I feel it’s about time I write a blog update, so much has happened since I have last written, but instead of boring you with all these things that have come and gone, I will focus on what recently has inspired me to write in the first place. This may be a long one, full of nothing but good news and revelations. Enjoy ;D
So I just heard back about the VEG (Volunteers in Environmental Governance; US AID grant opportunity offered for Peace Corps volunteers) grant I wrote to develop Barangay Ginablan as a bird and wildlife sanctuary and ecotourism destination. This idea was one that my mayor and the community members brought to my attention when I arrived here last year. This was something they were interested in starting, I merely helped push it along by facilitating meetings and tapping into some funding sources. The project has three main goals I would like talk about.
First, the project is designed to conserve the ecological biodiversity in the lagoon area, mangroves, and caves of Ginablan. We have actually been hacking away at this goal since I arrived last year. This required getting local support in creating a Municipal Ordinance by which to enforce the local protection of wildlife species. Under national law, wildlife species are protected but especially in the Philippines, it is essential to create local laws and ordinances for effective enforcement.
Secondly, we will raise awareness, educate, and promote participation in coastal resource management amongst community members and visitors. This is where some of the funds come in. Most of the funds I have obtained through VEG go towards educational materials, trainings, technical surveying equipment, IDs, and uniforms. The NGO Sikat Inc. that I work with very closely contributed significant funds for the construction of the boardwalk, guardhouse, educational center, and proposed watchtower. The Municipal Government also contributed funds that will be used to conduct IEC (Information Education Campaign) in each of the 25 coastal barangays by providing gas and snacks for participants, as well as providing catering during the training. For this VEG funding opportunity, they required a 25% community counterpart contribution of funds; this proposal exceeded that amount at about 45% of the total funds coming from the community. This helps to ensure the community has vested interest in the project and has put forth their commitment. Without this community contribution, the project may likely fail because the community has “nothing to lose” so to speak, and the commitment is just not nearly as strong. This has been shown time and time again in community development projects around the world. As Peace Corps volunteers, we don’t come with funds necessarily, but we come as dedicated, educated, and experienced individuals looking to “help communities help themselves”.
Which leads me into the third goal, perhaps most important, is to build the capacities of community members in bird sanctuary management during a training led by Fauna and Flora International. We will host a training to teach the community members how to identify birds, conduct basic data analysis, giving tours for tourists, and first aid for injured birds. Not only will these community members learn about how to manage a bird sanctuary, but they will gain experience in environmental education, leading tours, and managing income-generating activities, all while improving their English proficiency.
Anyways, that was a very brief thrown together summary of what I wrote in my proposal. I will receive the funds on October 1. Then we start the construction of the boardwalk, watchtower, guardhouse, and educational center. While the laborers are laboring away, the NGO, my counterpart and I will be working on putting together a local educational booklet on bird identification, as well as preparing educational billboards, and a video. Then by December we will host the training after I have bought all the technical equipment, and by March will be going to each of the barangays to teach/spread awareness about the bird sanctuary and the importance of biodiversity conservation. I will try to be more on top of it when it comes to writing blogs, I have lost a little inspiration in the last several months to be honest.
On to new matters… I am no longer the only volunteer on my island. I welcome Julie Crow, a new female volunteer assigned to Romblon, Romblon as an English teacher at the high school. We work about 75 meters apart or so, but we live almost 10 km apart. I am no longer the newbie…. Feels weird, time sure does fly, I have been in the Philippines for over a year!
Lately, I have had a variety of different opportunities come up to visit different sites in the Philippines to help out with other Peace Corps projects, camps, and assessments, but I have turned a lot of them down to focus on my site. I really enjoy being in Romblon and want to push through my own projects here. I don’t think I could leave here without feeling like I have accomplished anything. On the other hand, it’s nice to know there is an abundance of other opportunities for work if things are slow here. If I wanted to, I could easily leave once or twice a month on work travel. In fact, in a year, I have only taken 2 vacation days because so much of my travel is to help with other projects. But I do love it here. I have never felt so relaxed in my life. I have the freedom to do as much or as little as I want. It’s a wonderful feeling really. If I wake up and feel like staying home all day and dinking around my garden, reading, chatting with random passerbyers, watching movies, doing some occasional data analysis, writing, and cooking, there is nothing to stop me from doing that, other than myself. But obviously, that it is neither satisfying nor rewarding to make that a habit, considering not only the sacrifices I have made to be here but the money you as taxpayers in the US have paid to send me here.
Well that’s all for now, more later on as the project progresses….
Ingat po kayo!
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Grabe!
