razors to wild local honey. When we venture into town, a typical fiesta evening usually involves two squid tacos for jon cakes & two for me (at 20 pesos a pop they aren’t super cheap, but they are super delicious and totally worth it) sometimes accompanied by rice or a San Mig. This is always followed by aimless wandering, sometimes by buying cookies from the stall where Betsy works, and occasionally watching a play, or concert.

It’s a Sunday morning here and the town is engrossed in Manny Pacquio’s fight w/Oscar Dela Hoya which is being projected on big screens in public areas & blasting from every radio alive. On my ride into town the multicab driver came to a complete stop in the middle of the street just to listen to the fight on one of hundreds of radios blasting from unseen sources. Everyone listened intently for about 5 minutes & then we were off again.

Its only a matter of days before the Christmas parties begin & you know what that means: killing goats, coke-a-cola chugging contests, nightly christmas carolers asking for money, and being unable to avoid singing videoke. Until next time happy holidays & please post if you have any questions about our life here or things you would like us to blog about.

Peace Corps Partnership Program and Taw Kabui

2008-10-26T10:20:00.005+08:00

A Peace Corps Partnership grant is a chance for those back home in the US to contribute to current Peace Corps Volunteer's ongoing project. There are no administrative costs and all money donated goes directly to the volunteer's project. You can donate as much or as little as you would like directly to any specific volunteer's project or to a general fund for an initiative such as education or HIV/AIDS awareness. All donations are tax deductible. The process for a volunteer to apply to PCPP is the same as any grant for a non-profit agency. The grant must be approved by a PCPP committee as well as the Country Director.

Jon has completed a grant proposal to construct a resource center and purchase materials at a school for children with disabilities. This school, Taw Kabui for a Child, is located in their city and has been operating for about two years. To read more about the proposal and/or make a donation to the project follow the link below or in the margin.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=492-342

This is one of my secondary projects which I go to once or twice a week. Many of my best experiences of my service have been at this center and I really believe in the dedication and motivation of the people at this center. Because of these amazing people and their cause I decided to try to help their organization obtain materials and construct a small resource room for their school. The school itself is in an open air church area. There are very few opportunities or programs to help children with disabilities in the area making this school all the more important to the children and families who utilize their services. Nearly all of the children who attend are unable to provide any financial contribution to the school and would therefore receive no education or assistance in developing living skills and coping with their disabilities without it. The school receives a small amount of funding from a European fund to cover part of the costs of the school and also receives sporadic charitable donations from local and foreign visitors. The teachers at this school work more or less as volunteers receiving little, if any compensation. The head of the program worked at the National Social Welfare agency for 20 years before deciding to start this organization. It is from her that the organization has been able to put together a successful and well run program with such limited resource. It is also because of this impressive feat that I also want to help support this organization construct a real building to have classes and have access to appropriate materials to assist disadvantaged children with disabilities in this city.

Below is a photo of some of the staff and me standing in the church/school area.

underwater ... and barely above water shots

2008-10-18T12:17:00.015+08:00

here are just a few random shots that i thought people might enjoy seeing

This is one of jon (top left) diving w/a few of the PIRE researchers

here is a shot of some fish that had been speared so that fin clips could be taken

A baby crown-of-thorns (Acanthaster planci) munching on a coral during our night dive
jellyfish
table coral & fish

embarassingly i cannot remember what kind of fish this is. i'll ID it later.

nudibranch! these are one of emily's favorite little sea creatures.
... and another nudibranch these guys are pretty small. about the length of a pinky finger Cutting tissue samples from giant-ish clams (Tridacna squamosa). first you have to stick a little something in there to hold them open (emily's job below) then cut just a tiny tiny slice of the colorful flesh. Almost always this is done without disturbing/moving the clams, but for this occasion they had been brought to the surface.

some of these photos were taken during our dives with the PIRE project
& others were taken during sanctuary assessments conducted by emily's office.

Daily Faces

2008-10-15T11:51:00.012+08:00

Living in a city, much less the largest city in the province, poses some unique challenges to a PCV. First of all when you need backing for a project it doesn’t simply come down to whether or not the mayor wants to support it, but includes many other layers of fluffy bureaucracy. After a year or so of being a foreigner, you start to wonder if people will ever become used to you. In a small community, where everyone knows you this doesn’t take very long. But in a city, it will never happen. So it is reason for glee when we walk out of a shop in town & as we try to weave through the cluster of tricycle drivers aggressively recruiting us for a lift, one of them shouts at the others something to the effect of “hey, this guy always comes here & he never gets a trike. Back off.”

Since our community is much larger than it would be in a small village, finding our niche has had added stress, and i have found that because of this we have ended up with multiple different communities.

We both have our work communities or co-workers, as well as the communities where we do the bulk of our field work, the kids & families across the street, and the people who live/work/play on the streets we often walk on.

Like everything in this country, these groups are very fluid, regularly changing in size & composition. Even buildings, made out of lightweight bamboo and nipa thatch are constantly morphing. Fence posts beget houses & houses morph into sari-sari stores which drift across the street and are replaced by basketball courts and roosters... so depending upon the exact route we walk, and our mission there are lots of different people we can run into.

THE VULCANIZERS
The guys who have the vulcanizing shop at the top of our street (that emily is walking down in the photo below) are always tinkering with some mode of tire or tricycle. We met them because we needed to find someone with a drill... more specifically, someone who wouldn’t mind using it to drill holes into nyogs (old coconuts). Without having a clue why we wanted them to do this, and without even inquiring as to what they would get out of it, these guys didn’t hesitate to help with our random request. By time the holes were the right size & we started filling the coconuts with Tanduay (local rum) there was a pretty big group hanging around. Two weeks later when they uncorked and drank the aged-nyog-rum we had used as payment, we got a taste of a new community.

ATE LANI
I have a few different routes i can choose from when walking to work. The most direct of which takes me by Ate Lani’s house. Ate Lani is older than me... but i dont think she is older than my mom... she has 3 kids, all spread out in age “perfectly” (thanks to the pill, a fact that she is very proud of & that most other women trust very little b/c they are so misinformed) I had walked past her house many times before getting to know her, but as soon as she started planting a vegetable garden i found an easy excuse to dawdle. Ever since then i have looked forward to seeing her on every walk. Sometimes we will sit & chat as she grills green bananas to sell for 5 pesos to the kids around. Sometimes she will walk with me to the end of her street, and watch as i walk up the hill towards my own. Usually we talk about nothing in particular, and i dont feel like she expects anything from me. We are both just curious about the other & enjoy our simple chats. About how long i have left here, or when she will have more eggplants to harvest... The other day she said she was lonely because her older brother moved to the mountains. This led to an interesting & extended conversation about upland farming. He moved to the mountains to practice kaingin (a type of slash-and-burn agriculture that usually makes space to plant rice or sweet potatoes). She said that high rice prices prompted him to temporarily migrate there, and in three months they would have [free] rice. I guess this is a pretty common thing to do. So i asked her some more questions about kaingin & how it is done. She said that they can only harvest one, maybe two seasons of rice before moving on to another area. Then i moved along towards home.

BETSY & ATE JANA
My dearest friends here are Betsy and Ate Jana. Betsy (in photo below) is my age & used to live across the street from us, working at her aunt’s sari-sari store, but has since moved up the hill about 5 minutes away. Ate Jana is Betsy’s cousin & is just a year older than me, she lives just across the street from us. Sometimes we will get together at Betsy’s house & watch TV or take a walk, or if she is washing clothes i will help her. We pass the time both making jokes & talking about personal things. Telling each other stories about our families or problems or stresses that we have now. They are two of the only people i have met here who i feel really ‘get me’ and my jokes. I feel so comfortable being my silly self around them, trying to text them rhymes i have made up in Tagalog or having random afternoon dance parties to TV commercial jingles where they laugh at how uncoordinated i am... Other times they will come over, along with Betsy’s two little girls, and teach me how to cook a Filipino dish, or just offer honest but friendly critiques of one i tried to make. I try out lots of “American” dishes on them, introducing them to homemade tortillas and guacamole (usually avocados are eaten as a sweet dish here, with milk and ice). Below is a photo of Betsy's girls: Bea and Dinaya

playing mad scientist

2008-10-15T11:30:00.010+08:00

We have been in the Philippines about 17 months now. By now we are comfortable speaking Tagalog, and sometimes even try to speak some Cuyonin. Not only do we enjoy eating rice every meal, but we do so in the pinoy style with a spoon, or with our hands. Eating rice or any main course with a fork is just awkward. Squishing onto jeeps and tricycles isn’t always that entertaining anymore, just as the novelty of hand washing all our clothes has long ago faded. We have learned how to tagay-tagay Tanduay, ridden kalabaw (water buffalo), harvested kamote (sweet potato) and palay (rice). We sing the Lupang Hinirang (Filipino national anthem) at flag ceremony every morning and have danced the Tinikling.

All of this to try & experience Filipino culture. To live like people here live & see the world from another perspective. To live like our neighbors ~ that’s the adventure. Then yesterday it happened. I was called a Filipina. Wow. 17 months in & all it took was getting a good tan. This long in the tropics i would have thought that at least a hint of a tan would emerge, but any sun that does penetrate the sunscreen usually turns my flesh bubbly & fried thanks to the mandatory peace corps prescribed Malarone.

For the past two weeks we have been helping with a population genetics research project. The PIRE project is currently sampling 15 sites throughout the Philippines in the hopes of finding any possible genetic breaks in marine species. Next year they will move on to Indonesia and the following year to Malaysia. Before the research teams arrival i was involved in helping to secure the mayors permit, arrange accommodations, boat rentals, tanks, dive guides .... The highlight of this involved securing the mayors permit, which was needed to collect samples in city waters. For most of the fish species, fin clips would do (these could come from the market or fishermen as in the picture here), but for a few the whole specimen was needed, so that means spear fishing. The permit also covered sampling coral, and (only when necessary) in fish sanctuaries, as well as transporting specimens out of the city. So needless to say it is very important to obtain! After two months of trying to get the Mayors office to pass along a document for him to approve and sign, we had one week to have the city attorney notarize it before the sampling was scheduled to begin. For a few days i waited around his office, making tsika-tsika (chit chat) with his secretaries & explaining my situation (first nicely, then firmly, then frantically). I started to get nervous and angry at myself for not anticipating these set backs & waiting till the last moment. Painfully i resorted to American pushiness and basically made someone drive me around town hunting this guy down. We finally made it out to his farm where we found the city attorney in his pajamas playing darts with some drinking buddies...at noon on a Wednesday...
While the PIRE crew was here we had the chance to help them sample at both sites on our island. This was a great learning experience because we actually got to help collect, organize, and preserve samples. It was wonderful diving with people who know so much about marine species because as soon as we would surface I could count on having all of my questions answered! Then came spear fishing. Swimming through the turbid blue sea, on the prowl for just a handful of species, spear in hand... the fish just taunted me. They knew i hadn’t embraced my inner-hunter & were just dazzling me. But Jon on the other hand successfully speared a few clown anemone (think Nemo), and a few other equally beautiful species (like the dascyllus trimaculates below)We also spent time meeting with community members, both formally and informally explaining the project. People were so curious and expressed a genuine interest in the activities & goals of the project. Fishermen, like the one below, would just dump open an entire ice box of fish to see if we had something they needed (since all that is needed is a fin clip, these fishermen arent selling anything, they are just being generous with their catch & their time) Operating with a healthy mix of mad scientist & translator, it was a grand adventure!

below is a photo of the entire crew, our hosts, and some random stuffed tigers on the west coast of our island, the first sampling site...

returning at low tide, after a long day of sampling, means carrying in all of our equipment from the boats. the amazing sunsets made it well worth the extra effort

So what does a CRM volunteer actually DO?

2008-08-29T13:10:00.022+08:00

We just got back from meeting the new batch of volunteers. Greeting them at the airport w/Sampaguita lays (the national flower) & helping them get over jet-lag & adjust to the local scene. It was a great opportunity to meet all of them & do some personal reflection (lots of “what do you miss most” and “what has been the hardest thing for you here” type of questions). Mostly though the CRM volunteers just wanted to know what I actually do.

So lets see… usually I am in an office but at least a few days a week we are in the field. In the office I am training my counterparts in how to formulate & plan for surveys, as well as how to analyze & use the information after collecting it. More specifically I spend quite a bit of time teaching them how to use statistical software (SPSS) & write reports for managers (our supervisor & other CRM stakeholders) and prepare presentations (to share our findings w/the community).

Doing field work means a little bit of everything. To increase fisherfolks income we hold trainings to teach them how to add value to the marine products they are already catching. For example we facilitate fish processing trainings, where we teach women fisherfolk how to dry & smoke fish so that they can be preserved. Here is a picture of one of my counterparts, Ate Glo, at the latest such training. Sometimes we will assist communities with buoy installations for their marine protected areas, or host an environmental education activity. Lots of times we facilitate meetings, either helping to organize a protected areas management board, or doing a capacity training for a fisherfolk organization (teaching them how to arrange & conduct meetings, keep records, request assistance etc.) About a dozen times in the past year we have conducted biophysical assessments, which means diving, snorkeling, and playing in mangroves. Usually there is at least a little coral involved; however most of it has been seriously damaged by the use of sodium cyanide & dynamite.

Lately there has been a lot of tension in our city between the fish cage owners and the local government unit (LGU) and NGOs who are trying to support already established coastal zoning laws. So we held a fisheries forum where the owners & the LGU/NGOs could gather to discuss the issues & clarify the laws & procedures for constructing a fish cage. There was a huge turnout, with barangay officials, and civil sector representatives from all coastal communities with fish cages as well as the local environmental legal assistance center and various LGU offices. Total there were a few hundred people present. Even if they only showed up for the free Jollibee, at least they were there!

Then off to some remote coastal barangays to work on my primary project: SocMon surveys. (The Filipino government is very decentralized, so cities are made up of smaller communities called barangays. Barangays have quite a bit of autonomy, with their own laws & own elected officials.) We do surveys in order to monitor the socioeconomic level and resource perceptions of coastal barangays, ultimately to improve how management decisions might affect the population. For example, through socmon we learned that fisherfolk in a particular barangay fish solely for food. When we were trying to gather community support for a marine protected area in this community, we simultaneously organized organic gardening trainings in the hopes that this would provide an alternative food source, thus minimizing the community's fears that restricted fishing grounds would threaten their family's food security. However, in another barangay we learned from socmon that most of the fish are exported to the provincial capital. Since they are caught not for food but for income, our efforts in this community should idealy be more focused on alternative livelihoods and income generating activities than on food security.

Just to give you an idea of what its like I’ll give two examples showing how survey techniques need to be modified to fit the local context:

good luck getting a random sample ~ There are no household lists & lot maps are quickly outdated. Even if they are current they don’t include squatters. This is problematic because it is very common for people to build houses where they don’t own the land, and they should be taken into account when selecting households. Additionally, many farms are accessible only by footpaths up the mountains & we simply don’t have the manpower/time/money/motivation to dedicate ourselves to such endeavors. So we wander. We spread out & wander. I guess that’s random. I hope so because it is all I could suggest.

there is never just one person or household present ~ Its easy to imagine how a crazy white-ghost lady showing up at someone’s house in a remote barangay, reading off questions in broken Tagalog can draw a quick crowd. It doesn’t take long for 20 neighbors to crowd around & read along with me, laughing at my pronunciation, explaining the questions to each other, sharing answers & swapping opinions, feeding me sticky rice treats... Interviewing one household is in & of itself a community assessment & it is simply impossible to shoo away or quiet all of the curious neighbors. So is the interviewee influenced by others during the interview? well... yes... but again, thats the way it works here so just roll with it.

