It’s Sunday, another unpredictably great week has come and gone. Last Sunday, I had no idea I’d spend Wednesday through Friday at Alona White Beach on Panglao Island, learning how to conduct and planning for a livelihood workshop for out-of-school youth. (We all continue to pinch ourselves. They told us we’d suffer when we applied, and reminded us at every juncture. It’s been quite a vacation thus far, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers. It woulda felt even better before the billionaires got their tax cuts.) We are inviting the youth from all over the province and will hold the workshop in a couple weeks at Bohol Bee Farm, known for their organic squash muffins. We will help them decide whether entrepreneurship is for them, brainstorm business ideas, and write a simple business plan.
The most common business ambition here is “sari-sari,” the term for convenience store. As we learned in Tubigon, sari-sari owners are perceived to be rich. However, the prevalence of sari-sari is to the over-saturation point, and it’s tough work to explain that as the amount of sari-sari increase, the harder it is to make any money, cuz there will be more sari-sari sharing the same amount of customers. So we’ll be brainstorming away from sari-sari. Maybe pig-breeding or pig-fattening, although I’d rather if pigs were not slaughtered for every birthday, graduation, and fiesta. If and when I have a despidita (goodbye party), those expecting to chomp on baboy (pig) will be forced to eat tokwa (tofu) instead. And lots of it!
Back to the beach, I borrowed a friend’s snorkel gear, and I short order stepped on a sea urchin. My left heel was not very happy, but despite my foot, I swam out, with Kris, (He’s here in the Peace Corps with his wife Kristin, they married in august, and will spend their two years of service honeymooning in El Nido, Palawan, the location for the cover photo of the official The Philippines tourist map. He’s the guy jumping off the waterfall in the monkey see picture in my photo gallery. I haven’t spoke much about the volunteers, but it’s a great gang of 41, chock full of eccentric, eager, intelligent folks. I’ve got no idea how I made the cut.) Oh yes, back to the beach. At sea, we met thousands of tiny zebra-like fish schooling around in tight and ever-changing formations. Kris also discovered two scuba divers some meters below. We swam thru their bubbles, while the sun was setting.
I spoke to a fisherman in broken Cebuano. He told me he’d had no luck catching fish the whole day. Snorkeling reveals a sad truth here; destructive fishing practices. Littering the sea floor are countless pieces of broken balay ni isda (coral, literally house of fish). Dynamite fishing was extensively for years to scare fish out of the corals. My host papa’s father was a dynamite fisherman who blew off one of his arms and became deaf as a result. These days, there are fewer and fewer fish. (I’ve heard dynamite fishing, along with cyanide spraying in the corals, continues illegally to this day. Bribery is rampant here. To my tropical aquarium lovers: if you buy fish from The Philippines, they’ve probably been cyanided out.)
There’s an analogy I hope I can effectively draw for the people of Tubigon. Destroying corals for short-term gain has become a long-term tragedy. They don’t have Home Depot here, but even if they did, you wouldn’t find replacement coral reef. So too, the short term gains from saving money on dyes (chemical vs. vegetable) and/or proper waste disposal will incur nature’s revenge in the not so far future.
Tomorrow “site visit” week begins. My peers have already been disbursed to all corners of this Nevada-sized country. Me, I just have to walk a few blocks to the DTI office at 8am tomorrow. Then I’ll ride up the coast to Inabanga (near Tubigon) with some DTI to assess the potential for cloning the Tubigon weaving project fifteen times over (in fifteen separate barangay.
In the name of good first impressions, I went for a haircut on Friday, at the corner of Lamdagan and San Jose to be precise. I’m quite sure it was my 19-year-old barber’s first experience in communication breakdown in the workplace. But he trimmed the top and buzzed the sides perfectly. He understood I wanted him to leave the sideburns; Chops has become my middle name here. Not a bad deal for 20 pesos (56 pesos to the dollar.) It would have been at least 50 pesos at a place with Air Con. What’s a little extra sweat?
I do not expect to update this again until the 15th, and if you don’t see an update by the 17th, please kindly wait until the following Sunday at earliest. I appreciate your patience and promise some food commentary and a continuation of the videoke saga. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Finally, what became of my stinging foot? I did what I had to do. I urinated on it, and the urchin fragments kindly dislodged.
Posted by dbs at March 7, 2004 06:12 PM