Life has been crazy here lately, the hot season is beginning which as I have found out also means pigsa season. As some of you know, given my emotional phone calls and emails, I have been dealing with a nasty skin infection, making it really painful to do anything. The doctors here have been giving me lots of different antibiotics to fight the infection not realizing what bacteria I had and which antibiotics would treat it. So consequently I ended up with a "superbug" a very resistant strain of staph infection. I am now finally on the right antibiotic and my boils are improving, a month and a half later. Now I just have to prevent them from coming back, which will involve using a strong antibacterial wash intended for use by doctors to prepare their patients for surgery, for an indefinite period of time... The bacteria hides in your nostrils so I also have an ointment I apply with a Q-tip in my nose. Of course, the real solution involves boosting my immune system. My body should be able to fight off these bacteria, before they become serious illnesses and diseases, I think it's no coincidence that I keep getting infected with one thing of another. Thus I'm starting a regime of raw garlic everyday!
Other than this episode things have been quite alright at site, when I have been here at least. I have been traveling a lot over the past couple months, and it always feels so amazing to be back in Romblon. I really love it here. My garden is full of veggies and my puppy is growing into a healthy dog right before my eyes! Next week, we are heading to Negros for our In Service Training seminar where we will learn how to design and manage projects, and access funds made available to Peace Corps Volunteers. I'm really looking forward to starting this project it's about time already. I've been diving a lot lately with the NGO to restock the giant clams and do our annual photo documentation survey of our 14 marine protected areas. SIKAT received a huge grant from US AID and expanded their operations to another municipality! Great news! After the conference, I'm headed to Cadiz to visit my family, the town where my mother grew up!
We just had Easter here, I wasn't able to experience the brutal devotion/ self mutilation of Filipinos during this holy week in Pampanga, seeing someone nail themselves on a cross to be carried around town Grabe! It'll just have to wait until next year...
Anyways, to all of you who have supported me in the past week through all the chaos, I thank you for being there and hope all this crazy illness is behind us.
Other than this episode things have been quite alright at site, when I have been here at least. I have been traveling a lot over the past couple months, and it always feels so amazing to be back in Romblon. I really love it here. My garden is full of veggies and my puppy is growing into a healthy dog right before my eyes! Next week, we are heading to Negros for our In Service Training seminar where we will learn how to design and manage projects, and access funds made available to Peace Corps Volunteers. I'm really looking forward to starting this project it's about time already. I've been diving a lot lately with the NGO to restock the giant clams and do our annual photo documentation survey of our 14 marine protected areas. SIKAT received a huge grant from US AID and expanded their operations to another municipality! Great news! After the conference, I'm headed to Cadiz to visit my family, the town where my mother grew up!
We just had Easter here, I wasn't able to experience the brutal devotion/ self mutilation of Filipinos during this holy week in Pampanga, seeing someone nail themselves on a cross to be carried around town Grabe! It'll just have to wait until next year...
Anyways, to all of you who have supported me in the past week through all the chaos, I thank you for being there and hope all this crazy illness is behind us.
old news...
So last month, I finally was allowed to move out on my own, I moment I have been dreaming about since I arrived in the Philippines. While staying with a host family is an essential part of integration into the community, I must say it gets old being waited on hand and foot, having all your meals cooked for you and then not being allowed to clean up after yourself. It’s especially hard considering most of us have been living on our own for the past five years. This comes as a quite a shocker to most Filipinos. They are always surprised when I tell them I know how to cook, and are even more surprised when I tell them I know how to wash my own clothes. Anyways, I feel so alive now. I can do anything I want, I can cook when I want, sleep when I want, and come home when I want. It’s great! I have a puppy named “Bantay” which means like guard, or watch in Tagalog. My neighbor picked it up off the street and gave it to my host family which then gave it to me to have at my new place. He’s very smart already, potty trained after just a few days of having him. It’s nice to have a companion here, always playing with you. My boyfriend Jed left for his overseas job as a seaman marine engineer aboard an ship where he’ll be for the next 9 months. I am not sure how Filipinos do it here. It is so common here for one spouse to work overseas while the other stays home to take care of the kids. Typically they will go one to five years without ever returning home. Sometimes, by the time they come home, the marriage is has already strayed and there is not much keeping them together, they are so used to living apart. There are not many other options here, they do what they have to for their children.