This week involved a lot of socmon. This means lots of chatting w/strangers about their perceptions of local coastal resources & community problems. I love it. I really really love doing this part of my job. I feel like this is when I am in my element, chatting away about the environment. It feels so good to get away from the city where we live & out to the rural areas (rural here does not imply less populated, just more remote) People are generally very welcoming & their houses are open & breezy, like this one in the picture, with woven walls & native orchids, stapled to the side of a piece of driftwood where they sprout out like dandelions in a midwest summer. They are elevated so that livestock can take cover underneath. Which makes feeding them easy because you just drop your scraps through the bamboo floor boards. Sitting there looking out over the rice fields or dirt paths, I always find more motivation for being here. And its these experiences in strangers houses, in rural communities, that I will recall when I think of my time in the Philippines.

This was yesterday. We finished about 9 pm & since our city is very large & the roads can be pretty rough (like this one below) we were at least a few hours from town & public transportation had ended for the day.

We easily found a place to stay, at a wonderfully accommodating strangers house where we watched a wildly popular Filipino TV show called Dyezabel about a mermaid who becomes a beautiful human lady when she removes her necklace, drank some san miguel beers in the regular shot-by-shot style, and ate lots of rice with some local sting ray in coconut milk & garlic crab over conversations about breastfeeding & ghosts. The following morning (today) has been fairly typical for a day after overnight field work & went something like this:

-I woke up at 4:30, shocked by the karaoke & rooster-free solitude
-We had instant coffee, hotdogs & rice for breakfast
-We walked to the highway & while waiting to hitch a ride I bought a huge sac of oysters for tonight’s dinner for only 17 pesos, or less than 50 cents
-We hitched a ride in a pasing van
-The van got a flat tire or two & our driver pumped it up w/a bike pump
-We hit a chicken
-We realized we hit a chicken when the van became engulfed in feathers the cat (that an overly accomodating interviewee had given me the day before & which I happily passed off to an eager coworker) freaked out & released her bowels all over my coworker.
-Everyone freaked out & we screeched to a halt on the side of the road
-It just so happened this was at a charcoal stand. So I bought a huge bag of charcoal. I mean, huge. 65 pesos worth. It will last us months. Charcoal is the main fuel source & much cheaper in rural barangays where they make it than in it is in the city. The picture at right shows the cut logs. They are piled, covered with sand, and then left to smolder for days. While extracting natural gas from the earth isnt necessary cleaner and certainly not more sustainable, it is tough because the effects of deforestation for charcoal- making are much more obvious & closer to home, making me feel slightly guilty everytime we cook.

-I came home & swept my house, looked at my garden, ate oatmeal...

And its 8 am.

Filipino Dogtown Saga

2008-08-22T11:58:00.014+08:00

Before coming to the Philippines we spent months and months online & in local bookstores trying to find resources about our destination. It was surprisingly difficult for us to find books about any topic of interest. We wanted to read ethnographic literature, find out about the physical environment and the effects of religion on traditional Filipino cultures. Pretty much we wanted to know about the issues facing the people of this diverse country & all we could find were travel books. Luckily we have since discovered an independent book store in Malate, Manila, one of our favorite areas of the city b/c of its constant state chaos. When we were in the city one afternoon I wandered in to escape the heat, browsing through the books I stumbled upon a very small packet, perhaps 70 half pages of print, and so began an afternoon history lesson about my own hometown.

One of my favorite places in St. Louis, MO is Forest Park. A few of the activities that are usually accompanied by “Meet me in St. Louis” on my internal music box include nights at the Muny with my mum or learning how to use clip-less bike pedals for the first time w/my dad. Gazing out over the city from a huge arched pavilion, wandering along ponds & various waterways, which are now refitted so paddleboats can wiggle through them, and at least a drive past the birdcage at the city zoo. All of these locations, among many others are remnants of the 1904 World’s Fair, a glorious time in our city’s past where everything from sliced bread (holla’ out to Chilacothe, MO) to ice cream cones were introduced.

But there is more. And it is not quite the same story.

Many generations ago, deep in what is now part of the Cordillera mountain range in Mountain Province on the island of Luzon the Igorot culture originated. The term Igorot literally means “people of the mountains” and consists of six separate ethno-linguistic groups: the Bontoc, Ibaloi, Ifugao, Isneg Kalinga, and the Kankana-ey. We recently posted a blog entry about our trip to the Bontoc and Ifugao rice terraces, where we were at times a days walk from the nearest road or town. Where secluded communities continue to farm, eat, dance, worship and live as they have for generations. Because this is such a remote region of the country the various groups living there have always been cloaked in a cloud of mystery by outsiders. In other parts of the Philippines today the Igorots are still rumored to have tails. This is largely due to the traditional loin cloths that men wear while working in the muddy rice terraces that hang longer between the legs. During festivals women don long woven belts that tie in the back of their skirts. Such confusion and mystery persisting today in the very same country puts into perspective just how strange these half-nude dog-eating tattooed rice farmers were to people living in the States in 1904. It was hoped that putting them on display would help gather support against granting The Philippines the political freedoms they desired. Groups of Igorots were thus lied to and even forcibly coerced into signing contracts & were transported to St. Louis where a replication of their home community was constructed and they were put on display. Many of them died on the boat ride over due to the horrible living conditions and malnourishment. Many more died before the fair was over, and there seems to be very little literature available about what happened to the survivors. It seems that some were able to return home, and others simply stayed & tried to survive in St. Louis, either through marraige to a local or finding menial labor.

One of the draws to the exhibit was the daily killing and eating of dog, a traditionally common Igorot food, in front of fairgoers. Unfortunately for the Igorots on display, the 20 dogs/day as food as laid out in their contract was insufficient, thus they started bartering w/the crowds for more dogs to eat. As the story goes, this escaladed to the point where fairgoers would wander the streets surrounding the exhibit gathering up stray dogs to sell or trade to the Igorots. As the story I was reading goes, this eventually forced the local government to issue warnings to residents of the areas surrounding the exhibit to keep their dogs indoors. During this period the area around the exhibit began to be called “dogtown.” I know there are lots of conflicting stories about where the name comes from, but I just found this interesting & wanted to share. After I grew interested in the topic I discovered a wealth of papers written about it, and even a few Filipinos who had already heard of this connection to my hometown. As I sat reading this short pamphlet, linking the city I grew up in to the country I live in now, it struck me how personally involved I felt. It was a mix of shameful guilt that I will remember every time I return to Forest Park, and think about our amazing trip to Northern Luzon, but also a sense of pride in the strength of the various cultures I have encountered while living here. It is easy to fear for the homogenization of this country & the loss of local culture when every child I meet speaks Philippino or Tagalog in lieu of their parents’ native dialects. But then I think about the Igorots and the persistence of their culture, and hope that it will continue even with the introduction of electricity, cell phones, and junk food that we saw seeping in during our trip.

here are a few online links that have more information:

photos of Igorots today

Webster University link about Dogtown & the Igorot exhibit

Link to photos of our trip to the Cordillera

Fires & Friends

2008-07-08T16:59:00.024+08:00

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.

Gut Wrenching Beauty

2008-07-08T16:46:00.004+08:00

Sometimes I experience this incongruity. It happens when I see a strikingly beautiful scene & for some reason a very strong feeling of sadness overwhelms my gut. It’s that twisting feeling that happens during a sad comedy (anyone seen Juno?) the sadness you feel when you see something beautiful (or the loneliness that happens after an amazing visit with friends as the next entry will mention). One example is the play things of neighborhood kids.

The other day each of the four girls that make up our usual gang showed up w/an old electrical cord/wire. They were unusually giggly & excited. Jumping rope like it is what they were born to do. Singing, doing it together or solo. The few times one would take a break from jumping they would hold it so close to their bodies so as not to lose it. This was maybe one of the happiest play times & most exciting afternoons for them, but it made me profoundly sad. Why is that?

Perhaps it is because they are so deprived of toys that an old electrical wire, or a book that they don’t understand is cause for glorious celebration. Or because like kids anywhere, they seemed so simple & childlike, characteristics that are often overshadowed by the differences between them & the children we knew in our previous life. Getting to know a ten year old in the context of oldest of seven kids & primary caregiver for his youngest sibling or a four year old whose father is in prison & mother is mentally absent & unable to provide for the family, thus she has to wander the neighborhood asking for wires that could be used as fish hooks. Or even the kids who have great “normal” families but still wield machetes with the same comfort & ease of fish workers at the market.

Seeing them so excited w/their wire-as-toy, hearing their giggles, or even watching them quietly ponder books they could only barely comprehend, makes me want them to always get to be children without the worries & struggles of adults.

This sadness feels misplaced. The kids were on top of the world, enjoying life & a fancy glittery $5 jump rope w/handles wouldn’t have necessarily increased their happiness. Similarly brand new notebooks wouldn’t be more interesting to have than the ones just dug out of the trash can, filled w/someone else’s education, doodles, advantages & struggles. So why do pangs of sadness taint this happy scene? Maybe b/c the happiness is so simple & potentially short-lived. Tonight skyrocketing rice prices might mean they don’t have an ulam, or dish to accompany their rice. Someday, if they make it to school they will be years older than their classmates & wearing torn uniforms, feeling alienated & unable to learn.

Because of some random meeting of particles & explosions of luck I have had everything & these kids have nothing. I love life & it can be hard for me to understand that they can be truly happy too. I have always felt that happiness is a choice, but I’m not so sure at all that I could have made it if I had arrived on earth in their position. Physically they have so little & they enjoy it to its fullest. Where people in my place* actively seek happiness in possessions & often fail, for these kids buying it is not an option so they choose to make it. They find happiness in whatever songs they have, or other people’s trash they scavenge. It takes so little & they recognize it when they have it. And I obviously don't mean to romanticize or state that everyone here is happy, because they most certainly aren't. I'm talking specifically about our neighborhood gang right now. The kids we play with on a regular basis, whose families live across the street from us.

here is a photo of Rachel & Marie Kar looking through our bird ID & fish ID books. Sitting with them I might point out a picture of coral in the background of a fish picture. So close to some of the greatest marine biodiversity in the world, and they have no idea what a coral reef is. I try to explain but they quickly lose interest in the abstractness of it all & I might as well be talking about super novas.

*people here call our home “your place.” Perhaps because they are not exactly sure if we are European Americans or Americans from Canada or the United States... and is Europe part of the United States... or perhaps because every time someone asks, for example, about the temperature in the US and we give them some long response discussing the size of the country & its diversity. People we deal with regularly now know to phrase the question “is it hot like this in your place” so we can answer about our place, Missouri, somewhere without an ocean (crazy!) that is not New York or California, but near to Chicago... I like thinking about "our place" in this world as opposed to our entire country. Its simple & sweet & home.

Trekking the Rice Terraces of the Cordillera Mountains

2008-06-10T16:41:00.020+08:00

Our most recent adventure was an invigorating mix of overnight buses and ferries, intensely beautiful treks, a few museums, indulgent food patterns, and cold foggy days. We have spent nearly the entire month of May away from site. Our trip began with two weeks in Mountain Province and Benguet in Northern Luzon exploring the completely different cultures & once again, after a year of finally achieving comfort in our lives, being tourists and not knowing the language.

The first few days we spent on a ferry. Following the coast of our island north, we bobbed along on a ferry for a little under 30 hours. We split this time pretty evenly between waiting in line for fried chicken meals, sleeping in a huge airplane-like room (not the bunkbeds on the deck that you see below), and wandering outside, to the top deck where we usually found ourselves among clusters of tiny green mountainous islands jutting up all around, and every once in a while the solitude silence of wide open ocean. Then signs of Manila, our destination, started to float by in the form of plastic bags…

This is when the real adventure began. We headed north on a freezing cold night bus (ok, so that’s a feeling I don’t miss anymore!) then A brief bumpy jeep ride followed by an hour and a half hike through fog covered hills led us into the small town of Batad. We arrived in the late afternoon & just before sunset the clouds lifted just enough to give us a glimpse of the mystical mountain world surrounding us. Feeling truly a planet away from site, we spent the next few days chatting with our guides & hosts to learn about the terraces & Ifugao culture, and hiking to our hearts content to huge waterfalls…

While terraced farming is practiced throughout the north, Batad’s rice terraces are some of the more famous ones. The matriarch of the family with whom we stayed there was a wealth of information about Ifugao life. She had spent her whole life tending to their family’s terraces, and was thus completely hunched over. The way she struggled to straighten her back when she walked past us was strikingly symbolic. Almost like a physical manifestation of the community’s attempt to modernize, but still embracing and needing their traditional culture. Wearing jeans, accommodating tourists, and speaking English at the same time as trying to grow enough rice to feed your family, and living the same way they have for thousands of years, which requires back-breaking hours in the fields. The introduction of a market economy complicates things because money is needed for schooling and farm upkeep. So when a few of the terraces naturally collapse, fixing them just to continue to live hand-to-mouth on what was too little rice already, is a daunting task. Instead many people move to the cities for jobs, and send remittances home to their families. Because of this the terraces are slowly crumbling away. It is promising however that the guides have organized themselves so that a certain portion of all their income goes towards fixing trails and maintaining the stone terrace walls. The picture to the left is of the village of Batad.

We hiked the long way out of Batad against a backdrop of 2,000 year old rice terraces, and virgin mossy mountain forests, climbing steps like the ones above. It was pretty entertaining how barefoot men with enormous piles of wood and tiny women with huge sacks of rice would slip smoothly past us as we awkwardly trekked up & down, slipping, climbing & gawking at the beauty of these “backyard gardens” with our fancy little tennis shoes tied, backpacks on & walking sticks in hand, often wobbly on the thin walls. just don't look down...

We passed through small villages, such as Cambula below, each a small pocket for a unique language. We slept in a small community of just a few dozen houses, most of which look like this traditional Ifugao home.
Drinking from fresh mountain streams…
Our next destination of interest was Sagada, an amazing town that draws buckets of travellers, and still maintains cultural integrity through an intact and active council of elders with whom politicians must consult before any major decisions. You can see this in the wedding celebration taking place here in the streets ~ the traditional dances and songs still play a major role in celebratory festivals. It is clean, quite, and full of amazing caving and trekking. While there a large monsoon moved through & landslides locked us there for a little bit longer than intended, and I can’t think of another place I would have rather been stuck. We split our time between long rainy, cooler weather walks and eating copious amounts of broccoli and strawberries (two things that we love and do not have access to on our island) while reading or playing cards with other travelers.

On our way back south we went to Bagio city. The archivist and curator of the St. Louis University Museum of Culture & Arts, Mr. Isikias Picpican, graciously took the time to follow us around, explaining his current research on the Kabayan mummification process, and even taking out traditional musical instruments from the case and jamming with us! While the curator played some sort of mouth instrument, another museum worker jammed on drums, emily blew into a nose flute, and Jon played a bamboo xylophone-like instrument.

For more photos of our trip follow our link to "our online photo album" on the top left of our blog. The photos are in the "Northern Luzon" group.

Funny Names, Summer "Camps" & Pirate Ships full of Rubbicks Cubes

2008-04-15T14:18:00.006+08:00

We spent a week in Manila a short while ago and to our surprise we both really enjoyed it. Of course it was really, really good to get together again with all of the people in our batch and share stories of experience so far, but we even enjoyed Manila itself. It may have been because we didn't actually get to spend that much time wandering around Manila (we were there for a Peace Corps conference and our time was mostly filled), but I think it had more to do with just being familiar with the city and getting that nostalgic feeling (or nauseous feeling...jeepney fumes) from being somewhere familiar. This seminar/conference we attended gave us both a sort of boost or re-energizer we hadn't even realized we needed. We both came back with a lot of new ideas and resources to accomplish them.

