Here I am!

Kumusta kayo?! Well here I am in the Philippines, making a blog like promised. Peace Corps has kept us pretty busy since we’ve been here- our schedule planned out to a T. For the first few days in the country we (all 145 of us among the 3 sectors: Education, Children-Youth-Family, and Coastal Resource Management) stayed at a resort right outside of Manila during orientation. Those luxurious days are over. I am now at my training site where I will be for the next three months which is about a five hour drive from Manila. We are located on the island of Luzon in Morong, Baatan in a barangay called Sabang which is a pretty small rural fishing village of about 1,000 people. There are about eighty households if that gives you an idea of how packed each house is. It is beautiful here, I am right on the coast so we go snorkeling out on the reef after class. However, it is the typhoon season, so we’ve got to be careful of the current. Eek!




While in Morong, I will be studying Tagalog and Coastal Resource Management planning with seven other Coastal Resource Management “cluster mates”. Today we had the opportunity to meet the mayor and some of the other municipal offices that we anticipate collaborating with. During our stay here, we will conduct assessments of a nearby barangay since last years Peace Corps group assessed this barangay. We will be interviewing fisherfolk, the women who often end up selling the fish in the market, government officials, and any other stakeholders in the fishing industry. We’ll also be conducting assessments of the coastal resources available here like the coral, fish stocks, seagrass, and mangroves. By conducting these assessments we can create some baseline data, identify any issues to be addressed, and then help the community reach their own goals of sustainability. Dynamite and cyanide fishing is illegal and has not been a problem here in this barangay for about eight years. What does remain a problem are the commercial fishing fleets that intrude into municipal waters (15 km from the coast). The fish wardens and coast guards have such limited resources to enforce the regulations and their small bancas cannot catch up to the huge commercial boats in time to be effective. So these commercial boats end up competing with all these small-time local fisherfolk, and you can imagine who has the upper hand.



Peace Corps really stresses the facilitation and networking aspect of being a volunteer. We spend three months learning the language and culture so we can not only better communicate our ideas, but gain the respect of the local community. After training we are linked with one or more Filipino “counterparts” associated with a local government unit where we will begin to take on coastal resource management projects. I know a common stereotype of a Peace Corps volunteer is an American coming into a foreign country and telling people (who have lived there all there lives) what to do. But I want to tell you that this is a huge misconception. Pardon my preaching, but I myself have learned more about the Peace Corps in the last two days than I have since I applied over a year ago. The goal of Peace Corps volunteers is to help people help themselves. We work closely with the locals and help organize the community and facilitate projects to meet their own goals. Creating a sustainable project that will continue long after we are gone is essential, because in the grand scheme of things, two years is rather short.



Anyways, my host family is wonderful. They speak little English making it a good opportunity to learn Tagalog. I have been here for a week and am already starting to make simple sentences and express some emotions like “Salamat, busog na po ako” (Thank you but I am full). My host mother is Ate Olive and although she has no spouse or children, we live with her sister and brother’s family, so there are a few kids running around which I love. They teach me Tagalog, I teach them English, and we play hacksack and Uno. Everyone here knows everyone else, and chances are they are related to each other someway or another.



Oh and the bathroom- I am sure you are all interested bahahah! I have recently converted to the tabo method when I need to use the “comfort room” as they say here in the Philippines. Flush toilets do not really exist here but I have been blessed with a toilet none-the-less that will flush with a scoop of water (tabo). Basically you wash up with a water and some “handy” assistance. I actually feel a lot cleaner afterwards. Toilet paper is hard to come by here and it’s more a pain in the butt (haha) to deal with the toilet paper trash since they don’t have a trash can in the bathroom. You can imagine how awkward it might be to carry your toilet paper trash in a plastic bag as you pass through the living room to get back to your room. So tabo it is. Also there is no toilet seat, so when I come back with muscular thighs you’ll know why. We have all become really open about our poop, how it looks, how often we go, etc. It has become quite a popular conversation topic amongst us volunteers- that and our hairy body parts, bug bites and injuries. I played soccer on the beach last week barefoot and got kicked pretty hard above my ankle. Ten days later and I still don’t have any feeling there. The bruising caused some internal bleeding down into my foot but the blood is now starting to assimilate back into my blood stream. For a while I had a pretty good looking purple kankle! Now that I have flooded your mind with enticing mental images, I’ll talk a little bit about the culture.