I live on the same property as my host family, which is on a farm with rice fields, coconuts, bananas, native mangoes, manadarins, pomello trees, and pinapple plants to name a few . It’s the house that my host father grew up in, a quaint little cement house with two bedrooms. I find I am a lot more busy now, between washing my own clothes, cooking dinner, breakfast, packing a lunch, washing dishes, shopping, bathing and feeding my puppy, and cleaning (sweeping is necessary everyday or little dead bugs accumulate and you’ll have lots of ants). ANTS ANTS ANTS… they get into everything. I still have a lot to learn about living on my own when it comes to storing food. I can’t even leave a bag of plain uncooked rice on the table for a few hours without it being infested by tiny ants. I can’t imagine how people can store their food without a fridge, which I guess brings me to my next point about the abundance of plastic here. Everything is packaged in single servings for this reason, and of course also because people cannot often afford to buy any more than a asingle serving at a time. We have no garbage pick up where I live, which is also true for the other 25 barangays on this island. So I have a burn pit in my backyard, where I will burn my trash everyweek as much as I hate it, there is not much of another option. I could bring it to town and it would then just get thrown in the dump site and get blown into the ocean because it sits right on the coast and is never covered. There are a lot of projects we have been thinking about. One I am particularly interested in, and the mayor also (yippee!!), is to purchase this machine that shreds plastic which you can then add to cement blocks or roofing material, or melt it back into molds to make chairs, buckets, baskets, or what have you. They are just as sturdy, and it’s a great way to store the endless amounts of plastic that Filipinos use. The machine would be placed at the dumpsite and we would then hire municipal workers to segregate the trash. People from the barangays could then sell their plastic to the municipality by the kilo. Of course, this has it downfalls, as you can imagine, if people are able to sell their used plastic bags, there will be no incentive to save or reuse bags, instead people may begin to use even more plastic…
The other day we had a watershed tree planting event where people from many different barangays, colleges, high schools, technical schools, and the municipality participated. The site for planting was about an hour and half hike up a mountain and then back down a sleep valley to the riverbed. We had a huge turnout and people were all very excited and into it. However, the problem with these events is the accumulation of trash. Because merienda is essential if you want any participation, people had to bring food, and consequently we ended up with a lot of trash. Next time, we will make sure that the merienda involves little if any trash.
Anyways, I received my package so I am finally able to take pictures after three months without a working camera. Thank you all for your lovely donations of food and presents! I was absolutely overwhelemed with all the goodies and I shared them with all my neighbors.
So I have managed to get some nasty disease, illness or rash every month since I have been in the Philippines. This month, I got a pigsa. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a skin infection that starts when a bug bite gets infected with bacteria and fills with pus. Mine got pretty big and was really painful, I will spare you the details, but all sorts of ungodly things were oozing out of it which then created a hole/crater in my leg. After two weeks of strong antibiotics its starting to get better. Im excited to see what I have in store for next month, hookworm? A cockroach bite on my eyelid? Malaria? Don’t worry, I am using a mosquito net now, I sleep so well now, who could have guessed… now I am not waking up in the middle of the night because I feel something walking down my arm, oh wow look at that, that’s a giant poisonous centipede.
For those of you who want to know what it’s like to actually be a Peace Corps volunteer this video actually sums it up quite nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0
Looking back on it, I don’t think I picked up any valuable information during technical training that I use at site. They expect that I know a lot more than I do. For example, the other day I walked into work about an hour late, because well I was under the impression there were no activities scheduled for the day. Anyways, as I walk into the office, they all approached me and said where were you this morning??? You were supposed to lead a training on pearl farming in Tambac!! I was literally speachless, I had no idea what to say, I have absolutely no experience with how to cultivate pearls. Or they will tell me I will lead a training on how to plant mangroves and create a nursery. Well I know about mangroves, their importance, some identification, and a bit about their biology, but I have no experience growing them in a nursery nor techniques for planting them. I am finding I am learning much more from Filipinos than they are learning from me…
I am kind of in a slump now- the natural ups and downs of a Peace Corps volunteer (I actually wrote most of this blog last month but had yet to post it so it probably started off pretty chipper). It’s sure nice to live on my own, but I have got a lot of free time now- more than I know what to do with, which gives me a lot of time to reflect on what the hell I am doing here.
I live on the same property as my host family, which is on a farm with rice fields, coconuts, bananas, native mangoes, manadarins, pomello trees, and pinapple plants to name a few . It’s the house that my host father grew up in, a quaint little cement house with two bedrooms. I find I am a lot more busy now, between washing my own clothes, cooking dinner, breakfast, packing a lunch, washing dishes, shopping, bathing and feeding my puppy, and cleaning (sweeping is necessary everyday or little dead bugs accumulate and you’ll have lots of ants). ANTS ANTS ANTS… they get into everything. I still have a lot to learn about living on my own when it comes to storing food. I can’t even leave a bag of plain uncooked rice on the table for a few hours without it being infested by tiny ants. I can’t imagine how people can store their food without a fridge, which I guess brings me to my next point about the abundance of plastic here. Everything is packaged in single servings for this reason, and of course also because people cannot often afford to buy any more than a asingle serving at a time. We have no garbage pick up where I live, which is also true for the other 25 barangays on this island. So I have a burn pit in my backyard, where I will burn my trash everyweek as much as I hate it, there is not much of another option. I could bring it to town and it would then just get thrown in the dump site and get blown into the ocean because it sits right on the coast and is never covered. There are a lot of projects we have been thinking about. One I am particularly interested in, and the mayor also (yippee!!), is to purchase this machine that shreds plastic which you can then add to cement blocks or roofing material, or melt it back into molds to make chairs, buckets, baskets, or what have you. They are just as sturdy, and it’s a great way to store the endless amounts of plastic that Filipinos use. The machine would be placed at the dumpsite and we would then hire municipal workers to segregate the trash. People from the barangays could then sell their plastic to the municipality by the kilo. Of course, this has it downfalls, as you can imagine, if people are able to sell their used plastic bags, there will be no incentive to save or reuse bags, instead people may begin to use even more plastic…
The other day we had a watershed tree planting event where people from many different barangays, colleges, high schools, technical schools, and the municipality participated. The site for planting was about an hour and half hike up a mountain and then back down a sleep valley to the riverbed. We had a huge turnout and people were all very excited and into it. However, the problem with these events is the accumulation of trash. Because merienda is essential if you want any participation, people had to bring food, and consequently we ended up with a lot of trash. Next time, we will make sure that the merienda involves little if any trash.