One thing Peace Corps pushed to all of the Youth Volunteers is summer camps. I had never been all to interested in putting on a summer camp, but I thought what the heck, maybe I'll bring it up. Oddly enough when we returned to our city I saw a big banner (banners hanging from the street is the main avenue for announcing activities in our city...the street is always swamped with them) declaring "2008 Summer Camp: sponsored by CSWD". CSWD is my counterpart agency. I was a bit taken back by this because I had heard nothing about this yet and had heard no one planning for this.

The next day I sat with my counterpart catching up on what had been happening while I was gone. Soon she said with a bit of smile "oh and yes, apparently we are putting on a summer camp now." I told her I saw the sign and she said, yes that is how she found out about the camp as well. Apparently the PNP (national police) had come up with the idea. The week of the camp our city is hosting the national high school athletic competition, so lots of visitors from around the Philippines will be here. The mayor ordered the PNP not to allow there to be any kids on the street begging during this event (so people would have a good impression of the city). This posed a bit of a problem. The usual protocol for PNP dealing with street kids is basically they ignore them unless they get caught stealing in which case they will turn the kid over to the CSWD who will hold them for a short period at an ill equipped shelter until they return the child to their parents. They just don't have the resources or funding to do much else. The kid is back on the street within about 48 hours. The PNP decided that since their is no place for the kids and there are laws against holding them with adults, that they would create a temporary holding shelter for the kids (far from the city) just for that week. And to make it one better they decided to call it a "summer camp" for street kids...that way they don't have to watch over the kids...they'll have my department do it. They even made a sign.

In reality this is a really, really good idea for giving these disadvantaged kids an opportunity to experience something like a summer camp. Of course the flip-side is we have to prepare a week long summer camp in less than week and no one really thought about if this is even possible when they decided to do this. At the Peace Corps seminar when they talked about what to expect when planning a camp they mentioned you would need at least three months to plan for a camp. HA, what do they know? As of now Emily and I have our part planned out already. I have two days of games and team building activities planned while emily will finish our portion with half a day of environmental education. Now we just have to hope that the city will somehow come up with the funding to house, feed, and provide materials for the activities of 100 or so kids. If so I think this will truly be a situation of turning lemons into lemonade.

If I could sum up what work is like here, it would pretty much be this scenario. People in charge hear of a good idea that worked somewhere. They make a sign. They turn to those who work for them and tell them to make it work here in our place as well. Somehow, usually, they pull it off. Little planning or research is done about ideas or events. People don't ever stop to think, how will this work, should we do this here, or better yet can we do this here? If the person in charge decides this should be done, then none of those questions matter...they just have to do it...

We've heard a bunch of names here that, well, are just fun, funny, or odd. Here's a list.
Darwin
Jeyar (like the initial J.R. but spelled out as a name)
ABCDE (pronounced Absideeyah)
MaryDave (combination of the two parents names)
Dong (a girls name)
Cornelius Julius III (the name is not passed down, they just like the sound of "the third")
Sensha (sounds alot like the tagalog word "pasensha" which means I'm sorry...oops!)
Natz
MelGibson (thats the kids first name)

I've come up with a theory about trends here in the philippines. I think that every so often a ship full of goods from the '80s shipwrecks on our island (or is robbed by pirates and sold for cheap here) and suddenly, instantaneously everyone will be playing with some random new toy. I mean one day no one will have this toy and the next day every single kid down every alley will be showing off their fancy new Rubbiks cubes. Two months ago it was pogs. Awhile back the Jellies Slippers boat crashed and all the girls were wearing jelly's slippers. The yo-yo boat was last year. Slap-bracelet's was not too long ago. Who knows what will be next, but I'm hoping for the little generic green plastic army men boat to crash here... I loved playing with those things.

Photos: Tagbanua Script Class at Local Arts Festival

2008-04-13T13:11:00.026+08:00

This past week an arts and music festival was held here in our city at a place called Kamarikutan. During the day you could attend different workshops on painting, drawing, musical instruments, photography, and a variety of other arts or crafts. Artist and musicians from different parts of the Philippines came to display their work and teach these sessions. Emily and I took a class on how to write Tagbanua Script. It is an old writing form originally used here in our place, but is no longer used and slowly being forgotten and lost. It is similar to sanskrit and is an array of 18 symbols.

Each night there were several different performances. Some nights were drama interpretations, music, drum jam sessions, re-enactments of native rituals, and on the last night we got to hang out and listen to Joey Ayalla. It was an altogether great time... here are a few pics.

Family Time Photos

2008-03-13T17:48:00.012+08:00

emily, rachel & jon walking on the beach in el nido

mike & rachel playing on a fallen palm tree
below is a photo of our fish market

here are a few pictures of Mike & Rachel's visit (emily's sister & her husband) we have so much to write about, as their visit really put our lives here into clearer perspective. More specifically: the fact that we have a completely separate parallel universe in which we exist (albeit on hiatus...) Upon their arrival tiny pouches of hummus-to-go and goldfish crackers devoured our kitchen table, and with them a reminder of all our comforts back home. While they were here we took a trip to El Nido, Palawan. Upon their departure we found ourselves missing family & friends more than before, but also re-energized by the realization that this is so temporary & we have so much to do before we leave. so many relationships to develop, neighbors to get to know better, work to do... so here are a few fun family pictures.

the cakes

emily's "kiss from mother nature" aka her jellyfish sting

rachel in front of drying squid

emily playing in a lagoon

the husbands enjoying themselves, squished into our public transportation: a motorcycle sidecar

mike playing w/the neighborhood kids

emily's office's entry in our local wacky boat race

jon climbing trees

the girls feeding the goats at our local farm

good bye family ::tears::

this is mike & rachel's plane

HELP foundation

2008-02-21T09:16:00.002+08:00

Peace Corps occasionally sends us little newsletters from the PC Alumni Foundation for Philippine Development & one recent article was about a PCV in the Philippines in the 60s who ended up (as a surprising amoung of male volunteers here do) marrying a Filipina. The couple started the HELP Foundation - Humanitarian Efforts to Lessen Poverty in underpriveleged children of the Philippines. Its a really interesting organization & I added the link to it in our links section (top left corner of our blog, along with our photos, other PCVs blogs, and local news links) just in case any readers find it interesting or want to know how they can help. Now we are off to play for a week with Rachel & Mike, Emily's sister & her husband. I get so giddy thinking about their arrival that I can't sleep! I just keep hoping that they don't forget to bring their earplugs b/c those fighting cocks that our neighbors are raising are quite loud....

Do we have starapple's in our place?

2008-02-19T16:42:00.003+08:00

Star-apples are in season. Of course for the past month or so, basically since the neighborhood kids discovered the tree in our yard, we have had an eventful mixture of kids throwing rocks as the fruit, poking at branches with long bamboo sticks, and a few of the bigger kids in the canopy of the tree, scaling awkward branchless heights that even my best-tree climbing friend Kelly would struggle to achieve.

Jon teaches some kids how to blow up balloons, Emily tries a little badminton with the girls, the whole time tense with the sudden responsibility of a dozen fruit mongering kids high above our heads in trees at a house we rent we occasionally mutter something to the effect of “ingat kayo! Watch out! If you fall you will hurt your head and your parents will get mad at me.” It’s curious how kids seem to have an easier time understanding my tagalong than adults. Perhaps because their own grammar is so flexible they are more forgiving with deciphering my own… & its true that they are the best teachers as they are patient & wigglingly excited by each of our pathetic attempts to speak & they are so unintentionally delicate when correcting.

I try so hard not to compare with how things are in the states – an activity that is complicated by the near constant stream of “is it like this in your place” themed questions - & properly answering these questions is a delicate balancing act, tailoring answers to compensate for any preconceived ideas. My favorite ones to answer are about the beauty of the natural environment & the weather. This is partly because I love talking about the seasons & I can do so in Tagalog without any conscious effort, and also because it gives me a chance to mention trees & conservation & how our city here is so incredibly unique in the Philippines “have you ever left this city? This island? Other places are not like this talaga. They are dirty, or have no trees. It’s the same in my country. Some places, they are pretty. Some places, they are not. In my state, no no not California. No no, not New York either. Actually my place is somewhere far away from both. It’s close to Chicago.” Faint nods of recognition before I blow their minds with “walang dagat doon” or “no ocean there.” I don’t know which is harder for them to fathom, no ocean or winter & snow. So it is very different, and at first it seemed only slightly different, but every day we discover new things & it seems more & more dissimilar. But many things are the same. Hot season here is no hotter than a muggy Missouri summer day & we have rice, just less frequently…

When I say that in America, we have rice, just not everyday people are confused. They don’t really know what we eat. Do we eat hotdogs or hamburgers? Just lots of bread? To be honest, I don’t even know what I used to eat. Trying to explain a burrito is always interesting. Here you have your rice & your ulam (main meal) popular ulams here are a fish, fried or grilled, or some other cooked dish. Jon’s specialty is chicken adobo (a kind of soy sauce, sugar & vinegar mix that tastes kind of like bar-b-q) and emily’s favorite is mongo bean (her fix for the lack of dried split peas around town) & when I think about it, in the states we do the same thing, we just eat more of the ulam & not so much rice, but to tell someone here that just makes us sound so rich. To get full from ulam takes a lot of ulam! & while most of us in the states are (or at least live like we are) there are still people without a job. Without a livelihood, and without sufficient income & everyone here knows the Hollywood America, so I struggle extra hard to expose our own marginalized population, even though we all know it’s on a totally different scale.

Then there are the “in your place” questions that can really only be answered with a “hindi” or “no.” like when we are riding a multicab (little truck converted into a tiny bus with benches, see jon to the right) bouncing our way along, passing fresh fish vendors, driving up over the curb to avoid stoplights, passengers jumping on the back to stand outside on the step b/c we are already 5 over capacity with little kids gawking in terror at this beastly white ghost sitting next to them… personal space is little more than a fuzzy memory & someone po9ses the in your place question... no, its not like this in my place. And we continue riding while horns happily honk along, and people swerve & drive on the wrong side of the road & stop in the middle to let passengers off & on & no one is in a rush… its not the same…

So while kids scamper up trees I nervously brush aside my “in our place your parents would sue the PANTS off us if you went home with even a stain on your shirt” as I realize I couldn’t play with kids in the states like I do here. Here kids sharpen bolos & an 8 year old might be the primary caretaker of his 6 month old sister. They are still kids, but I don’t even trust myself to sharpen a bolo or take care of a baby full time! Oh how differently delightful to be in a place where kids are expected to have tattered to threads shirts, one pair of shorts only & an mismatching pair of slippers (flip-flops in American)

::THE OCEANS IN A GULP::

2008-01-16T13:08:00.000+08:00

Recently I have been thinking about a trip we made to Zambales province during PST (pre-service training) & the PCV (pc volunteer) there. I have elaborated on this experience below, but basically everyone still remembers him & he was a perfectly successful volunteer in every way I can tell. The light bulb that he switched on in his community has helped them develop a seriously successful CRM plan & so I think to myself “hmmm… what can I do here? Something new to offer [I’ve mentioned previously that my site is a leader, not just nationally, but regionally in southeast Asia as well, for CRM, so they are beyond just needing the light bulb flipped on] I need to come up w/something that will create a lasting change, so in 20 years people in my community will be better off & maybe even remember me….” I believe it is safe to consider this line of probing as a generic portal into any PCVs mind…

So I did what I often do when bored…
Or feeling uncomfortably, uncharacteristically over-emotional…
Or to ponder how far a light year really is & how eleven dimensions, full of oscillating, vibrating superstrings created this – all of these illusions of solidity & life in an empty void of space…
Or simply needing a moment to slow my brain droolings into legitimate thoughts:

I lifted my plastic, neon, oversized water-bottle to my face & began what would become a long morse-code-like series of gulps & sips. Not rapid, but slow full gulps* Breathe through nose, blink, drink, inhale, think, drink, exhale, drink, think, think…

My thoughts progressed as something to the effect of:

MPAs…meron (we have)… ::sip sip:: what else do we have ::sip:: plastic bags…plastic wrappers & sachets… oh witches britches… I should ask Rachel more about her fancy bioplas tics ::sip sip:: blink ::sip:: plastics aren’t killing the fish ::siiiiip:: we are. We are the ones who kill em, ::gulp:: cook em and eat em ::gulp:: fish are so delicious ::gUulp:: much better in the ocean than by belly though… ::siip siiiip:: well even if I don’t eat fish – who cares – as long as hungry impoverished people here ::siiip:: & rich people there keep depending on & obliviously craving (respectfully) fish then what does it matter [the inevitable pessimistic slide upon which I am slipping is not being helped by a recently received reaffirmation of my insignificance thanks to Bill Bryson’s A short history of nearly everything] ::siiip sip sip:: everything in moderation ::sip:: nothing in excess ::sip:: blink::sip::exhale:: thirty-percent of all commercial fisheries have already collapsed ::guUlp:: all corals dead in twenty years ::gulp:: 2048, fish to eat, gone ::siiiipp:: fear-mongering tree-huggers ::gUUlp:: threats to biodiversity are corrupting any fighting chance marine species have to adapt to global warming and the third law of thermodynamics ::guuuulp gulp:: residual warmth. Can’t stop global warming. It’s done. Its too late ::gulp:: its ok ::siiiip:: just minimize the problem ::siiiip::gulp:: ok, how ::sip:: so how do we deal, its happening already ::sip sip:: relax ::sigh::

AND thus my research on how to prepare coastal communities for the inevitable coming of rising seas & temperatures began. I am giddy to report that there are actually quite a few things that we can still do, many of which are obvious & already being done. Basically just start (or continue) protecting & monitoring our coastal resources (i.e. establish fish sanctuaries). There are some other interesting things we can do too, like protecting not just mangrove forests from logging, but protecting future mangrove sites from development now, so that in a few decades when mangroves are all drowning, there will be places to plant new ones. The picture here shows one of four types of mangrove species in the Philippines ~ the root are pneumatophores, the purpose of which is to get protrude above ground just enough so that they can get oxygen durng low-tide (they are also great filters). So who knows, hopefully something we do here (in the Philippines, on earth, in life…) will matter in the long run. Even if we are just a blink in time.

*i think i find comfort in water b/c of my mother’s eternally calm-in-the-face-of-crisis demeanor ~ headache? Drink water…Chronic fatigue? water…You think you broke your arm? Ok… drink some water. ~ so I’ve come to honestly believe that water cures all physical discomforts & from there it’s only a small leap to psychosocial comforts as well

Zambales: During PST (first three months in country b/4 we were actually volunteers) we visited a rural coastal community in Zambales province as our MPA best practices site visit. Not only were the coral reefs & seagrass beds productive, healthy, happy, thriving habitats - filled with shellfish of all kinds, star fish, sea cucumbers, big fish, little fish... & giant clams (a favorite of mine), but the best part of the entire trip was learning about how it all began. The original fish sanctuary in Zambales was established b/c of the initiative of a few community members & a Peace Corps volunteer. In the 70s when Patrick was a pcv, there were only a handful of MPAs in the entire country (mostly in the southern islands).

literally every single person we spoke w/about the MPA & local CRM plans, from members of the fisherfolk people's organizations to municipal hall employees, to the ladies who cooked us lunch, they all spoke w/a sense of honestly-deserved pride in what their community is doing to protect their local fisheries - both in terms of food security as well as preservation of marine habitats in a non-market value, purely altruistic tree-hugging way. Great right? To make it even cooler - they all mentioned Patrick by name, without us even broaching the topic. A few actually still said they keep in contact w/him.

