Ahoy! Well as some of you know, it’s been a little crazy here in the Philippines in the past couple weeks with the typhoons and all so I thought I would start this blog entry with all the madness then end on a lighter note. It rained pretty hard last week and caused some flooding near Manila leaving us stranded on our trip to Zambalas. I managed to contract amoebas leading to some intense diarrhea, making me dizzy and lightheaded and causing me to faint and break my nose. Fortunately, this happened the night before all of the flooding so I was able to get to a hospital. I spent almost a week there recovering from my amoeba ordeal and getting my nose operation, which by the way is still crooked. Builds character right? Yeah…. Ok. Anyways, people are getting sick left and right here, and one of the other volunteers I am training with managed to get dengue fever, an untreatable illness transferred by mosquitoes. He spent a week and half in the hospital with a 104 degree temp and an intense burning and itching sensation all over his body, but he’s much better now, more alive and glowing than ever. We are nearing the end of the wet season, so bring on the heat and avocados!
In other news, I am off to my permanent site, Romblon Island, in only two weeks. I fell in love with this place during my visit, it is everything I wanted. It is an ideal location, but yet to be discovered by tourists, because well it’s a quite a challenge to get to. I took the easy way there, a 45 minute airplane ride from Manila which lands on the island of Tablas adjacent to mine, then you either have to cross the island and take a one hour bangka ride to my island or you can take a three hour boat ride around Tablas to get to Romblon, Romblon Island. Just to clarify, Romblon is a province and within that province includes many islands and municipalities, but I am living near the capital of the province called Romblon which is on Romblon Island within the Romblon province. On the way back to Manila without the airplane, it wasn’t quite so easy. The flight is much more expensive than taking the ferry so I can’t afford it on my budget. So on the way back I first took a ferry to Tablas which continues north to Batangas on Luzon, then a bus from Batangas to Cubao in Manila, then another bus to Olongapo, then two more jeepneys to Sabang, my training site. Whew! All in all, about a 30 hour trip. I like that it is a remote site thus it remains relatively pristine. If I want to go somewhere touristy and crazy, I am only about 4-5 hours from Boracay, tourist central. It’s absolutely breathtaking here and I hope some of you can get the opportunity to visit me here on Romblon and experience a part of the Philippines that many Filipinos don’t even get to see. We have marble and quartz all over the island whether you are on the beach or climbing the mountain behind my house to get to town. We have an abundance of fresh seafood and atis (sugar apples), rice fields, a quaint bookstore/coffee shop, dive resort, and beautiful white sand beaches. The island is very clean compared to the rest of the inhabited Philippine islands. Peace Corps did an amazing job fitting us with our preferences. My house is about 100 m from the beach and a 16 hectare Marine Protected Area (MPA) however I am about 9 km from the town proper (and workplace) which makes things difficult. I plan on moving to town after living for three months with my host family so I can be closer to both my job and the markets. My host family is wonderful; my host father is an electrical engineer and my host mamma owns a store that sells electronic devices. I have a host brother that is 14, a sister age 8, and a baby boy age 1. I also have a very sweet grandmother age of 88. My host sister has a physical disability where her bones are not quite developed thus her body is very soft and she isn’t able to walk, but she’s very smart and has won several awards at school. I have my own room, occasional internet access if there are no clouds, a television with many English channels, about 30 chickens (one of which is perched less than a foot away from my window), dogs, cats, a shower, flush toilet, oven, and back porch. During my visit I also met the congressman, mayor, and governor, all of which were very excited for the upcoming projects. My office is located within the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries sector under the Local Government Unit. I am going to work on setting up a bird sanctuary to protect wild ducks that live off this cliff and will be doing a lot of watershed and mangrove reforestation. I will also be monitoring several of the Marine Protected Areas and updating their Coastal Resource Management Plans. In addition, I will be developing alternative livelihood projects for fisherfolk in the community. Livelihood projects are intended to give fisherfolk an alternative income and therefore reduce pressure on marine resources. Examples of these could be seaweed farming, aquaculture, basket weaving, making peanut brittle and jam, paper bead jewelry, and recycling plastic into bags, purses, and wallets. I am really excited for my work but a little intimidated by the language barrier I will face. I have spent the last two months learning Tagalog although in Romblon, like many islands in the Philippines, they have their own unique dialect. My counterpart (the Filipino I will be working alongside throughout my two year service) and supervisor are wonderful people and I know I will continue to pick up the language after training because they say when I arrive, they will only speak to me in Tagalog and likewise it is bawal (prohibited) for me to speak English. I couldn’t be more happy with my placement, it will be challenging but I am so excited to become fluent in Tagalog!
We went to an elementary school for an environmental education workshop a couple weeks ago. Among us eight volunteers we had 200 students (4th and 5th graders) to teach! We split into pairs and had four games in which about 50 students rotated among. My station was the “Trash Relay Game”. Basically it was a relay race among four student teams to pick up items off the ground (banana peels, crumpled paper, plastic candy wrappers, glass and plastic bottles, coconut husks, and plastic bags) and place them into one of the three bins: Re-usable, Trash, and Biodegradable/burnable. The kids were all really into it and enthusiastic about segregating their trash! It was quite a success! We showed kids they shouldn’t be burning their plastic wrappers and that they can reuse many bottles and plastic bags. Teaching the children is great way to integrate in the community and you inevitably influence the decision making of their parents because their children go home and tell their parents about what they learned in class. Another game we played was intended to show the kids about dynamite fishing. A few kids represented dynamite fishers by holding water bottles. Then the rest of the kids were lined up along one edge and had to run across a field without getting squirted by the dynamite fishers. We also set up ‘Marine Protected Areas’ by marking a circle as a safe zone where the kids could run without getting squirted by the dynamite fishers. All in all, it was a success and the kids had a ton of fun… and I lost my voice.
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