Anyways, I received my package so I am finally able to take pictures after three months without a working camera. Thank you all for your lovely donations of food and presents! I was absolutely overwhelemed with all the goodies and I shared them with all my neighbors.
So I have managed to get some nasty disease, illness or rash every month since I have been in the Philippines. This month, I got a pigsa. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a skin infection that starts when a bug bite gets infected with bacteria and fills with pus. Mine got pretty big and was really painful, I will spare you the details, but all sorts of ungodly things were oozing out of it which then created a hole/crater in my leg. After two weeks of strong antibiotics its starting to get better. Im excited to see what I have in store for next month, hookworm? A cockroach bite on my eyelid? Malaria? Don’t worry, I am using a mosquito net now, I sleep so well now, who could have guessed… now I am not waking up in the middle of the night because I feel something walking down my arm, oh wow look at that, that’s a giant poisonous centipede.
For those of you who want to know what it’s like to actually be a Peace Corps volunteer this video actually sums it up quite nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0
Looking back on it, I don’t think I picked up any valuable information during technical training that I use at site. They expect that I know a lot more than I do. For example, the other day I walked into work about an hour late, because well I was under the impression there were no activities scheduled for the day. Anyways, as I walk into the office, they all approached me and said where were you this morning??? You were supposed to lead a training on pearl farming in Tambac!! I was literally speachless, I had no idea what to say, I have absolutely no experience with how to cultivate pearls. Or they will tell me I will lead a training on how to plant mangroves and create a nursery. Well I know about mangroves, their importance, some identification, and a bit about their biology, but I have no experience growing them in a nursery nor techniques for planting them. I am finding I am learning much more from Filipinos than they are learning from me…
I am kind of in a slump now- the natural ups and downs of a Peace Corps volunteer (I actually wrote most of this blog last month but had yet to post it so it probably started off pretty chipper). It’s sure nice to live on my own, but I have got a lot of free time now- more than I know what to do with, which gives me a lot of time to reflect on what the hell I am doing here.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Enero festivities
Goodness, it’s been quite some time since I have written in my blog. We’ve been pretty busy here, lots of celebrations and piyestas. Christmas was a blast here, we went caroling all day around the Barangay and collected money for our piyesta. Then at night we had a dance party near the Barangay captain’s house. For the piyesta we had a benefit dance the first night, followed by a rest day (hahahah), then a beauty pageant the third night which I had the honor of judging. Lots of fun! Then for New Years I went to Boracay, one of the most out of control touristy places here in the Philippines with about 40 or so other Peace Corps Volunteers, madness absolute madness. Not sure I am interested in ever going back though, once was enough. I gorged on amazing expensive American food all weekend, but was sure happy to get back to my typical Filipino ulam and kanin… After returning from Boracay, the whole municipality was just preparing for the Biniray Festival. All office work was put on hold. We spent our days making our costumes and decorating the town and we spent our nights practicing dance moves and drumming. The Friday before the piyesta started, we took down the statue of the Santo Niño in the church because it is normally protected in a glass case high up set in the wall. It was one of the most fascinating things I have ever experienced. As they brought it down, crowds of people came rushing up to the front, it was like a mosh pit, like a celebrity, people being trampled, people taking photos with their cell phones, people shoving their way to the front to wipe their handkerchief on the statue, the Philippine National Police acting as body guards and crowd control. All for this statue, the symbol brought by the Spaniards during their colonization. Apparently as they were trying to leave Romblon, they tried seven times to bring their Santa Niño symbol, but the sea was too rough so after the seventh attempt they left it on shore. So now as part of the tradition, we take bangkas out and make seven loops off the pier. The next day at 4 am everyone from my Barangay headed to town for mass at the high school followed by the parade around the town. Almost every Barangay participated in the parade, they each have their own tribe, unique costumes, and drums, and they compete for best costume and best sound. Soo fun, Filipinos really know how to party, I was pretty lasing by 10 am hahah, shots of brandy flowing left and right. Then the rest of the week there was an event in the town plaza every night: women’s night, Barangay night, tourism night, Romblon National High School cultural show, Holy Rosary Concert, etc… We also had a photo exhibit in the center of town showcasing the work we do with SIKAT and through the Department of Agriculture, livelihood projects and a wealth of information about community based coastal resource management.