A Barrio Christmas

2008-01-11T18:41:00.000+08:00

Time is moving so quickly - and it seems suspiciously like summer still, but they say its christmas... the best part about it being winter at home, is explaining to people here what that means. Sometimes they are totally disgusted that people eat snow, other times they go crazy excited at the thought of free "halo-halo" (an ice, milk, sometimes corn, sometimes beans, always sugar... drink) Usually though it leads into a discussion about all the different seasons at home, and how the fruit is better here because its fresher & has less of a journey from earth-to-plate, so its simply more delicious. Except for the apples, which are the one fruit that do not taste better here. there are about 15 different kinds of bananas alone here! red, green, yellow, brown...

Since my siblings & their significant others & families are scattered all about the globe, St. Nick had a difficult time chasing us all down this christmas season. So he opted to purchase a water buffalo for a heifer family in our honor. After receiving St. Nick's email informing us of this amazing gift, I realized that my family at home had no idea how close we live to so many of these incredibly helpful animals - so I did two things: I sat down & wrote an email to everyone at home about what a great help calabaw are for farmers here, how they are one of a handful of iconic symbols of what will be registered in my brain as "The Philippines" when people ask about my time in the Peace Corps. The second thing we did was head out to find a water buffalo to ride. Luckily we have an amazing friend, Elsie, who has done wonders teaching us all sorts of new skills - from Tagalog & cooking lessons, to help with Filipino laundry methods. Elsie was sweet enough to invite us to her family's farm where we rode calabaws, ate a seriously filipino feast, and played in the river.

:: CHRISTMAS & NEW YEARS ::

For weeks leading up to Christmas we were serenaded nightly by the little neighborhood crews. Little squeaky kid voices singing at the top of their lungs to get our attention. Quite often groups of adults asked to carol too (ask b/c saying yes means you will make a monetary donation, although w/the kids you can often get away w/a few little firecrackers & single pesos)

We spent Christmas day at the beach in town w/some friends. Promptly upon our arrival at the beach we were adopted by a wine-drinking, badminton-mongering, sea urchin & trochus shell gathering (& eating) spaghetti good-time loving family.

Once our other friends arrived we grilled a tuna, played some more badminton & a great new variation of tag – significantly more intense than the dancing-with-an-orange-between-partners-foreheads-dance-contest (that emily & jon lost BOTH times they were forced to play at office Christmas parties) & no less entertaining to watch than the blindfolded-feed-your-partner-a-banana-contest that emily almost won at the City Agriculture Office Christmas party.

Unlike new years eve in the states, where it is predominately a friend-based celebration, new years Filipino-style is, as the culture would obviously suggest, a much more family oriented affair. Most people return to their family’s home & celebrate there. We new-yeared at our house here with three friends we met while living in manila. For all three this was the first year they had rung in the new year away from family. Like most celebrations here it involved: lots of cooking, lots & lots of eating, and fireworks. We bought a little touch of home when we found the “Missouri Spirit” 16 shot firework!

When our Manila friends arrived in town (all but 1, who is from here, had never been outside of a major Filipino city) we picked them up at the airport. As we bumped along on our ½ hour ride home from the airport – never a taller-than-three-story building in sight… then a landscape dominated by nipas, wood, or concrete houses & tiny shops selling everything from candy to car tires, vacant green plots of land… the pavement ends & the bouncing intensifies… the five of us plus luggage bouncing along in our tricycle sidecar…

“this IS a major city” jon kept explaining
“no really, this is URBAN, the biggest city in the provence” emily adds

But to them it remained the barrios & we all enjoyed the irony of us, the foreigners, introducing them, the Filipinos, to a little bit more of their own country. Playing host to our hosts.

:: BULAKLAK BOOK CLUB ::

The other day when i came home from work i reached to open our gate & I noticed dozens of tiny little bulaklak (tagalog for flowers) tucked into all of the possible nooks on our gate ~ as i stooped to inspect this intricate colorful celebration of nature, i heard tiny little voices run up behind me & turned to see my girls - here is a photo of our neighbors.

These are the same girls who I am currently reading "Ang Munting Principe" to or "The Little Prince" in Tagalog. Its great because the language is so easy to pronouce, but there are plenty of words that I don't understand. While i sound out the words (none of these girls can read) they will act out words that I do not understand. Luckily I know the story close enough by heart so as to lend a little help to their often totally obscure charades. I like to think of this as kind of a secondary project labeled "reading appreciation & occasionally flossing lessons for out of school youth"

christmas is coming & the creepy crawly critters are getting fat...

2007-12-12T10:51:00.000+08:00

here are a few photos of our trip to a nature park where they breed crocodiles & rehabilitate illegally captured or injured wildlife for re-integration into their natural habitats. and yes, this spider really was just about as big as emily's head.

the starfish & trochus shell are photos taken during our recent seagrass planting & monitoring. notice the little eyes of the sea snail popping out of the trochus shell. Sometimes we eat these (steamed or grilled) but most of the time when i find them in the water i just think they are so amazingly beautiful that i simply cannot justify bashing in the smooth shine of its intricately formed shell for such little food. delicious, yes. but sometimes thats not what should matter most when it comes to food. it is kind of interesting when we are scuba diving or snorkeling & see a school of fish that are similar to the one we just ate... and not just the beautiful, colorful fish either. the more time we spend in the water the more delicate the world seems. the impact of a somewhat abstract event, like the ocean rising 3 feet, becomes so much more tangible when i can look out into the water & literally count the islands that will be completely submerged underwater then.

also i thought i would throw in a photo of our town's christmas tree, just so everyone knows that we most certainly do celebrate christmas here ~ in fact the christmas season starts in september here! we are so excited to make homemade bread (if emily's yeast catching is successful & her sourdough starter works) for all of our friends as a special holiday treat. people think we are crazy when we talk about how good sandwiches can be. hopefully a taste of real bread will re-credit us of our sanity

our holiday activities/plans include the following:

~ kids caroling nightly outside our house, shaking around a tin cup full of coins waiting for us to fill it up

~ christmas eve dinner at a friend's house

~ hopefully a good long christmas day hike out to some recently discovered waterfalls (where i saw my first wild monkeys ~ not just the "wild" monkeys that wear diapers & jump from tourist-shoulder-to-tourist-shoulder in Djemaa el Fna, but real wild swinging through the jungle monkey families!)

~ a week full of christmas parties which will hopefully include: lots of silly blindfolded-partners-feeding-bananas-to-eachother games, a few servings of sticky rice treats, and no forced interacting with microphones or public singing...

Monsoon Thanksgiving

2007-11-30T16:27:00.000+08:00

Despite the apparent wildness of shifting tectonic plates in the north, a handful of rowdy political dissidents in the capitol, & a few lingering fujiwara effect inspired typhoons we have managed not only to merrily - largely obliviously - survive, but also to enjoy a deliciously gluttonous American holiday, make some new friends, learn how to cook tortillas from scratch, get some seriously fun work done, host our first visitors, playing cribbage by candlelight…

~ Thanksgiving ~

Unfortunately, because of the monsoons accompanying the three typhoons that drenched the Philippines last week, we had to cancel the grand cultural-exchange that was to be our thanksgiving: plans to celebrate by hosting our filipino friends/co-workers/neighbors for a backyard grilled turkey, corn on the cob, and mashed root vegetables while introducing them to pilgrims and Indians. As I’ve stated in previous entries this is the pattern that dominates our conversations: attempts to get the general point across usually supersede personal cravings to be (in this case Zinn-like) honest. so I just muttered something about it being cold, the corn freezing (which on its own is beyond bizarre to many here & spurred its own impossible to articulate tangents) and our ancestors (ninuno) from Europe surviving only by the grace of generous indigenous people who shared… and against my better judgment, but for the sake of simplification I gave most people the grade-school textbook version of the thanksgiving holiday tradition and they seemed content enough. We did manage to enjoy ourselves however & cook quite a little feast with the other peace corps volunteers in our area. Your traditional mashed root crops (gabi, not sure in English. Imagine hairy, elongated potatos), giant prawns (a special treat, as was the real butter that accompanied them, as they are certainly not within a pcv’s budget), and of course we had our corn on the cob.

~ monsoons + bold creepy crawlers – electricity = time to play in the streets ~

With all the storms coming through, even though they haven’t gone directly over us, there has still been quite a bit of damage to fishing vessels & crops so fish is too expensive for people to even stock & most people are going without an ulam (main course that accompanies the always present rice). vegetables have skyrocketed in price too (“our farm," see picture below, where we buy a weekly box of veggies sustained an estimated 90% of damage to crops, and lost the roof on their nursery & green house areas) for dinner we usually cook vegetables & of course rice. rarely some chicken. occasionally fish. if we eat seafood for dinner its because on his walk home from work jon will stop by our suki (regular buyer/customer) just down the street from where we live & pick up the catch of the day (gives local & fresh a whole new taste in my mind)

It wasn’t a hunt for seafood, but the lack of electricity that dumped us out on the evening streets for an extended wander. Candle light would be fine for me if only the creatures that share our home wouldn’t get so darn bold in the dark! Did you know cockroaches can fly? and that giant lizards lose their tails when frightened (think a tail the length of your hand) Or that I am apparently not scary to a mouse? Its wet outside, its warm & dark inside. I know where they will play. And play they did ~ They had a party every night, yipes! playing cribbage by candlelight sounds oh so romantic until a mouse flys into your kaldera full of rice & a cockroach buzzes overhead... So we went wandering, which led us out beyond our normal chika-chika (chatting) with immediate neighbors & to some routes where they are perhaps a little less used to us.

Sometimes I think its so much easier to make small talk here. i guess b/c its not the usual “where do you work; what kind of music do you listen to…” conversations but people really dive right into the juicy conversation about “what?! No kids yet? How long have you been married? Do you want them? What kind of contraceptives do you use? Does your husband want my husband to give him lessons on back massages? I have four kids…” I love it. Im getting better at just smiling when I don’t want to answer (or even know how to answer) I think jon is a little better at this as he was much quicker to realize that you don’t necessarily have to answer all the questions honestly all the time.

~ giant clams, seagrasses, & some ideas ~

This past week I did some great field work. after the storms everyone in the office was busy doing damage assessments throughout the local barangays (validating fishermen’s claims in my office while jon helped distribute rice with his office) Once the weather cleared up we did some seagrass assessments. Then we used some plants from a very healthy habitat, replanting about 185 of them in surrounding sandy areas bordering a mangrove forest. While in the area we informally (no transects used, just a general impressions/visual census) assessed the health of a giant clam project that was started last February by the city government (73 happy health HUGE dayglow creatures slowly contracting-relaxing-releasing bubbles)

on my own I am doing some research on alternative livelihood projects & right now have some ideas for teaching women fisherfolk how to make biodegradable non-toxic laundry soap, and also messing around w/the idea of hooking some local co-operative lending institutions with kiva (or something similar? Anyone have any suggestions?) im also trying to get some ideas going for an IEC (information, education, communication) campaign. I want to really localize it & make people proud of & take responsibility for the wonderful resources & environment they have here in the hopes that they will see the usefulness in proper management. Right now im thinking comic book, but its kind of a bad time of year to start projects as fiesta is next week, then Christmas, so for now I’ll just keep brainstorming & doodling ideas...

this is a photo taken during my swim in between bursts of cold rain on our play day in the bay near our house. i love the way the sky looks so ominous, creeping into the picture.

Freed from the Shackles of Contagious Disease: Adventures with Sabang, Cemetaries, & Sticky Rice

2007-11-11T17:59:00.000+08:00

well the pink eye has healed (except for some tiny red spots in our eyes that are in no rush to leave. as long as its not permanent!) which is great b/c it means that we have been able to go out in public again instead of being creepy contagious witches holed up inside our home making a plethora of home-processed foods (for the record cucumbers in vinegar are deliciously NOT pickles) so out & about in full swing we have been ~

All Saints Day & All Souls Day are really important holidays here. Because of that & barangay elections on Oct 29 we had a two day work week during which everyone in the office kept busy by buying flowers for their trips to the cemeteries & of course, talking about the upcoming festivities. All of this fostered a great cultural exchange. asked if we had these holidays where i come from i explained that yes we do, but its very different. as religious holidays, not everyone gets off work. and most people really dont celebrate it (i dont think i was the only one in my grade school who thought we got all saints day off so that we could recuperate from the halloween sugar high that kept us up all night). i explained that people in my place do go to cemeteries sometimes, but its more of a personal affair, perhaps to celebrate the anniversary of the person's death, or their birthday etc. but most people never really go, and lots of people are cremated so there is no grave to visit. After talking with a few people a few thoughts surfaced ~ most revolved around the personal versus the communal: how in america mourning the dead is something done on a personal schedule, according to desires, needs & free-time, but here the event becomes a nationally coordinated holiday, where people try to return to their hometowns where the family graves are, and with every house overflowing with malagkit (sticky) rice treats (reminds me of the scene in forest gump when bubba tells forest about all the different ways you can cook shrimp - and it takes him a good solid day. from bibingka to suman to... i have no idea how many different treats can be made from malagkit, all different colors & flavors & consistencies AND they are usually all wrapped up nice & neat in a banana leaf ::smiles::)

some of my co-workers were a little discomforted by the fact that we do not honor our dead relatives, and after explaining american all saints day, i couldnt help but notice the presence of a void in my own life-experience. not just the recently dead, but my ancestors too. its so hard to explain to people here how americans' ancestors come from lots of different countries & most of us dont really know much more than a general story (i think my siblings & i are pretty standard here as we know enough to have successfully fabricated our own 'bloody handless nub family crest' story)

so without a cemetery to call our own for the holidays we headed into the jungle ~ and visited sabang & the underground river. The trip was absolutely amazing, and our hike on the monkey trail ~ winding through jungle & occasionally being spit out on deserted pristine beaches ~ satisfied some serious cravings for playing among huge trees in an unpeopled wilderness owned by giant bayawak (monitor lizards). the ride from the capital of the provence to sabang is about 3 hours on a jeep literally overflowing with people, provisions, and poultry (similar to the one in the photo) stacked, squished, cramped between jon & a huge bag of charcoal, bumping along enjoying the adventu - uh, oooo... start slipping... sliding... trying to make it up a soggy hill ::mud flying:: naively thinking to myself something to the effect of "uh-oh" & before i could finish my thought about a dozen men jump from the roof to push & while im still wondering where they all came from we are moving forward again & they are leaping back up onto the roof & we are bumping & winding jollily along amongst virgin-jungle drenched cliffs. this is a picture of the entrance to the underground river:

Back home the following week we were both kept very busy at work (for jon thats obvious seeing the previous entry). While jon met with local officials to arrange for an upcoming barangay needs assessment i (lucky duck) got to head off to do a coral assessment. This involved riding a boat down a skinny wiggly river exploding with mangroves (and mosquitoes!) out to a marine sanctuary where we donned scuba & snorkeling gear, laid some transects, recorded some fish (visual census) and assessed the health of the corals (amazingly beautiful, but unfortunately obvious was the effects of dynamite fishing, the most common type of illegal fishing in the area) the next day we led a satisfyingly productive (yet very long) management planning workshop in a different barangay for a proposed fish sanctuary. I am still not used to being introduced by a flattering judgement of my appearance, but being introduced as a "beautiful expert on CRM" does sound pretty fancy pants. but thats just the way we roll here - one of my co-workers was introduced as "ang gwapong lalaki with bagong highlights sa kanyang buhok" (a hot guy with new highlights in his hair) and another as "sexy and skinny." i still cant help but giggle when this happens. no one else thinks its funny so i just chalk it up as yet another cultural difference & sit back & wait for the day when i too feel comfortable using the word "sexy" to describe anything other than organic vegetable gardens & johnny weismuller .

