Dear Blog,
We are all getting pretty anxious to find out about our permanent sites; Peace Corps does a really good job at keeping you in suspense during the application process and throughout training. They don’t give you any information until the time comes when you actually have to move. In a week or so I should know because I get to visit my permanent site and meet the supervisor I will be working with for the next two years. We’ve been staying super busy like always, so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write lately… but here I go!
Last week, we conducted coral reef surveys by snorkeling in Nagbalayong. The reef is in pretty bad shape here as dynamite fishing sill occurs regularly. We found several dead fish when we were out there and were told that there was dynamite fishing just earlier that day. We did manta tows which are super fun—basically we get dragged by a boat and snorkel for two minutes, then identify the percent cover of hard and soft corals and any abiotic substrate. We also set up a 200-meter transect and estimated the percent cover of corals, sand, and seaweed by snorkeling/free diving. The area we surveyed was probably about 8 meters down and since the visibility is pretty bad and because you have to read the tiny numbers on the transect tape, you have to literally dive to bottom to check out what’s there. We do 50-meter transects between each pair, and have to survey every 0.25 meters. If you do the math, that’s 100 points each, and if you are lucky, you can survey a meter (4 points) every dive. Still, that’s at least 25 dives each and usually many many more because you drift so much and forget where you are at along the transect. I definitely cannot complain though, I love my job. In addition to assessing the corals, we also assessed the fish populations. That was a bit of a joke to be honest. It was set up the same way as the coral survey. Basically we had to take turns free diving again down to 8 meters looking for any fish along the 50 m by 10 m plot and coming back up to record on a slate. I hardly have enough air to dive down and find where we are on the transect tape, let alone try to identify tons of different reef fish swimming every which way direction. So I am getting pretty good at free diving now! The survey would have been a lot more successful had we had SCUBA gear, but you just have to work with what you’ve got. We didn’t have enough fins for all of us and some of the fisherfolk even improvised with some hard slabs of plastic strapped to their feet!
This week we were working through this process Peace Corps developed called the “Participatory Analysis for Community Action”. We got together with the fisherfolk again and created a community map of their available resources. We start with this because we want to identify the strengths first which can then pave the way for an assets-based approach to resource management as apposed to listing all the problems first. Then we created a seasonal calendar that identified everything from holidays to the high fish-catch seasons to the rice-harvesting seasons. Then we made a daily activities schedule to identify the best times for the community to meet and work on a management plan. Lastly as part of the process, we identify the needs of the community. Medical supplies and equipment for the health center were top on our list as well as an ambulance to bring people to the nearest town for medical emergencies. They also were lacking reliable transportation for high school students especially during the rainy season. Having a cemetery was also pretty high on the list. Irrigation dams and a spring-fed source of potable water were brought up too. Right now we pump all of our water from deep wells and one individual claimed that it is only a matter of time before their waste water contaminates their drinking source.
The next day we went back to Nagbalayong to conduct our socio-economic survey. We went from house to house asking questions regarding their monthly income and expenses, number of children, religion, family planning, level of education, what they do with their garbage, and their perceptions of the local coastal resources and pertaining issues. All of the folks we interviewed were very welcoming and invited us into their homes. Many had little more than an elementary level education and identified severe economic hardships as the biggest issue in the community.
With all of this information (the biological surveys I talked about previously too) we are going to create a “Coastal Environment Profile” and present it to the community by next week. It only serves as practice for when we actually get to our permanent site. The profile is intended to identify the local issues and assess the coastal resources by collecting baseline data. While collecting this data is extremely important, it is a little frustrating because we have no time to actually put this data to use by developing a management plan to address these issues. So we are essentially collecting the data, identifying issues, and then leaving because, well, we are only here at our training site for another month and a half or so.
We also participated in a beach clean up event the other day. We ended up picking up a whole lot of old used diapers and drew parallels to beach clean ups in the states where, instead of diapers we end up picking up old used condoms. Interesting eh? Yesterday we had a volunteer cook out with our language and technical trainers for some “cross-cultural exchange”. We made adobo, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, salad, and apple crisp with whipped cream. The apple crisp was a hit, it was “baked” using coconut shells as coal, since ovens don’t really exist here. Yum!
Next Saturday, another volunteer Morgan, and I are going to host a community soccer workshop/game, we’ll see how that goes. First we have to level out the beach with some rakes. We also just started talking about putting on a fashion show/empowerment movement/costume party for Halloween using recycled materials for clothing! Keep ya’ll posted with some photos mamaya!
Well this is what I’ve been up to in a nutshell, a big nutshell maybe. We are continuing to pick up the language all the while. It is a bit overwhelming at times, so I enjoy escaping from reality for a minute to enjoy a good novel. I have also been eating lots of new foods here like snails, balut (the fermented fertilized duck egg that’s on the verge of hatching), dinuguan (the chocolately thick stew made of pork blood), avocado leaf tea, bright pink hot dogs, and bibinkas-- napakasarap! Anyways, writing blogs is rather weird for me because, well, I don’t really enjoy blabbing about myself this much, so I’d love to hear from ya’ll too!
Makita kayo sa isang linggo. XOXO
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