Anyways, I really enjoy being at site, I feel very content here, I never really have the urge to get up and travel. All of the volunteers have just been visiting me at site! I really lucked out with my placement. Work has been slow in the office with the piyesta and all but next month we are starting a coral propagation project. So we will be using SCUBA to place down these cement domes in sandy substrate to create an artificial reef. We will be collecting small pieces of branching Acropora hard corals and creating a nursery where they can grow a little larger before we attach them to the cement structures. We will be hosting a training event and I have invited a couple other Peace Corps volunteers to help out. Should be fun!! After that we will be starting our fisherfolk and boat registration for the year 2011. That means we will be going around to each of the 31 barangays among the four islands in the municipality and visiting with the fisherfolk. This should bring in a lot of money for the local government unit. I look forward to meeting all of the small-scale fishers here. Hopefully my Tagalog is sufficient to carry conversations with them… We will also be going around to the other marine protected areas and removing crown-of-thorns, the ferocious coral-eating sea star. Starting in March, we will also begin a bird survey off of San Pedro point, where I had mentioned earlier about creating a bird sanctuary ecotourism destination. We have the balinsasayaw here, the infamous bird that creates nests made of saliva which are sold on the market in Manila for up to 200,000 PhP a kilo ($ 4,762 a kilo). It’s illegal to take, purchase, or sell these nests but there are many restaurants still selling these on Palawan. They make their nests in caves or off steep cliffs, and we are going to work on protecting their habitat.
I found a house that I am going to move into next month. It is actually the old house of my host father when he was growing up. It’s right down the road from where I am living right now. A simple little concrete house, two bedrooms on a good plot of land. I had a few options but I settled on this choice because I really wanted to stay in the same community. I have developed relationships with the people here, and it has really helped to integrate with a host family here. There was a much nicer house closer to town, made of marble, right on the beach, land to make a garden, yard, porch, pool table, couches, beds, TV, oven, complete with all the appliances, the works really and for a good price, only the equivalent of about $70 a month, but I don’t know anyone in that community. I could see myself just getting off work, heading home, and having a big ol’ house to myself and no one to talk to. And there is not a People’s Organization there either. Here in Agnay there is a very active group of people passionate about conserving their marine resources so this is where I am meant to be, even if 9 km from town. At least it should keep me in shape while I am here, riding my bike everyday to town. I love the people here, they treat me like family, they watch out for me and I truly feel very welcome and safe which is why I want to stay here. Everyone in this Barangay is literally related to each other, they are one big extended family. I love them.
Anyways, I really enjoy being at site, I feel very content here, I never really have the urge to get up and travel. All of the volunteers have just been visiting me at site! I really lucked out with my placement. Work has been slow in the office with the piyesta and all but next month we are starting a coral propagation project. So we will be using SCUBA to place down these cement domes in sandy substrate to create an artificial reef. We will be collecting small pieces of branching Acropora hard corals and creating a nursery where they can grow a little larger before we attach them to the cement structures. We will be hosting a training event and I have invited a couple other Peace Corps volunteers to help out. Should be fun!! After that we will be starting our fisherfolk and boat registration for the year 2011. That means we will be going around to each of the 31 barangays among the four islands in the municipality and visiting with the fisherfolk. This should bring in a lot of money for the local government unit. I look forward to meeting all of the small-scale fishers here. Hopefully my Tagalog is sufficient to carry conversations with them… We will also be going around to the other marine protected areas and removing crown-of-thorns, the ferocious coral-eating sea star. Starting in March, we will also begin a bird survey off of San Pedro point, where I had mentioned earlier about creating a bird sanctuary ecotourism destination. We have the balinsasayaw here, the infamous bird that creates nests made of saliva which are sold on the market in Manila for up to 200,000 PhP a kilo ($ 4,762 a kilo). It’s illegal to take, purchase, or sell these nests but there are many restaurants still selling these on Palawan. They make their nests in caves or off steep cliffs, and we are going to work on protecting their habitat.
I found a house that I am going to move into next month. It is actually the old house of my host father when he was growing up. It’s right down the road from where I am living right now. A simple little concrete house, two bedrooms on a good plot of land. I had a few options but I settled on this choice because I really wanted to stay in the same community. I have developed relationships with the people here, and it has really helped to integrate with a host family here. There was a much nicer house closer to town, made of marble, right on the beach, land to make a garden, yard, porch, pool table, couches, beds, TV, oven, complete with all the appliances, the works really and for a good price, only the equivalent of about $70 a month, but I don’t know anyone in that community. I could see myself just getting off work, heading home, and having a big ol’ house to myself and no one to talk to. And there is not a People’s Organization there either. Here in Agnay there is a very active group of people passionate about conserving their marine resources so this is where I am meant to be, even if 9 km from town. At least it should keep me in shape while I am here, riding my bike everyday to town. I love the people here, they treat me like family, they watch out for me and I truly feel very welcome and safe which is why I want to stay here. Everyone in this Barangay is literally related to each other, they are one big extended family. I love them.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Adjusting to a new life...