Kawawa Kami

2007-10-25T12:18:00.000+08:00

You could translate the title of this entry to more or less mean "Poor Us" or "Pathetic Us". Last weekend Emily and I had our first Scuba Lesson in a pool at a hotel near our house. What we thought would be the start of an exciting few weeks ended up just the opposite. The next day Emily had one of the nastiest cases of Pink Eye I'd ever seen. After another day I had gotten full blown Pink Eye as well which eventually spread to both of my eyes. We soon got a call from our Scuba instructor who said he wouldn't be able to make our meeting this weekend because he had come down with a case of "sore eyes". We laughed and said that would be alright.

Fortunately we've grown used to wild swings of luck and happenstance so we did what we've been doing the whole time we've been here in the Philippines: we rolled with it. And of course as things tend to do, everything worked out for the best, like when we went to the doctor and found out he was in a mountain biking club that meets every sunday morning to explore around the Puerto area...random.

We quarantined ourselves from work (which was a little discouraging considering we were "finding our rhythm") and most of the outside world for all of this week. We had a lot of free time on our hands. It may seem kind of boring to read about, but we've been having a great time recouping the past few days!

Most mornings start off with finding what crumbs we forgot to sweep up the night before covered with ants. I've been having an ongoing battle with them and think I'm finally starting to win. Next we have to sweep up the Lizard droppings left each night by all the Butikis who live in our house (we don't mind this because the butikis eat insects). After that there isn't a whole lot to do so we did what any young married couple would do...we make peanut butter. It's pretty simple really - just roast that raw peanuts then pulverize into PB - it just takes FOREVER to do...luckily we had all sorts of free time. On top of all of this excitement we'd usually get a good porch sit in and try to remember which and how many eye drops we were supposed to put. I think we just experienced what our lives will be like when we're retired.

Our eyes are starting to feel better today and we hope to be back to work next week. It really wasn't too bad, but I especially didn't want to go to work and infect kids. It would have spread like a California wildfire through the centers (poor taste?). Because I know we haven't really posted what my job is supposed to be like once I get started I'll give a good description below. If you're not that interested that's okay...I just thought I'd include it so everyone doesn't think we're only out here playing and having fun. But Before I do that....

CHECK OUT OUR LINK TO FLICKR. WE JUST UPLOADED PICS OF OUR NEW HOUSE. WE'LL BE REGULARLY ADDING PHOTOS AGAIN NOW THAT WE GOT OUR CAMERA SITUATION FIGURED OUT.

I am working with the Local Government Unit (LGU) and a network of NGO's serving the Youth in Puerto. In the LGU I'll be working with the City Social Welfare Department (CSWD-they're big on acronyms here). I have several different projects I'll be focused on. First is the Bantay Bata or child protection drop in center. Right now it is basically non-existent so i will help them right an operations manual to prepare (and help convince) the LGU to build a nice facility and get the program really running while also doing activities with the kids. Also I'll be doing some tutoring and interaction with the few kids who live in the run down house currently passing as a shelter for kids.

Next is the Children In Conflict with the Law (CICL). Here I am going to help create psycho-social analysis tools to assist in creating treatment plans for youth offenders. This will also aide in creating a case management system because as of now it is virtually non-existent. They'd also like me to help them with some kind of Juvenile Crime Prevention Program and in creating an effective Diversion Program. There is a lot to do here in this area because prior to 2006 there were no laws dealing with how to treat juvenile offenders so they were generally just lumped in with the adults in jail. Now they have laws preventing this, but the problem with implementing this is resources and lack of programing or enforceability.

And the last thing with the CSWD is working with this group called PAG-ASA Youth. This is basically an out of school youth program. I'm really excited about this one because I'll get to do youth leadership camps, help with vocational/job skills trainings and hopefully get some of the kids back into school (by finding them funding sources since usually they're just to poor to go to school).

My work with the NGO's is a little less defined. There is one that has a group of teacher who do community based teaching to kids with disabilities like DOWN syndrome and autism. Most of the teachers did not get any special training for teaching this kind of population so they want me to research and do teacher trainings for them and the parents of the children about the disabilities the kids have. we'll see how it goes, but the group of people I'm working with seem like a great bunch.

The last NGO is a care facility for orphaned/abused/neglected youth boys. Not sure what my work will be here, but i think it will be similar to the others in helping come up with programming and basically just interacting with the boys.

This may seem like a huge list of things to do and totally overwhelming, but don't forget I haven't really even started yet. Its nice to see there is a lot of work to do here, but we'll see just how much I really get to be apart of. My contribution to these projects will just be part of something that will have to take continued and ongoing work for many, many years.

finding our local rhythm

2007-10-21T13:06:00.000+08:00

We have really been enjoying getting into the routine of our new home. Its a little frustrating because we want to be good volunteers & feel like we still have not started the work that we have set out to do almost 5 months ago; for now we are just taking the time to get used to the way our host agencies function & figuring out exactly what programs need our help & more importantly (& difficultly) figuring out how to actually help the people here. It just takes time, but we get pretty antsy & worried about living up to our ideas of "successful volunteers." So our jobs are going well, as we are now focused on building relationships (always step one in the philippines), but it will take some more time before we really even know all that "work" encompasses.

aside from work we have been keeping busy exploring on our new bicycles, riding around our neighborhood we have found some terrifically interesting places, such as the local chess club (a nipa hut where a lot of old men sit around playing chess) & the handwoven loom shop where women work weaving fabrics all day, only a short walk from our house. one of our favorite activites is just walking through the streets, discovering new [literally] hole in the wall places & stopping to chat. Through the CSWD (city social welfare dept) where jon works he has been introduced to some really great organizations, doing some very interesting things - like the Aloha Farm & orphanage where we now get our very own CSA box ~ aka community supported agriculture (they call it a "happy box" which is entirely true as no box has ever made me happier than this one, which jon had, to my surprise, ordered & had delivered to my work on friday. it was filled w/all sorts of locally grown organic vegetables & even hummus & pita bread! very very rare items here!)

We started taking dive lessons to get our scuba certifications. We have only had one lesson, and i have to admit it was a pretty uncomfortable situation. Yes, breathing out of a tank underwater is scary & awkward & will certainly take some getting used to, but the discomfort was severely heightened by a number of factors: most of our equipment is just a sliver too small, like our flippers & wetsuits. jon's wetsuit had a big hole on the back side, blinding our ever-growing crowd of spectators (which were many as you can imagine a group of three foreigners, donning scuba gear in a hotel pool would) with the whitest-white skin any of us have probably ever seen. we are looking forward to the next lesson, where we will be out of the pool & in the sea.

So tomorrow, monday, i'll head back to the city hall where i work pretty much every day doing coding for a social monitoring survey & am starting to work on developing an IEC (information education communication) campaign for 6 coastal barangays (barrios). the coding is a great way to study CRM-relevant tagalog. I take notes of all of the words i have to ask about & each day have a pretty extensive (not to mention varied) list of items. Jon is in & out of the office, meeting with all of his NGOs & other groups. He splits his time between working w/out-of-school-youth (trying to find them livelihood projects, which might involve hammock making or providing training on how to carry out the tricycle conversion project, similar to this one), children in conflict with the law (CICL ~ trying to develop program manuals for agencies working with these kids) & a few other organizations. So we are having a really good time & cant wait to get even more deeply involved in all of our work projects.

also, in light of the recent manila bombing, please take comfort in knowing that "no news is good news" & that we are very very safe, and very far from manila. This was actually a really interesting situation for us to experience, as we are so far removed from the city on our island, and as anyone who knows us realizes we of course do not own a tv ~ so getting a text about the bomb really threw us for a loop. we had no way to figure out exactly what happened, as all of the neighbors we questioned knew little more than us. it was an interesting reminder of how spread out & diverse this country really is (in physical distance the islands are much closer than we realized before coming here, as you can often stand on shore of one & look out to see a few others that on the map we assumed would be beyond the horizon). a good example in how politico-cultural lines can often seem so arbitrarily drawn. for example palawan's biophysical environment is much closer to that of borneo than the rest of the philippines (which is one reason for the high level of biodiversity in the philippines & Dr. Kent Carpenter's research on the center-of-the-center of marine biodiversity in the verde island passage) & there are hundreds of different & unrelated languages still spoken throughout the country. So no worries about our safety when you hear news of things like that ~

Txt M8s, Lizards & Starfruit: Settling into our Final Home!

2007-10-11T16:06:00.000+08:00

We arrived on monday, and spent the day unpacking & wandering around our new home. experimenting w/new modes of transportation, trying to figure out which way is north, discovering new local handicrafts, fruits, and phrases. We woke up early on Tuesday to take a long walk around the rocky-dirt streets that make up our neighborhood, chatting w/our new neighbors & watching the city wake up. we were in our respective offices at the local government unit all day, jumping right into the work routine ~ which at this point necessitates a cultural lesson: time is a social construct, and as in keeping with such, it's importance & perception varies significantly depending upon the cultural context. in america: if you have a business meeting at 1 o'clock, most likely a seriously attempt would be made to arrive by one. after a few light & polite interactions business would begin. If say, in order to be on time to the meeting you had to end a conversation w/your neighbor about their clogged drain, you would do so & it would be understood that a schedule must be kept. it is disrespectful to arrive late. in the philippines, however, relationships are of utmost importance. work will not be as successful if relationships are not developed first. people-over-time is kind of how we have begun to conceptualize it, so when i say that we spent the whole day "at the office" what needs to be understood is that this involved quite a bit of socializing. one of the conversations (a pretty standard one here) is that someone wants an american text mate. now, take this as an invitation anyone who is interested, but i have a new co-worker who would very much like a cute american man (un-married) to be her text mate. she has made it very clear that she doesn't want to be a caregiver though, so if you are looking for a cheap live-in nurse read no further. and this is how my first day at work was spent. today the same co-worker brought in pansit (filipino noodle dish) to celebrate her new text-mate-turned-husband-to-be.
our second day of work started out a bit differently, as we were picked up in the darkness of 5 am to go dolphin watching with the mayor & a film crew from the discovery channel. after a wet & wavey ride out to sea we saw quite a number of bottle-nosed dolphins. huge schools of them swimming like a continuous stream, slightly exposed & jumping. we still aren't sure what the end product of the discovery channel's documentary is going to be, but it has something to do w/our city, our mayor, and eco-tourism. so keep your eyes peeled. should air sometime in the new year. so we returned to work & then had a fancy little welcome dinner w/lots of traditional filipino entertainment, local musicians singing & dancing & performing to songs about dynamite fishing etc.
the wildlife here has been amazing us. the giant lizards that sound like honking babies, the fruit trees in our yard that produce something like starfruit, and another one with a kind of giant, not-as-juicy-or-as-strong grapefruit, kind of like that at least. tomorrow we are going bicycle shopping & will hopefully be able to begin exploring our new home even more.

applogies: per my dad's very sweet, polite & obviously needed suggestion i have attempted to pay closer attention to my spelling, but this computer does not have a single program w/spell check & well, i am of the spell-check generation so i feel somewhat helpless. i suppose this is the situation my 2nd grade teacher warned me about (like being stuck w/o a calcualtor when trying to compute how much you need to save each day to earn enough to buy that candy bar at the end of the week)

Packing Our Bags (again)

2007-10-05T12:12:00.000+08:00

After all our time here in Manila we have finally been told when we can leave. And of course like everything in Peace Corps it is abrupt and with little notice. Monday morning we will head out for our new home far, far from the bright, gritty urban landscape of Manila. We have had an interesting time here that is like no experience I ever could have anticipated when signing up for the Peace Corps.

When we first arrived I didn't have the highest of opinions of Manila. Dirty, polluted, menacing, sprawling...the opposite of appealing. Now, after just over one month here I must admit I have a new perspective and maybe even appreciation of the city. It became our sort of home (yes we lived out of a hostel for a month). I became used to walking ten blocks or so to the drop-in-shelter for street kids here and learning what Jeepney I could hop in if it was raining to avoid getting soaked. Yes we went and saw the sites here, but we were lucky enough to experience the city on a deeper level...it became everyday life.

Everyday life here is a polar opposite of the "provinces" (rural areas of the Philippines). It is a fast paced city life with everything you could want at the tip of your fingers. Leaving Manila I can say I actually enjoy the city and maybe...even if just a very very little bit...miss it.

There is plenty of great live music to see, countless amazing restaurants, people playing ultimate frisbee (i joined a league while i was here), and just an overall vibrant, alive, fun city to explore. I even welcome the in-your-face presence of the poverty. It doesn't allow people to forget the inequalities present in their city. After seeing the hostel we stay at feed the kids who live on the street outside its doorsteps and the efforts of the many drop-in-centers and shelters for street children you can really begin to believe there is a chance for hope to the seemingly endless and overbearing problems in this megalopolis. It has a long, long way to go and is far from perfect, but I'm glad I was able to see what lies beneath the gritty, polluted exterior and not just look past the street kids asking for money, but actually work with them, play with them and try to understand them.

Now we must leave all this and head back out to this provinces. It will be a strange re-adjustment. It feels like every time we start to feel comfortable in a place we're uprooted and relocated. This is probably the reason Emily and I are most excited to get this move over with...we will be living in our new home for the next two years. It will be the longest I have lived in one place since I left my parents house for college. I can't wait.

the limbo before paradise

2007-09-25T12:15:00.000+08:00

So our new site is pretty much an ideal situation. Its in the wildest, most untamed & gorgeous paradise province in the country & even more exciting is the fact that our new jobs sound amazing as well. Funny how things work out! We will both be based out of the local government unit (LGU).

Emily is going to be working in the Municipal Agricultural Office (MAO) doing social monitoring (SocMon) in areas w/existing & proposed marine protected areas (MPAs). SocMon is a pretty new aspect of CRM, which is predominately biophysical focused & helps to satisfy a need for a greater understanding of the human dimension in the field. This is done in a number of ways, most of which deal w/talking to, observing, & dealing w/community members directly. Its important b/c community attitudes towards & uses of coastal resources have very direct & serious implications on the health of coastal & marine habitats & wildlife (ie. They are the ones who use the resources & thus have the most influence over how sustainably they are managed & its important to understand their perspective, concerns, education/understanding of the situation…) SocMon is being adopted throughout southeast asia, & our new site is actually a pilot site in the Philippines, so there is a lot of work to be done. The best part about all of this is that it quells my fears that I earned a terribly interesting & constantly relevant, yet professionally useless degree granting me little legitimacy outside of a small group within academe. So to whomever suppressed embryonic giggles during a conversation w/me regarding career opportunities for a Sociology/Anthropology major, can sit back & relax b/c I have a kickin’ job in a land where my degree is applicable, and the streets are paved with golden mangoes.

Jon’s host agency at our new site will be the City Social Welfare Department (CSWD) but he will actually be working with a few different agencies. He’s really excited about that b/c, while its not typical of the CYF sites in the Philippines, it does give him a great deal of flexibility & will keep life interesting as he is dealing w/so many different groups of kids. Some of it will be more structured & some of it will be more community based. All of it will be dealing w/teaching life-skills to youth who are either at risk, living on the street, or already in conflict with the law.