People in the Philippines are very conservative. It’s absolutely prohibited to wear two-piece swimsuits let alone a one-piece swim suit. We must wear t-shirts and shorts while swimming and tanktops (even around the house) are not appropriate. I actually ended up throwing away some undergarments that had “less material” because I was afraid of what my host family would think come laundry day. It’s frowned upon to walk alone with a person of the opposite sex or be in the same room with one alone- otherwise, there will be lots of chika chika (gossip) that will spread around town like wildfire. Everyone here is so very nice though and greeting everyone you pass is the norm. People are very generous with the little they have and generally pretty shy as well. If you want to ask or invite a Filipino to eat or hang out, it’s a rule of thumb to ask at least three times because only then will it be known that you are sincere. A lot of the Filipino guys that I have met here are very flamboyantly gay and proud of it, we call them baklas and they like it. The dynamic is strange because other Filipinos bluntly laugh at them and make fun of them in front of others, but they love it and really enjoy the attention. There is also a lot of non-verbal communication like raising eyebrows and pointing with your lips. These are things I grew up seeing my mom do and never thought twice about it until I came here and heard other volunteers discussing it as Filipino culture. Also I understand now why Filipinos always mix up he/she because they are the same word here- siya pronounced “sha”.



As many of you know my birthday was last week, but I actually chose not to celebrate it- weird I know. In fact, I didn’t even tell anyone it was my birthday until a few days later. I actually just went out for the first time last night. We went over to one of the volunteers’ house and I sang my very first solo videoki song, Hey Jude it was. I am actually pretty surprised that I have made it two weeks in the Philippines without singing. It sure won’t be the last- and mind you, these events typically occur while sober.



It’s been hot here, I get pretty sweaty unless I am directly in front of a fan. Thus it doesn’t take long for my clothes to require washing. I’m lucky my host family has a washer but it still means I do a lot of my clothes washing by hand. I soak all my clothes first in a big bin and then throw them in this “mixer” with some soap and water which just stirs it around for about 15 minutes. Then I take the clothes out of the soapy water and put them in clean water, wring them, and repeat several times. I am also lucky that there is a spinner attached to the washer which spins the clothes really fast and works pretty well to dry them-they still require a day or so to dry on the line. It’s extremely nice to have one of those spinners during the rainy season, otherwise it can take a few days for your clothes to dry which is prime time for mold.



All of my meals consist of a mound of white rice and some type of meat-usually a small fish, but cooked whole, with the head and all or some fatty chunks of pork. Eating fish, or any other type of meat for that matter, becomes a bit of a dissection project. My favorite dish so far is one with the banana flower, the Tagalog name escapes me at the moment. My diet is definitely lacking in fresh fruits and vegetables so I am trying to take multi-vitamins to keep healthy. It’s pretty sketchy eating anything raw here, intestinal parasites are pretty common among volunteers placed in the Philippines, I am crossing my fingers! I have learned how to eat with my hands- and somewhat gracefully might I add. Nothing goes to waste here either, we suck the bones dry and eat every grain of rice on our plates. The bones and any other inedible scraps go to the stray cats and dogs, which are pretty abundant here as there is no money nor clinic to spade or neuter. I just pulled my computer out for the first time in about a week from a plastic bag and as I type there are still ants crawling under my keys gathering crumbs that have probably been accumulating over the past several years.



Well that’s all for now. I’ll post some pictures soon. Sige, hanggang sa susunod. Magandang gabi! Ingat