So as happy as I sounded in my last blog, it really isn’t quite as magnificent and carefree as I made it out to be. I still felt like a tourist in my last entry, everything was new and I was just beginning to discover the island. The poverty here is real and prominent on the island, the Philippines certainly isn’t paradise for the people who live here. They struggle everyday to make ends meet, they have no concept of saving, planning for the future, just living day to day. Many have no jobs or work only temporarily, and many talk of one day reaching America. But I have conversations with them about America as well. America also isn’t the paradise they dream of. I tell them we have poverty too, we have many people living on the streets begging for money, and the economic gap between the rich and poor is alarming. People are struggling to find jobs in America as well I tell them. They ask if we have squatters, and well we don’t really. I tell them we just have people begging on the streets because they don’t know how to build their own shanty house, they don’t know to raise chickens and crops, trade for food, and sustain their own livelihood, they just weren’t raised in that type of environment nor is there the space for that kind of life in a town, but they do know other skills, like maybe how to use a computer, do construction work or fix a car, but got sick and weren’t able to pay their medical bill, maybe they are disabled, maybe they have a criminal record, maybe they are veterans or maybe they are emotionally unstable because they had an abusive upbringing. Many of them were raised in the city or in more densely populated areas where there are no farms or other natural resources to live off of, and that’s where they end up, on the city streets begging for money because they don’t know how to sustain their own livelihood like a squatter usually does. Anyways, I really enjoy having these conversations with Filipinos, because many people in less developed countries just see America for what is in the media and on television and are unaware of the inequality and poverty that also exists in my home country.
I live in a beautiful place here, but as you can imagine living in a foreign country is vastly different from traveling to a foreign country. In all my previous travels, I have had the freedom to be able to pick up and leave, catch the next bus out, and be on my way to a new place surrounded by unfamiliar people. I have made the commitment to leave here, get to know the people, the language, and work to improve the livelihood of the Filipino people. The most difficult has been the language barrier. Unless I am being talked at directly, I tend to just sink into the background and try hopelessly to pick up what they are saying because not only do they speak very fast, but they speak the local dialect. There are miscommunications everyday, they take me for an idiot sometimes just because there is that lack of understanding which I guess could happen both ways. I also have a really hard time because I talk slower obviously than a native speaker. So I get cut off a lot and interrupted because well that’s how Filipinos talk, they all talk at once really fast and whoever talks the loudest or longer seems to get their point across. I really enjoy one on one conversations because I have more time to compile my thoughts in Tagalog before being cut off and I also get laughed at less. And if you do know something, never say “I know” here because it is taken to mean “I know all” and that you are a snobby American. Today I had my first session with my new Tagalog tutor at my house. She will be coming here Tuesdays and Thursdays for one hour and then three hours on both Saturday and Sunday. She is wonderful, her name is Mercedes and she is actually a 4th grade teacher so she really knows how to teach at an elementary level. I am really looking forward to becoming fluent in Tagalog!
My work started off pretty busy working with the NGO on the giant clam restocking project, but it has settled down quite a bit. I was warned about this everyday of orientation and training. The work pace is much slower here than in the United States as I am sure you can all imagine. When I come into work at 8 am, we chit chat about anything really, speak with other government officials or community members that stop by our office, play computer games, read some papers or books, look at pictures, sometimes just stare into space, take trips to market to look at the fish available, take naps, walk around town, and well do whatever you want really, it’s up to you how productive you want to be, then we all head home at 5 pm or sometimes have a drink at a sari-sari store after work. We also take trips to other parts of the island to meet with other People’s Organizations and their projects they have going there, like vermiculture (composting with worms), greenhouses, tilapia farms, and mangrove restoration projects. I started looking into starting a freshwater pearl farm here but I am not sure if we have the resources to start something like that here. It really has to be pretty big scale if you want to profit from it at all as an alternative livelihood project. So as some of you may know, mussels produce a pearl as a reaction to a foreign object inserted into its tissue. So you can artificially inject them with sand and they will produce a pearl, but for about every 100 pearls you inject, only 50 will survive, and only 10 of those perhaps will produce a nice pearl. Couple the survival rate with the fact that it can be a 5-10 year process and well, that calls for a pretty big operation, patience, and a lot of capitol investment. We haven’t ruled it out, but we are looking into more feasible projects.
One that my mayor suggested during my site visit was to create a bird sanctuary. I actually just visited the site earlier today. There are mangroves in the area which block off a decent sized body of water which only really mixes with the ocean during really high tide. There are wild migratory ducks, hundreds of them, they come to the lagoon around 5 pm every afternoon and leave every morning during sunrise when the squatters that live there start walking around. They are threatened apparently because people remove the nests and eggs and sell them for a high price in Manila. We want to not only create a bird sanctuary but develop the area as an ecotourism destination where tourists can walk on a boardwalk through the mangroves, watch the ducks, take a small paddle boat out and hook and line for bangus, and have a kitchen for them to grill up their catch, paddle out or take the boardwalk to a tiny little island just off the coast and hike on a trail to the top. While it all sounds ideal, we of course have to be very careful to not disrupt the natural ecosystem here and ensure that this ecotourism will not further destroy the habitat and thus further threaten the wild duck populations. It is a delicate situation that must be approached with caution. We will have to stock the pond with bangus (the national fish of the Philippines- milk fish) and maybe insert a mesh barrier where high tide ocean water enters the lagoon to prevent them from all escaping. We’ll have to build a guardhouse to watch over the area which can be connected to the kitchen area. However, there are, as of right now, eight families of squatters on the land. While they have no permission to be on the land, and we have every right to kick them off of the land if they are encroaching on land used by endangered species, it is a difficult and sensitive situation. These people have lived on the land for a long time now whether it is federal land or not, they have established a home here. The one I walked by today had a decent house, very well maintained yard, raked clean, and complete with flowers and a garden plot. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, it will be hard to tell these people they need to leave.