IN THE MEANTIME

While we wait for the paper work regarding our new site to cycle through the Philippines government (1 month?) we have both been set up to volunteer w/local NGOs in Manila. Jon will be leading life-skills sessions (in Tagalog) at drop-in shelters, while I will be working w/Conservation International (CI). Both of these things are very closely related to what we will be doing once at site. My job is to create a standard set of questions designed to address the issue of enforcement in MPAs from the perspective of the bantay-dagat (bantay = protector & dagat = sea). This is a topic that the current model of SocMon doesn’t sufficiently address. the bantay-dagat are volunteers (sometimes paid in money, sometimes in rice, sometimes not at all – which leads to the obvious problem of lack of income – which unfortunately sometimes makes bribes a very appealing option) who are charged w/the task of stopping illegal fishing. Often times they have big hearts for the job, but very few resources. They are politically appointed by the mayor & their effectiveness varies widely. So, I’m supposed to develop a survey capable of gathering info about everything from basic demographics to incentives to improve enforcement.

Since we have been in manila, meeting w/all different PC staff members & various NGO workers we have, at times, found ourselves totally out of our league. Honored to be sitting with such impressive and inspiring people. We have had the chance to talk extensively with people who spent quite a number of years during the 60s & 70s working throughout the Philippines in Vietnamese refugee camps, and we have become quite good friends with a British woman who has been living with a very remote group of people in Borneo, surviving off grubs & playing w/gibbons for the past five years. On the way to jon's ultimate frisbee game we randomly found ourselves seated in the car next to one of the contributors to the Lonely Planet Philippines, getting the inside scoop on where to travel. We have had the opportunity to meet many very prominent & influential researchers in the field of CRM. Its especially exciting to meet someone whose work I have spent the past few months studying & referencing, especially b/c they are all so friendly & wonderfully passionate people.

AND A BIRTHDAY

Generally in the Philippines a birthday is an opportunity to give thanks to friends & family, meaning that you host a party for yourself. Many volunteers take advantage of the opportunity to, in a way, repay all of the hospitability of their host country friends/family. However, since we are in limbo jon & I celebrated my birthday American-style & we took the opportunity to have a fun play day in the city. We did one of our favorite things – here is a hint: it involves moving from one place to another for a small amount of money. That’s right, we played on manila’s public transportation system. Specifically: jeepneys, the LRT (light rail transit) & the MRT (metro rail transit). We ended up in a little “park” where we relaxed & had a picnic of dried mangoes, oreos & wine. In the rain we found a small digital photography studio showing Emmanuel Santos' "the passing of light" & wandered around the gallery, then enjoyed some delicious Korean food for dinner, where I received an amazing present – a phone call informing us of the location of our new site! It was a wonderfully carefree & relaxing day.

Where are we & how did we get here?

2007-09-10T12:36:00.000+08:00

Our life here is dominated by extremes. Its extremely hot (& thus we are extremely sweaty) parts of manila are just extremely filthy, extreme highs & lows, ups & downs – extreme happiness, excitement, confusion…

Sometimes we even end up in extremely swanky posh situations & then stumble into the complete opposite:

Jon & I went to eat thai food with 2 other PCVs last night. Spicy, delicious food & an interesting & very serious yet giggly getting-to-know you conversation. Living in a hostel we have these conversations everyday. A girl from Holland doing research on Alligators, a boy from the states preparing his thesis on population genetics in marine protected areas, students from all over the world, traveling, studying, wearing fanny packs, & of course our Filipino friends who have recently gotten us into an intense badminton league. These meetings have usually ended up in a grand game of taboo (playing with non-native English speakers is always interesting) but our conversation last night was different. I always especially appreciate talking to older female volunteers – I’m curious, how did they make it to this point in their lives without accumulating a house full of pretty, yet useless items? And what event sparked the decision to just pick up & move for two years? Being young w/little in life established, these things were easy for us to deal with. So, walking home after an inspiring meal we stumbled upon a live jazz scene, met some new friends & found ourselves warmly welcomed yet sorely out of place in saggy jeans, t’s & Chocos at a swanky wine drinking apartment art show. Standing in the posh loft, chatting, sipping, and viewing projected renaissance-inspired photographs taken around the globe by a Filipino artist based in Melbourne Jon’s gaze narrows on me & all wide-eyed & bewildered grin says “where are we? how did we get here?”

After our brief exposure to the local manila art scene we ventured back out onto the city streets. Extreme cush-swanky gets slapped in the face by extreme poverty. The brief evening monsoon left the sidewalk a maze of puddles & people. ½ clothed children with worm-bellies sprawled out on flattened cardboard boxes (could they still be dry?) & the occasional bather – crouched in front of a bucket with their back to the street, lathering up & literally bathing right there.

Being a PCV involves a lot of such extremes. Very formal luxury meets very basic needs for necessity.

How can we move so freely between the two ends - Transgressing as if there were no generations-high invisible concrete wall keeping some in & others out? How can we justify living one extreme, but claiming we are here to help or “save” the other? Our sleeping, huddled on the streets, isn’t the answer. Our extra bodies out there aren’t going to be helping, we’d just be thieving someone else’s cardboard bed. So as I climb into my clean, private bed to sleep, the thick air of an eternal summer swept off my body by the steady cooling breeze from our slow moving ceiling fan, I cant help but get lost in these thoughts. The paradox of the extremes.

Where are we? How did we end up here? And what are we going to do about it?

And back to Manila indefinately

2007-09-06T11:50:00.001+08:00

Due to some recent unrest at our site & some bloody incidents very close to home, we have been pulled out of our site for safety & security reasons. we received a call at 10 am yesterday that the decision was made to pull us out & we would be picked up at 1 pm. yipes! so i said goodbye to everyone at work & hurried home to tell our family & pack. it was pretty difficult to say good-bye to our host family. we have really bonded with them & were beginning to feel like true members of the family. so we packed up, and are now staying in manila until a new CYF (children youth family) & CRM (coastal resource management) site can be developed. a combo of the two is actually pretty tricky b/c most of the CYF sites are in & around metro manila & well, thats not really where CRM workers are posted so... manila is home right now & you know what that means ~ lots of delicious falafel, dirty air, and time to read, write & explore. The city is so stimulating & i am really going to make an effort while im here to try & articulate all of the madness. funny, seems i should really be focusing on improving my tagalog, not my english...

So we arent sure how long we will be here, but we are safe & smiling & together so all is well.

Harvesting Seaweeds

2007-08-28T15:59:00.000+08:00

this morning when we woke up (after a night terrified by the sounds of a hungry beastly rat scurrying around our room & building a nest out of dried mango seeds under our bed. I'm not exaggerating, this is not a cute little mouse. it could easily be mistaken for an obese racoon that is big enough to eat your housecat) jon asked me what i wanted to do today. simply enough i said "i don't want to sweat" which left us with three options: internet, mcdonalds, or jollybee (the only places with A.C.) internet over fastfood is an easy decision & thus here we are.

i really enjoyed this past week of work, the fisherfolk peoples organization i work with spent four days harvesting their seaweeds project. My role in this was riding out on a bangka (small fishing boat) and pulling floating plastic coke bottles on to the boat. the bottles served as homemade buoys & were attached to long stretches of rope on which the seaweeds were anchored. Sitting out on the bangka, looking back at the shore i was amazed by my surroundings: patches of healthy coconut palms dotted the coast and the steep lush green climbing hills that jut up behind make such an idyllic backdrop to the squatter settlements that are rapidly encroaching onto the water (or is it the other way around these days...) the entire scene is unified by two thin lines where the tide melts into the shore - separating sea & structure are the darkness of wet sand on what is left of a beach, and the whiteness of bleached beached corals, faded packaged food wrappers, diapers, and other disposables. i was struck by the extremes of the harsh & rusted corrugated tin shacks & the bold untamed beauty of nature jutting up from behind. I really wish i could have captured it on camera.

Then, back on shore, we broke the seaweeds into smaller pieces & retied them after that we took them back out to the nursery. In three months time (after they have doubled in size) they will be harvested again, and put back out to sea for one final growing period. even though the endeavor isn't actually economically productive, as they do not produce enough of the dried product to sell to foreign markets, there are benefits - such as an increased fish yeild within the nursery. Hopefully though we can come up with some way to help improve the situation, but as for now im still new & im content just trying to remember everyones names & learning the simple tagalog childrens songs that they are determined to teach me while playing with gooey seaweeds.

Lakes and Volcanoes

2007-08-22T11:24:00.000+08:00

This past weekend we took a trip up to Taal Lake/Volcano not to far from our site. It is one of the many astonishing natural occurrences here in the Philippines. From view points in the city of Tagaytay you can see a huge lake surrounded by high mountains that appear as though they were once joined together forming a massive Volcano. Instead, now you see a crater filled with water and an island in the middle where the still active Taal Volcano is reforming and growing from within the lake. They think the lake itself is the remnants of a massive eruption sometime in the past. What is once again more mind blowing is that the main cone of the volcano itself also has a lake within it! So it is a lake in the crater of a volcano explosion that has a volcano in the middle of it that has a lake in the middle of it....that makes my head hurt thinking about it.

Unfortunately we didn't have the time to take a boat ride out to the volcano island itself and hike up it (Once we are allowed to stay away from site overnight we are planning a trip to stay with some of Emily's great aunt Sister Joan's friends!), but we did go to a place called "Picnic Grove"in Tagaytay overlooking the lake and volcano. This was a decent little park that draws lots of Filippinos for an afternoon of lunching, lounging, and gazing over the Lake. Of course with a few Americanos around we seemed to be the main attraction at times. It will never cease to amaze me how no matter where we go people are so excited to see an American. It is unreal. They actually make you feel as though somehow you are important or a rock star. For example, as we were on this little "nature trail" we would be standing at one of the vantage points checking out the sites when we would notice there was a Filipino family standing around us about to take a picture. Thinking we were being rude and intruding on their picture we would kindly try to duck out of it and walk away. As soon as we would do this the family would all smile and look at each other and then take a few steps closer to us. Then we would realize they weren't trying to take a picture of the background, NO, they were trying to get a picture with the Americans. AMAZING! we were a bigger draw than this beautiful site right behind us. As we walked along people always tap whomever they are with to show them the white folks walking past and every once in awhile they would click a picture (some of the more polite ones would actually ask our permission first).

A truly bizarre feeling, especially when you feel as though Filipinos are so familiar with Americans and the West. We are beginning to realize most Filipinos have seen our movies, music, and news, but most do not know or have never interacted with an American. They are truly fascinated and even I guess a little giddy to see us up close and for real.

It is the same for speaking English. Filipinos must study English during all the years they are attending school, however hardly ever use the language outside of school and it is even rarer to practice using it with a native English speaker (especially outside Manila). Often times this leaves them wanting to shout out the few English phrases they know when the opportunity presents itself (as in us walking by).

As we were waiting on the side of the road for our return bus we decided to see if we could find a different way home. We flagged over a jeepney and asked him (in Tagalog of course) if he was going to our town. Before we were even able to finish our question he was smiling, nodding his head and telling us to get in. The hard part of taking Jeepneys (or really any transit here) is that it is impossible to figure out what is there exact route or timetable (because they don't really exist), you can only figure out their end destination. We knew this jeep was going to end at a city fairly close to our own, we just weren't sure if it would pass through our city first. We should have realized he was just giving the typical Filipino response, which is to say "yes, yes I can do whatever is you are asking of me"....and then actually figure out whether or not they can do it later, but we were up for an adventure.

As we later found he was not going to our city and we ended up about 13km away. Fortunately we have enoughTagalog (Especially Emily, she's getting really good!), powers of persuasion, and probably luck that we convinced him to drive us the extra bit home. Good thing to because it is past 7:00 already which in the provinces means nearly everything shuts down. This was one of the first instances where i think our ability to speak Tagalog saved our butts. Not only could we get home, but it didn't cost us an arm and a leg.

It is of course not to say we are fluent. NO, no, no we still speak mostly in English and in fact probably are still far from fluent, as the next day we would realize.

Monday was a holiday and emily had no work and I only went in for a half day. One of our host sisters was in town from Manila and they made a big lunch for us all to eat. After lunch they asked if we would like to accompany them to a funeral because the Uncle of their mother had died. It kind of came out of left field, but hey most things here do so of course we said we would go with them and off we went.

The funeral was in a barrangay far from ours so we all (em, me, mildred, maribelle, and maribelle's boyfriend) rode in our Tay's (hostfather) trike...Maribelle's boyfriend was driving. It was like the scene out a movie. We saw our Tay hand the keys of trike to Maribelle's boyfriend and say a few words in Tagalog that I couldn't understand, but could assume were something along the lines of "bring it back in one piece." Five minutes later we're on a poorly graded gravel rode and this guy is having a heck of a time with the clutch until finally we all get out so that he and I can start pushing...all the while I'm trying to hold the laughter under my breath as I can only imagine how he's going to explain to his girlfriends dad how he blew the clutch out on the trike.

We role it up to the next closest house and of course the people there start hollering "hey joe, where are you going? whats up?" So i answer in Tagalog "Sira", which means something like "its broken". That was pretty much the last thing that I understood that day.

The next few hours were spent transfering from trike to trike, stopping by what i guess was a funeral for about 2 and a half minutes and then jumping in a little truck to go back to our original trike which i guess was being fixed all the while, the people whose house we left it at even tried to feed us noodles when we came back. As we were leaving the truck our host mother was having a conversation figuring out where everyone was heading and how they would get there. At least thats what i assumed they were talking about, it could have been anything because when a group of Filipino women are talking together I can rarely follow the conversation. As the conversation came to a close our sister Mildred looked to me and said "did you understand?" to which i could only respond, "i have know idea what is going on" The whole truck most have heard me because they all burst out laughing and kept repeating "Jon said he doesn't know what is going on!!"

And then just as abruptly as we had been taken to a funeral we were back at home sipping an orange soda on our porch. For the next two days it was pretty much the running joke that i had said I have no idea what is going on. Our Nay really got a kick out of it. I could only laugh because seriously I had no idead what was going on!

We constantly are faced with two sides of a coin. At once we will be frustrated and wondering what on earth we are supposed to be doing here while at the same time having an amazing experience and be incredibly motivated by the tiniest of successes. As we grow more confident with our place here, small as it may be, we begin to find small things to make us happy. Eating at the myriad of corner resturuants for lunch has been our favorite pass time thus far. We have also recently found the earliest hours of the morning are the most peaceful and offer us a great time to get out and walk without the tailpipe and fumes of hundreds of tricycles buzzing past us.

somewhere south of manila on luzon...

2007-08-12T16:24:00.000+08:00

Im not supposed to put our site name on this blog, hence the title of the entry in which i am going to describe our first week at site. I am going to try to keep this as informative as possible to give everyone at home a good description of our new home:

First of all we live with a host family in the center of town (pop 60,000) The family consists of our nay & our tay - who live in the same concrete/wood house that we live in. it has a living room (tv with HBO! where am i?!), a large kitchen, and indoor bathroom with running water, another outdoor kitchen area & a great porch on which to sit & enjoy the cool rainy season breezes. The front yard is enclosed by a short stone wall & is filled w/huge fruit trees - coconut & mango (not in season now) - that provide delicious shade at all hours of the day & a great stagnant-water-mosquito-breeding-ground after it rains (no complaints though, there is an element of romantic exoticism that exists in sleeping under a mosquito net... although that is completely forgotten when i wake up & have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night & try to climb out if it in the dark - stumble & tangle my way out of bed...)

next to our fairly large cement home, in the same compound, is a smaller wooden buhay kubo-like house where our host-sister, her husband, 11 year old daughter, and twin 8 month olds live. They are all absoloutly amazing & have embraced us like true family members. Mildred, our 34 year old host-sister, has been great at helping us w/our tagalog. her directness distinguishes her from many of the other filipinos we have met so far.

at the unavoidable risk of forming a mass-generalization about roughly 82 million independantly-minded individual human beings, i am going to say that so far, in our short stay here, we have gotten the distinct impression that filipinos are not blunt. Instead they tend to be very sensitive and aware of even the slightest body language, and subtle social cues. This works for them b/c they pretty much know whats going on, but usually leaves a foreigner (us) totally out of the loop & not sure if that slight eyebrow raise was b/c of an itch, or because they really did want that piece of fried chicken you were offering up... or if they did not hear our inquiry for directions or they actually just pointed with their lips & we missed it... this is one of those times when it really helps to have a partner* here b/c we stand double the chance of picking up on these social cues ~ i digress. My point is that Mildred is a great resource & friend to us b/c she is not afraid to laugh at us and tell us that when we tried to say "delicious little rice cakes made with coconut milk" we really said something vulgar that she cannot even repeat.