Last weekend, two other Peace Corps volunteers came to my site and we went diving on Cobrador Island, which has some of the nicest reefs because the island is not nearly as populated as the main island. We planned on cooking up an Indian feast here for Thanksgiving with my friend here from India, also a volunteer but working as a director of a catholic school teaching kids technical skills. However, we got back late and came back to his school to find our meal was already waiting for us, prepared by his talented cook! Very delicious, spicy chicken curry! Not your typical Thanksgiving dinner, but masarap talaga! I met a few ladies the other night that also work in the Municipal Office. I walked by a sari-sari store on my way out of the office and I was convinced to come in and have just one beer, then it was just one more, then isa pa lang, then one for the road, and so on and so one. They bought me several beers, dinner, and paid my fare to get home despite all my effort to pay. Filipinos are so generous here, it’s really in their blood. They are my newest friends here all in their 50’s, one of them is divorced and another is a widow. We talk girl talk and about how we don’t need men and are independent, haha, but then the next minute we talk about how I will keep my eyes out for single men for them and that they will be looking for a nice lalaki for me. Filipinos are very keen on finding all of us volunteers a Filipino spouse. Usually the third question I get after how old are you and where are you from, is are you single?
Anyways, that’s all for now, overall it’s been great, my first few weeks of work have really flown by. I have my good days and I have my bad days, but as another volunteer put it, without a bad day you would never know a good day.
I live in a beautiful place here, but as you can imagine living in a foreign country is vastly different from traveling to a foreign country. In all my previous travels, I have had the freedom to be able to pick up and leave, catch the next bus out, and be on my way to a new place surrounded by unfamiliar people. I have made the commitment to leave here, get to know the people, the language, and work to improve the livelihood of the Filipino people. The most difficult has been the language barrier. Unless I am being talked at directly, I tend to just sink into the background and try hopelessly to pick up what they are saying because not only do they speak very fast, but they speak the local dialect. There are miscommunications everyday, they take me for an idiot sometimes just because there is that lack of understanding which I guess could happen both ways. I also have a really hard time because I talk slower obviously than a native speaker. So I get cut off a lot and interrupted because well that’s how Filipinos talk, they all talk at once really fast and whoever talks the loudest or longer seems to get their point across. I really enjoy one on one conversations because I have more time to compile my thoughts in Tagalog before being cut off and I also get laughed at less. And if you do know something, never say “I know” here because it is taken to mean “I know all” and that you are a snobby American. Today I had my first session with my new Tagalog tutor at my house. She will be coming here Tuesdays and Thursdays for one hour and then three hours on both Saturday and Sunday. She is wonderful, her name is Mercedes and she is actually a 4th grade teacher so she really knows how to teach at an elementary level. I am really looking forward to becoming fluent in Tagalog!
My work started off pretty busy working with the NGO on the giant clam restocking project, but it has settled down quite a bit. I was warned about this everyday of orientation and training. The work pace is much slower here than in the United States as I am sure you can all imagine. When I come into work at 8 am, we chit chat about anything really, speak with other government officials or community members that stop by our office, play computer games, read some papers or books, look at pictures, sometimes just stare into space, take trips to market to look at the fish available, take naps, walk around town, and well do whatever you want really, it’s up to you how productive you want to be, then we all head home at 5 pm or sometimes have a drink at a sari-sari store after work. We also take trips to other parts of the island to meet with other People’s Organizations and their projects they have going there, like vermiculture (composting with worms), greenhouses, tilapia farms, and mangrove restoration projects. I started looking into starting a freshwater pearl farm here but I am not sure if we have the resources to start something like that here. It really has to be pretty big scale if you want to profit from it at all as an alternative livelihood project. So as some of you may know, mussels produce a pearl as a reaction to a foreign object inserted into its tissue. So you can artificially inject them with sand and they will produce a pearl, but for about every 100 pearls you inject, only 50 will survive, and only 10 of those perhaps will produce a nice pearl. Couple the survival rate with the fact that it can be a 5-10 year process and well, that calls for a pretty big operation, patience, and a lot of capitol investment. We haven’t ruled it out, but we are looking into more feasible projects.
One that my mayor suggested during my site visit was to create a bird sanctuary. I actually just visited the site earlier today. There are mangroves in the area which block off a decent sized body of water which only really mixes with the ocean during really high tide. There are wild migratory ducks, hundreds of them, they come to the lagoon around 5 pm every afternoon and leave every morning during sunrise when the squatters that live there start walking around. They are threatened apparently because people remove the nests and eggs and sell them for a high price in Manila. We want to not only create a bird sanctuary but develop the area as an ecotourism destination where tourists can walk on a boardwalk through the mangroves, watch the ducks, take a small paddle boat out and hook and line for bangus, and have a kitchen for them to grill up their catch, paddle out or take the boardwalk to a tiny little island just off the coast and hike on a trail to the top. While it all sounds ideal, we of course have to be very careful to not disrupt the natural ecosystem here and ensure that this ecotourism will not further destroy the habitat and thus further threaten the wild duck populations. It is a delicate situation that must be approached with caution. We will have to stock the pond with bangus (the national fish of the Philippines- milk fish) and maybe insert a mesh barrier where high tide ocean water enters the lagoon to prevent them from all escaping. We’ll have to build a guardhouse to watch over the area which can be connected to the kitchen area. However, there are, as of right now, eight families of squatters on the land. While they have no permission to be on the land, and we have every right to kick them off of the land if they are encroaching on land used by endangered species, it is a difficult and sensitive situation. These people have lived on the land for a long time now whether it is federal land or not, they have established a home here. The one I walked by today had a decent house, very well maintained yard, raked clean, and complete with flowers and a garden plot. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, it will be hard to tell these people they need to leave.
Last weekend, two other Peace Corps volunteers came to my site and we went diving on Cobrador Island, which has some of the nicest reefs because the island is not nearly as populated as the main island. We planned on cooking up an Indian feast here for Thanksgiving with my friend here from India, also a volunteer but working as a director of a catholic school teaching kids technical skills. However, we got back late and came back to his school to find our meal was already waiting for us, prepared by his talented cook! Very delicious, spicy chicken curry! Not your typical Thanksgiving dinner, but masarap talaga! I met a few ladies the other night that also work in the Municipal Office. I walked by a sari-sari store on my way out of the office and I was convinced to come in and have just one beer, then it was just one more, then isa pa lang, then one for the road, and so on and so one. They bought me several beers, dinner, and paid my fare to get home despite all my effort to pay. Filipinos are so generous here, it’s really in their blood. They are my newest friends here all in their 50’s, one of them is divorced and another is a widow. We talk girl talk and about how we don’t need men and are independent, haha, but then the next minute we talk about how I will keep my eyes out for single men for them and that they will be looking for a nice lalaki for me. Filipinos are very keen on finding all of us volunteers a Filipino spouse. Usually the third question I get after how old are you and where are you from, is are you single?
Anyways, that’s all for now, overall it’s been great, my first few weeks of work have really flown by. I have my good days and I have my bad days, but as another volunteer put it, without a bad day you would never know a good day.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Happy as a Giant Clam
I am officially a United States Peace Corps Volunteer now. Up until a few days ago I could only claim I was a trainee, but now I am sworn-in, a full-fledged volunteer and have experienced my first two days of work thus far. Every Monday there is a flag ceremony here which is pretty typical everywhere you go in the Philippines. We sang the national anthem and then I was called up to the front to give an impromptu speech in Tagalog about what I am doing here. Everyone was very welcoming and the crowd was filled with nothing but good energy and smiles. After the flag ceremony I bought a mountain bike, a helmet, and a lock so that I could ride to the office of “SIKAT” a Non-Government Organization that I will be working with closely during my time here. We did a Giant Clam assessment in Agnipa around the Marine Protected Area (MPA) using the manta tow method I described a few blogs ago where you are basically pulled behind a bangka as you snorkel and then count any giant clams you see. We located the clams and recorded their location using a GPS so that the following day we could find them again, weigh them, and transfer them inside the MPA. It is prohibited in the Philippines to take Giant Clams regardless of whether they are inside an MPA or not. However, by putting them inside the MPA, they can be better monitored because there is a Bantay Dagat (coast guard) protecting the area. We are also moving the clams to slightly deeper water, about 15- 20 feet, so they will be less accessible to illegal fishers and less susceptible to overheating in shallow waters during low tide. We will then return to these MPA’s and tag each clam so that we can keep track of them and monitor their growth. It’s been an amazing couple of first work days and it doesn’t stop there. After work, I ride my bicycle 9 km to my house winding in around mangrove forests, coconut tree groves, up and around cliffsides with unbelievable views of the neighboring islands, breathing the fresh clean air because there is never traffic, and making it just in time to catch the sunset over the horizon. When I get home, my family greets me with smiles and banter, and merienda of course. Life couldn’t be better…. The last three months of training has certainly paid off, I am finally here at my permanent site in the Philippines, Romblon, starting my new life as a volunteer.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Meron akong maliit mga hayop sa tiyan ko
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.
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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