It is about a five minute walk to the bay from our host family's house (picture right - if you look closely you can see the largest coal fired power plant in the provence sitting on the bay) and about the same to the center of town where the palengke (market) & municipal hall (my office) are. We spent our first full day here wandering around the market & ended up with a hodgepodge of purchases: half a kilo of garlic (or maybe its a kilo. whatever it is its a LOT), one kilo of rice for 22 pesos, and one kilo of rice for 27 pesos. we wanted to see if we could actually tell a difference in the quality & surprisingly we kind of can (i must note, however, that calling it simply rice really eliminates a huge aspect of the cultural experience b/c here there are numerous terms for rice depending on the stage of the process - if its in the fields its palay, in the palengke its bigas, and once its cooked & on your plate its kanin. just for the record i am totally digging rice at every meal! even plain its delicious. i'll let you know if i get sick of it) s0 after the rice we each bought an umbrella & a pair of "slippers" aka flipflops. Our only remaining mission was to track down the ever-elusive barako coffee. Barako is grown locally in batangas provence, and is the only alternative to instant-coffee (outside of starbucks) in the entire country. we finally found it at a little stall worked by two warm & welcoming women. separating the store from the street were two glass boxes filled with whole coffee beans, in the corner was an old grinder that reminded me of something wonderful & magically forgotten in my Grandpa Pitlyk's basement. We chatted for a moment with the ladies, and bought one scoop of each kind of coffee.

For the rest of our first week here jon went to work during the day. he has to travel about 7 km outside of town via jeepney (sometimes it takes 5 minutes to catch one, sometimes an hour and a half) and then he has to walk up a pretty steep mountainish-hillside to the boys home where he works. This week he pretty much just led some getting-to-know-you activities & played some games so they could all get comfortable with eachother's presence. meanwhile, i stayed home & washed & mended the clothes (thats not a joke) washing clothes here is serious business and takes a good chunk of time, plus all that scrubbing & slapping & lathering & rinsing & wringing out does a number on the clothes so there is always something to sew back together. I find solitude in sitting in the shade washing clothes - its almost theraputic, at least in very small sporadic doses. but enough of that playing housewife business, thats not why i joined the pc so its a good thing i start work tomorrow.

We have both had some bouts of feeling down & upset for various reasons - from worries about what our work will actually be like to cultural frustrations to no identifyable reason at all - perhaps these feelings can be traced back to a little one-line sentence in the Phlippines Welcome Packet we received back in March that said something to the affect of "The philippines if full of many wonderful tropical paradise locations, however your site will not be among these." While the sentence registered in both of our minds, we passed it off w/a slight giggle & started packing. Upon arriving at our training site all those perfect exotic images in our lonely planet guide instantly evaporated into the toxic haze settled over manila bay. I unconciously found comfort in knowing that the water surrounding metro-Manila was as bad as it could get, and ever so slowly, over the past three months, i guess i developed a hope here, an expectation there... Our permanent site is w/o a doubt a thousand times more promising than manila bay, but its still a city. there is still a smoggy haze clouding the center of the city, the open, untreated sewers still empty directly into the unnaturally cloudy sea, and the municipality has a number of medium and large scale industries. So i guess i've been feeling more than a little frustrated with our site placement, feeling like out of all the CRM volunteers, my site is probibly the most... challenging i guess is the right word, seems silly because i have perhaps the least amount of technical experience.

whenever i write this blog i get excited about sharing all this info with everyone at home, trying to come up with topics that my readers would find of interest, but it would be an unacurate portrayal of our first few months here if i did not mention that there have most certainly been times, espeically throughout the past month, when we have felt really lousy & downright sad. so no worries, we are doing well & happy we are here - sometimes it just gets really hard. SO we decided to get out & explore our new surroundings this weekend. We tried our best to get lost in the very unplanned maze of streets winding around the area, watching a man lead his "cow" into the slaughterhouse, slipping into streetside restaurants when we got hungry & chatting with whoever was inside... it always feels good to get out & wander - even if it is in a crowded city. We are determined to discover the urban wilderness that is surely hidden somewhere in our new home, espeically once we get our bicycles!

on another note...
mentioning the rice/tagalog thing made me really want to explain where the word "tagalog" comes from b/c i think its really beautiful & helps explain to an outsider exactly how descriptive this language is. in tagalog "taga" means from and "ilog" means river - the language comes from the river. i think its so romantic!

*i was trying to think of another phrase that is more appropriate to the situation than "partner-in-crime" but could not come up with anything. Feel free to post alternatives - any ideas to help my pathetic attempts at creative-writing are much appreciated :)

we are [finally] OFFICIALLY volunteers!

2007-08-06T12:44:00.000+08:00

We are currently in Manila, gorging on amazing food and taking care of some official post-swearing in business before we leave for Batangas tomorrow morning. We are officially volunteers now. it just feels good to finally be moving on to site & to finally start working & doing what we have been waiting to do for such a long time now. We both passed our language proficiency interviews, im not sure how that one worked out b/c after asking my language interviewer why he wasnt married i proceeded to ask him if he would rather have a pet dog or a pet monkey & while he tried to convince me that dogs are better b/c they are not as naughty, i felt the need to explain to him that monkeys make better pets b/c they will eat your lice. so really, most of the time when i am speaking tagalog i am more likely to say what i know how to say as opposed to what i mean to say. its just easier that way. so no one here really knows how big my family is, or really anything about me b/c if i am describing my favorite food & forget the word for broccoli-cheese puff pastry then i might end up telling someone that my favorite food is balut.

The only reason I knew how to talk about lice in tagalog was because of the experiences of a dear close fellow peace corp trainee... we ended up treating it by rubbing kalamansi (citrus fruit) on her hair & letting it sit for 20 minutes, then soaking her hair in vinegar for another half hour. while letting it soak we made some guacamole & i think she got bored b/c before it was all over she had put the left over onions and garlic in her hair & smeared the extra avacado on her face. i guess thats a peace corps spa. she actually got rid of the lice using this method, but was re-exposed to it at her family's house so it kept returning. she also fell in an open sewer. unfortunate.

to be perfectly honest, the idea of balut absoloutly terrified me when i first heard about it, but you know - you get used to life & things seem less & less bizzare & then one night you find yourself chasing down some delicious fried chicken with sugary milk filled with sweet corn & coconut-jello chunks while singing videoke next to some rancid smelling fish ponds ... a little man on a blue bike with a tiny headlight & a friendly bell rides by with a big hot bucket next to him filled with balut. it tastes like crunchy chicken noodle soup/hard boiled egg mixture. not bad. looks worse that it tastes and sounds worse than it looks and it tastes pretty good. im glad we tried it.

so manila ~ overflowing w/bodies & noises & smells & life of all sorts. its an incredibly exciting city w/so much happening at all hours of the day. walking down the street you pass unclothed sleeping children laying on cardboard boxes, people riding unicycles, vendors selling deep fried brown sugar coated bananas on sticks for 10 pesos, rainbow jeeps with designs ranging from dick tracy stickers to 'jesus is lord' slogans - stepping over stagnant rain water & slipping into a fabulous middle eastern restaurant for falafel. at times the air is so thick - anything from the smell of sewage to the fragrant freshness of a brewing monsoon, and there is always so much to see, its can be overstimulating for sure, and im loving every bubbling moment of it.

a quick note on the jeeps - yesterday i saw one painted as an add for a multivitamin & it occured to me how rad it is that that was the first jeep w/an advertisement that i have seen. the rest are all painted just for fun, it was like realizing that there is space left - im thinking 'no logo' by naomi klein - so that was my refreshing burst of a bustling city weekend.

We spent our first afternoon in batangas at jon's work. I am totally digging rainy season & while he had meetings i wandered around the nearby forested hillside, when the drizzle picked up i scurried to a banana tree, finding shelter under its huge leaves. it was one of those moments in which the world pauses - no one is wondering where i am or what im doing, no one can see me, i am alone in a rainy forrest on a hill overlooking the countryside, sheltered by nature & giggling b/c in my haste to find shelter i slipped in some squishy mud and was using leaves to wipe it from my feet. i could have stayed there all afternoon - chalk it up as one more reason why banana trees are my favorite :)

before we left jon's work some of the children were gathering the leaves of a vine-like plant & explained when it is smooshed up & rubbed on the skin it serves as a very effective way to treat scabies (a few children at another one of the foundation's shelters have it). we watched them climb the trees gathering the vine while jon practiced juggling guavas with one of the kids.

dumpster diving on the fourth

2007-07-08T12:06:00.000+08:00

something i've been wanting to mention but havent yet is A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to our book that rachel put together for us. i'll take some photos of it so everyone can see the final draft, but it looks GREAT & makes everyone seem so much closer to us. thank you to everyone who sent her a photo or email, it means so much to us to have a book full of everyone we love & miss. I feel like its so hard to explain to new people we meet where we come from & who we are, and this book really takes that conversation to new levels!

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

So we now know where we are going to be living for the next two years, but unfortunately, we cannot tell you here b/c that is against PC policy. so that will have to come in a mass email. But we are both really excited about our jobs & the people we will be working with.

Jon will be working with children in conflict with the law at a gorgeous "farm" on top of a mountain. the focus of the place is on therapy & helping get kids out of the city they have always known, and into a healthy, fresh place. Its a bit of a commute inland for him from our new host family's house (which is in the center of the city, Pop about 60,000) but thats to be expected for at least one of us b/c being married is pretty difficult for the peace corps to manage. no complaints though. Jon will have to write more about his job, but it sounds like he will have lots of work to do. (farm is in " b/c it can actually only be a farm during the rainy season, otherwise water scarcity is an issue)

My job sounds great. basically i will just be spending time in the 11 coastal barangays, hanging out mostly with fisherfolk, but also w/other members of the community. Im working in the fisheries department as well as with the municipal planning & development office of the local government unit, so my office is in the municipal hall. i will actually only report to my office once a week to check in & update my boss & for meetings. the bulk of my time will be spend doing "PCRA," basically a community-based needs assessment for coastal areas. This will involve conducting interviews, assessing things like water quality, explaining what resources are & why its in the communities best interest to protect them etc. A big part of my job is to get people to support a CRM (coastal resource management) Plan and then drafting & passing one! The municipality i am working with is in the beginning stages of the CRM process, so that means lots of work. i'm stoked about all of it though.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

THIS fourth of july was a bit different than usual ~

Jon spent it in manila doing a street immersion, where they visited various centers in the area & then also spent some time out in the streets talking to the kids who live there. he mentioned that some of the kids wrote really poetically about their lives/situation & it sounded pretty intense. a totally different world that i can imagine. and i hope he has time to write more about that sometime.

I spent the fourth going on a field trip to the local dump. it was actually very interesting. it feels like most of the trash here is either thrown directly into the sea, or as is more common, burned. but a small portion of it does go to the dump, so we went to check it out. it is inland, up on a big hill & is basically just a lot of plastic wrappers & stinky crud (like any small city dump.) it was a gorgeous setting, lush forest w/ancient mango & santol trees, healthy soil... very easy to see the beauty surrounding the trash. the people who have been living in the area for generations used to make their living off gathering root crops, but now scavenge for scraps of metals, glass, or plastics to sell to junk shops. like the stereotypical filipinos though, they are still smiling & happy. its an amazing characteristic that I feel honored to experience. a good lesson in dealing with misfortune by smiling & laughing :)

something different here is that so many things come individually wrapped in tiny, single use packages (like shampoo for example) i think this is upsetting to a lot of us b/c proper waste disposal is such a huge issue here, and it's hard to adjust our outlook. i think most things are individually wrapped b/c of 1. monetary constraints, and limited disposable income at any given time 2. the fact that most people buy their snacks, detergents etc. at the little corner store (its cheaper than making a trip to the market or into town) and these places cant/dont stock large items

coming from a place where i don't feel any shame in harassing someone who litters, because they really should know better & there is no reason not to properly dispose of their trash, to a place like this where information and options are limited, its ... I don't really know how to describe it & i hope that after two years i can come up w/some explanation so that i can understand why things are the way they are & then i can help develop a solution. but from what i have gathered, and this is just my personal uneducated outside-observer theory: think about the situation here a complete generation ago, or better yet, two generations ago. what goods were people consuming? how were they consuming them? food is a good tangible example. i bet there were a whole lot less highly-processed, resource-intensive snacks & more locally produced ones, like suman for example. (photo of me learning how to role suman for a fiesta- its basically the most delicious 'oatmeal-like' food ever. its sticky rice & coconut milk boiled, then rolled into banana leaves & steamed or baked.) before plastics arrived widespread on the scene, banana leaves served as the filipino duct-tape with a million plus uses. when you bought your fruit at the market for ex. it was wrapped in a banana leaf. now it is tossed into a plastic bag. today, when aluminum foil is unavailable, our family will wrap the fish in banana leaves before throwing them on the grill. Its so interesting to think about this situation. in my mind "how great/sustainable/practical/blahblahblah banana leaves are" and in many other peoples minds, they might seem like something you would only use if you couldn't afford an alternative. Basically a generation or two ago people COULD throw their wrappers in the sea or river & forget about it b/c it was biodegradable compost. so while the goods consumed changed, people's habits remained constant, and with no one realizing the fatal difference between banana leaves and plastics, there is now a serious solid waste disposal issue with which to deal.

The Best Kind of....

2007-06-15T17:27:00.000+08:00

....Language Classes are our language on foot or "field trips". Our first on was to this little cafe/coffee shop in our town and sipping on a philippines style mocha while learning some tagalog. This was one of the first times we have been able to sit in A/C since we got here...oh so nice. The best field trip by far was to the seaside town of Marong. Here while we were practicing our tagalog we did some snorkeling in a clear water bay with some coral coverage. Emily and her CRM peeps learned how to do assessments of coral coverage by being towed behind a little boat while wearing snorkeling gear and guesstimating the amount and kind of corals they see pass below them. Not a bad gig.

....Cross Cultural Exchange is when your filipino friends start asking you about the English words they don't teach you in school. Most Filipinos have only experienced the little English they have learned in school. Few have actually talked to a native English speaker and therefore don't know some of the more interesting words or translation. The best part about it is that one of our host sisters is a fifth grade teacher and she writes down each new term they ask us about in this little book with it's definition. Try to imagine a 45 year old Filipino asking you "What do you called the semi creamy stuff that sometimes comes out of your nose" and then having a 5 minute conversation about when it should be called snot or when it should be called boogers? or maybe the best question they asked was "what do you call the bad air that comes from your..." well lets just say that one had emily laughing our heads off, but hey we're learning it all here.

....Swimming pool is 4'x8'x3' and takes nearly an hour and a half to fill with the pump. Man it is so worth it.

.....Basketball game is on a dirt court with a lopsided ball. The dirt will cover your hands and feet and most of your clothes and you'll wonder what color you are. With about 20 or so little kids and maybe even 10 or so adults watching every move I make on the cour everyone either cheers and shouts when I make a shot or do something good, or just laughs and laughs when I brick the shot off the top of the goal or do something else equally silly. Really i think its just entertaining for them to have the white guy come play on their court.

....scare to jolt me awake in the middle of the night is when I think some creature is trying to bite my toes off, then realize I've just stretched out to far and the blades of the open face fan keeping us cool at the end of our bed is hitting my foot. Then giggle roll over and fall back asleep.

....cookout is with some real filippino food over an open fire, rusty nails and all. Last week we were taught how to make some Bichol Express and Chicken Adobo. Just like everything here it was a learn as you go event. It started off with our LCF handing me a flaming piece of paper and saying light the stove. My first thought was: what stove? My second thought was: HOT! and then i threw the paper down. then we kicked the fire over to some bricks on the ground and threw some miscellaneous wood onto and in no time had a good little fire going and just started cooking right there on the ground. The food ended up being pretty awesome.

...1st wedding anniversary is sitting in the Phillipines across from a curly crazy-headed, doo-rag wearing, swashbuckling lady and realizing that it wouldn't matter where in this world you were sitting, just as long as it was across from her.

So as not to end on a sappy note I have one last comment about weather. I always thought it was pretty normal to mention something about the weather in KC. Man it's hot today. Can you belive all this rain we've gettin? But at least it changed from time to time so you would have something new to say each time. It always made me laugh when in San Diego almost everyone would act surprised by how nice it was each day. Without fail almost everyday someone would say to me, Can you believe how nice it is today? I'd usually politely smile and think to myself...well yeah its always like this. I was thinking about this today because it's the same here except its just always HOT and everyone walks around saying "It's so HOT. Super Hot today!" or in tagalog Mainit! It just makes me wonder if during the rainy season when you know its going to rain EVERYDAY if everyones going to go around saying...looks like rain today.

(photos above, clockwise: cooking bikol express, all of the green things are hot peppers; our cluster, steve, rebeka, lauren, and our language teacher ate elsa; nade playing & jon tending the fire/food, emily making coconut milk)

MANGROVES, PROM DRESSES, AND LANGUAGE LESSONS

2007-06-03T15:09:00.000+08:00

I feel the need to write a brief outline of the highlights of my past week. In the previous post jon outlined an average day for us. perhaps it seemed a bit... too normal? that is because it would be impossible to write everything that happens in a day. maybe its a combination of awaking at 6 am & being in a continuous state of sweatiness for the next 14 hours, or perhaps its the small 4 road barangay that we live in coupled with an overdose of the most delicious mangoes on the face of the earth, but the days here seem really really long. please don't interpret this as a negative ~ we enjoy every minute of it. Its just that time seems more fluid here. people aren't overly concerned with getting things accomplished in a certain time-frame & i think its in complete contrast to the importance many american's place on time (killing it, wasting it, making the most of it, etc.)

SO usually when we walk to class we stop on the bridge to stare at the black jellyfish in the water for a moment, talk to the neighbors at least a little, maybe we'll even catch a glimpse of a dead pig floating out to sea (apparently they sometimes jump the neighbor's fence & their poor little legs just cant doggy paddle adequately to survive) ...

1/2 A DAY IN THE MUD & 1/2 A DAY IN A PROM PARADE

May 29 was our first CRM field trip. It also happened to be our Barangay's Santa Krusan parade (photos coming soon.) We started the day off by heading west - to the south china sea. We arrived at a turtle sanctuary/small town where we proceeded to learn how to do a mangrove assessment. Mangroves are kind of like pirates - they are easily romanticized, but when you get up close & personal they are kinda mabaho (smelly in Tagalog. its my favorite word so far) It was still a lot of fun learning how to identify and date various species & to learn how to assess the health & productivity of a mangrove swamp. If i had to build a tree house i think i'd do it in some mangroves. Once out of swamp/river we sloshed past a meowing bush. Now lauren has a baby kitten & i'm co-godmother. We then hopped onto a banca (a type of tiny fishing boat) and headed out to a more secluded part of the coast. the water was perfectly clear & turquoise (VERY different that the water by our house. let me explain: we live on a bay in a relatively urbanized part of the country. we dont have running water in our house. instead you dump a 'dipper' full of water into the toilet to 'flush' it, about 2 feet of piping later it pours into the sea. the open sewers that line the streets here do the same thing. so basically no matter how hot it gets - swimming is not in the cards for us pampered americans) SO the water was gorgeous, we did some snorkeling & learned how to assess seagrass beds & to identify different species. I saw some amazing creatures. everywhere i looked there was something i thought was either made up, or went extinct with the dinosaurs. there were giant orange & black bumpy starfish, gooey gross sea cucumbers, neon sea urchins & fish of all sorts - including a puffer fish (unpuffed & fully alive) it was amazing.

we came home just in time to squeeze into very elegant promish dresses, get sprayed full of hair spray, re-pierce our ears, and cover ourselves in make-up & make it to the church in time for santa krusan. then we walked around in a parade for a few hours - with all the eligable women in our barangay looking mighty beautiful indeed! true cultural immersion.

LANGUAGE LESSONS LEARNED

Lesson #1

Gusto = i like
simple enough right? thats what we thought at first too. So we would say "oh gusto ko sombrero, gusto ko pop-cola, etc." thinking we were just sharing our preferences.

then we found out that
Gusto = i like AND i want.
no distinction between the two.

oops.
now i have three hats.
but at least my nose isn't sunburned anymore!

Getting into the Flow

2007-06-01T13:25:00.000+08:00

We have been here (at our host family's) for close to two weeks now. It may be too early to say we are completely settled in and feel totally at home, but we are definitely becoming used to our surroundings and have already had a number of memorable experiences.

We live with Celia and her five year old son Kian (key-on). They are absolutely great. Kian is the cutest little boy ever, though he is also quite the trouble maker. Sometimes Nanay (grandma) sleeps over as well. Celia usually cooks us our meals. We always have rice, mangoes, and some type of fish or pork. They cook it all sorts of different ways and the food so far has been oh so delicious. When Nanay cooks she usually makes us some sort of American food because she used to work at an orphanage run by Americans. She makes some good fried chicken!

I have to travel about an hour and a half away to another town 1-3 times a week. I feel like I've definitely been thrown straight into the mix with my constant traveling. Peace Corps made a really big deal out of always being with another person and ingrained into us never to travel alone...or always have your Kasama (companion) as the Filipinos would say. I guess this doesn't apply to me since they didn't even have some one go with me on my very first day of training and with no language abilities. Traveling in the Philippines is a trip...seriously. One thing that can be said of Filippinos is that they definitely fit as many people as possible into their public transportation.

My routine travel consist of riding a

<<<----tricycle to the jeepney stop.

I wait there for maybe 10 minutes max and then flag down the next jeepney that is passing by and ride it to the next town for about 20 minutes.

From there I hop onto a bigger bus and ride another thirty minutes to the next town and then finally arrive. I've pretty much got it down now and know how to make my way around. It's especially easier now that i understand the language a little.

We really enjoy the little village we are living in now. Eveyone is soo nice to us. Emily and I walk about ten minutes to our language lessons each morning. It seems like each day everyone learns a new phrase in Engish to yell out at us. A popular one is "hey joe" of course, but people have started saying "what's up" in their best american accent. By far most people yell out "Hey where are you going?" and pretty much every day we say back in our best Tagalog "we are going to study tagalog!" and then they laugh at us. we love our walk. many times we stop and try out the newest tagalog phrases we have learned. then they ask us if we are mormon missionaries and we say no and try to explain what we are doing there, but mostly we just laugh and then people try to give us food. sometimes we stop and play different games the kids play in the streets.

My favorite place to walk past is the ping pong table. A bunch of teens hang out there and always ask me to play. The first time I played they smoke me. I think i scored 4 points in about 12 games (everyone wanted to play...especially since i sucked). I was pretty nervous though since it was only my second or third day here. Now when I stop by sometimes I win, but usually i still lose.

I'll let Emily post here later about her day when she snorkeling in the South China Sea (researching sea grass and mangroves) and then came back and was in Santa Kruzon a parade where all of the girls dress up in gowns and then walk ALL over town. There's probably a couple of other random stories I'll come up with later, but for now this a quick run down of what a "typical day is like for us".

We are usually awake by six o'clock. A shower in the morning and a cup of instant coffee for Jon and a mango for emily. The shower is in reality a couple of bucket filled with water and dipper to pour it onto ourself. The cool water feels pretty good no matter what time of day because usually it is pretty hot. Next we're off to language lessons until noon...then a quick lunch. The afternoon's vary, but Emily and I go to our respective technical sessions to learn what we will be doing once at site. Come home for dinner and some reading and then go to sleep sometime by 8:00 or 9:00.

**Don't Forget to click the link on the side of the page to see a whole bunch of pictures**

** we have taken!!!**

TECHNICALLY WE ARE IN THE PHILIPPINES...

2007-05-17T07:07:00.000+08:00

We left LA at 1 pm on the 11th of May, chasing the sun we landed in Tokyo 11 hours later, spent 4 hours in Narita Internation Airport in Tokyo (easily passing the time with futuristic bathrooms, fancy money and Saporro) watched the sunset then left for Manila where we landed at about midnight. Because of elections we have not been allowed to spend any time in the city, and have henceforth been sequestered on a gorgeous compound. We left for a little bit yesterday to do some water safety training. This involved tipping over tiny boats and sitting on them upside down, and blowing up our life vests (inter-island boat travel can be more than just a bit unsafe, depending on the conditions, and we have heard enough "lost in the south china sea for 56 hours" stories to make us cautious.) The experience thus far all seems very un-Philippine-like. We are surrounded my Americans, sitting in an air conditioned conference room, occasionally getting shots and eating tons of rice. The food is pretty normal for cafeteria type food i guess. Although the fish is served as whole fish & you have to pick it apart. careful not to crunch on tiny bones. We eat about 5 small meals a day here, and OH MY THE MANGOS are soooo delicious. and i am sooo happy.

We leave friday for our host family's house, a few hours drive from Manila. We will spend the next 12 weeks living with this family, doing PST (Pre-Service Training) learning the language & doing technical job training.

We both have cell phones now & its completely free for us if you call us. I dont want to post the #s here for privacy reasons though. Also we can text back and forth to the states. i think it costs us 40 cents each which is reasonable enough. It is free for us to receive ALL calls too. We will also be using the following address for the next couple of months (and thereafter any packages/letters sent there will be forwarded to our new home - so no worries):

Emily and/or Jon Lecuyer, PCT
U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 7013
Airmail Exchange Office
N.A.I.A. 1301
Pasay City, Philippines

*note - I am not sure if fed ex/ ups can deliver to PO boxes here. my guess is no & i've heard the best route is to send the set rate usps tiny boxes. wishful thinking, as there is nothing we need yet & you all havent even had time to miss us, but just an fyi. also, letters are still the best!

So, we are both happy, healthy & ready to get out into the country. Very ready to meet our host family, start learning the language and get going with this adventure that we have been waiting for for so long.

From Cali to KC

2007-04-30T02:20:00.000+08:00

We sold our furniture, packed up the car, and left San Diego April 19th 2007.

Two weeks, three national parks, 1,500 miles, the most terrifying hike ever, two moose, a snow storm, and some fancy champagne later I am sitting here, stuffed full of Gates bar-b-que, writing from Kansas City, MO.

Our first stop along the way was Zion NP in Utah. We drove through the night & arrived in the morning chill and immediately set out for Angel's Landing. We had read that the hike took 5 hours, and after one hour of fun, heart-pumping, well-maintained switch-backs we arrived close to what we thought was the end of the trail and enjoyed the view for a moment. We erroneously
took pride in the speed with which we had ascended, but that evaporated into the canyon walls the moment we glimpsed the metal chains hanging onto the side of the cliffs ahead. The trail literally teetered on the edge of the cliffs, at times no wider than 3 feet with 1,500 to 2,000 foot drops on both sides. Following Jon's lead I did a combination of climbing, crawling, and intense hiking to reach the real summit.
I know I am a lover of hyperbole, but this was seriously the most terrifying experience of my life. It's safe to say Jon would agree. We almost turned around twice - the picture to the right was taken at the second of these two spots. The trail follows the spine of this ridge, and ends slightly after reaching the top. Most terrifying experience of my life thus far, but also the most exhilarating adventure.

Then came some camping, some snow in Bryce Canyon NP, which was beautiful, and a drive through southern Utah. Anyone who has not seen this part of the country most certainly needs to. The rapidly changing rock formations & colors seem fake, and although we drove all day it all seemed to just whiz by. A night drive through a canyon in nearly blizzard-like conditions spit us out into Grand Lake, CO. We spent the next few days with Melissa (Jon's sister) and her husband, Enrique. The adventures seemed never-ending. We saw a bunch of elk, and two moose (one in their front yard, just a few feet from us), we celebrated Earth Day with a snowy trek through Rocky Mountain NP, a game of pictionary, and by learning how to roll sushi.

Moving along we drove a round about way to Boulder, avoiding avalanches & determined no to turn back ~ we spent a day wandering around the city & drinking tea at a Tajikistani teahouse. After stopping in Denver to visit the last of our Colorado friends, it was time to keep moving. So we drove across Kansas. As I write this I have Gates bar-b-que sauce running through my veins to my little hearts content, and have been enjoying playing disc golf in the woods, and am getting ready for the next round of Jack Stack. Wednesday we will be off to St. Louis where I will get to see my family (finally) and say the rest of our farewells.

The past few weeks have been the perfect beginning of our much anticipated adventures together. There is nothing that I can imagine would give me more pleasure than playing outdoors in some of the most amazing canyons, mountains, and valleys, while visiting with nearly everyone we love ~ many thanks to all of our friends and family who have opened up their homes to us, making sure we were stuffed full of delicious food and drink, and to those who have traveled from their homes in order to meet us along our route. It has helped to make the past two weeks some of the best of our lives & we can now head off to the Pearl of the Orient satisfied in having seen nearly everyone whom we love on this planet.

Cheers!

Long Kiss Goodbye

2007-03-17T00:42:00.000+08:00

Emily and I have about one month left here in the sunny paradise of San Diego. Time is a much coveted commodity to us now. Emily rarely has a free moment now that tax season is in full swing and she is working 7 days a week. Tack on her bus commute time and Emily is soon to be a fully functioning Zombie.

Along with trying to enjoy and spend time with all of our friends in San Diego before our exit, we have had and will continue to have a constant flow of visitors and well wishers right up until our very last day here. It has been a great excuse to get out and see all of the sites in San Diego one last time. For me especially it has been an even better excuse to use up the last of my paid vacation!

With the number of chores to do dwindling and only a few items remaining to be bought, it is nearly time to start packing everything up or putting it on Craigslist for someone to come haul away. Next it will be time to head across the country and say goodbye to our families and be on our way! Here is a quick blurb of when and where we will be:

Arrive in Zion National Park on the morning of the 20th and camp/hike there.

Arrive in Grand Lake on the 21 probably more like 22nd depending on whether or not we can make it there in without stopping.

Arrive in denver on the 24th/25th.

Arrive in KC on the 26/27th.

Arrive in STL May 2nd or 3rd.

May 9th...LEAVE FOR LA! training and stuff for a few days

May11th...LEAVE FOR PHILIPPINES !

I'm looking forward to many more posts in the future. Hopefully they will be filled with all sorts of amazing adventures, stories, and pictures.