I ate an early breakfast of plain toasted tofu squares and a mango on Wednesday. Day was just breaking when I crept out of the house, hurried down the narrow rocky dirt path and out to the CPG Avenue where I waited for the de facto Peace Corps jeepney to take us to the pier in Baclayon. (Her name is Green Monster People Mover. She is piloted by the fearless, faithful Jerry.) At the end of the dilapidated pier, we embarked a small pump boat and set out towards Pamilacan Island.
The possibility of spotting whales was the reason we were on the boat at 6am. Their favorite time to play is the early morning. But they were hiding on Wednesday. Instead the dolphins came out. Brought back memories of dolphins swimming alongside Semester at Sea’s S.S. Universe Explorer. The best part was watching our tech trainer Ambet giggle and cheer every time the dolphins surfaced. (As a street child he never experienced childhood properly, and he proudly explains that he sometimes makes up for lost time.)
The whales were also the reason we were headed to Pamilacan in the first place. The people of Pamilacan have hunted whale since the beginning of time. Which has provided them with enough money to live comfortably on their two kilometer island. Unfortunately, the whale population has steadily dwindled to the point of near extinction.
A few years ago, whaling was banned. And unlike most natural resource depletion bans here in The Philippines, the people have abided to the ban. The people love the whales and most of them, if not all, are content with the ban. There is even a museum dedicated to the whale in the works.
But all of a sudden, the main source of income on Pamilacan was extinct. So the women set up a bakery cooperative. (Why a bakery is not quite clear.) So eleven of us Peace Corps trainees went there to help the women figure out why they haven’t made any money in the past year. (When people in developing countries don’t make money right away, they tend to think their business is doomed. And one of the trainees was doomed by the sun. She got burned so bad she had to hire a boat to bring her back to the mainland for treatment before our workshops got underway.)
The first day on the island we spent lounging around, drinking coconut juice fresh off the tree, and planning our workshop on the beach. A big hairy black pig (the native pig) escaped her cage and we watched the islanders run after it every which way. The darn thing hurled herself through a barbed wire fence and didn’t even flinch. And the sunsets of Pamilacan are among the hottest sunsets I’ve ever been privileged to.
In the morning I woke at sunrise to have a snorkeling session. It’s simply amazing the living rainbows just below the surface. And the sounds of snorkel breathing makes me feel like I’m back in outer space. I haven’t been scuba-diving yet but I will when I get bored and lonely and feel like treating myself to a magic show.
We hiked up the hill (there are no cars or trikes and I only saw one bicycle and two wheelbarrows in three days) and were ready and waiting for our bakery women at 8am. 9am rolled around and only four of the 25 bakers were present. So Ambet went to their houses to corral them to the day care center we had taken over. Nineteen ended up seated in pint-sized wooden chairs (reminiscent of the days I taught English to Japanese tots.) This was their first opportunity to sit around for any length of time and discuss their bakery since some German NGO build the bakery and a government agency called TESDA came to the island to teach them how to bake bread and brownies. That was a while ago.
We each had one session to conduct. Mine regarded “The 5 M’s of Production.” Apparently these 5 M’s are pretty famous, but I don’t recall hearing about them in any class I ever took. This was the final session of the first day…so we moved over to the bakery to check it out. Picture a garage-sized rectangular cement building with a big table in the middle and a small oven in the corner. Conducting a session in the bakery was a mistake, cuz it was really hot in there (even without the oven on.) So while I was teaching them about Materials, Moment, woMan power, Machinery, and Money (though not necessarily in that order) the women fanned themselves incessantly and stared at their watches.
Before we cut the session short, we learned that one of their fears is that some of their bread will go unsold, which might eat into their meager profits. However, this is an unrealized fear, as they’ve always sold out their inventory. If they made more they’d probably still sell out, but another problem arises that they don’t have enough money to buy more ingredients. (There is only one “ferry” to the mainland per week, so they can’t just run to the grocery when they’ve sold out and have enough cash to buy more. They have to wait until next week.)
There are many challenges, all interlocked, and we were just there to help them get the discussion going, make some realizations about their cooperative. They’ll have to figure out what to focus on (scheduling, fund raising, exporting to the mainland, learning how to make breadcrumbs from the stale bread, etc.) After all, if we told them what to do, they’d expect the same when they have bigger challenges, and we won’t be around to hold their hands. That’s really what Peace Corps is all about…helping people learn to help themselves.
All in all, the women were really into our workshop, evidenced by the fact that they bothered to come back after lunch. (Apparently, workshop defections are the norm here.) They also showed up early the second day, and there was a massive hand-shaking session on our way out.
I spent my language study time lounging on a big bamboo bench with a bunch of teenage boys who sit out the hot hot heat, saving their energy for the cooler hours when they go out fishing, hoping to catch enough for dinner, and, if they get really lucky, a big lapu-lapu that can be sold to a resort on Panglao Island. (There are no fancy resorts, let alone a hostel on Pamilacan.) So they take it easy all day while the girls and women are busy doing laundry, feeding the goats, cooking, cleaning, etc. And since the electricity only comes on from 6-11pm, they are TV-free couch potatoes. There is, however a radio soap opera they listen to on a staticy old radio. For me, radio soaps are something my grandparents might have listened to. For them, it’s about as high technology as it gets.
Yesterday I was forced to play basketball with a neighbor, one-on-one. (When I tell people I’m baynte tres, the response is “Michael Jordan!” Too bad I’ll be baynte kwatro in a month. NBA action dominates the morning sports report on DYRT AM. A current promo for name-brand cough syrup is a free NBA basketball card, by Upper Deck. Obviously, basketball is huge here.) OK, outside the parentheses, let me describe the court. Picture mud and trash heaps burning. Rusty sheet metal is the out-of-bounds marker. The backboard is a piece of rotting wood, nailed to a tree. The tree has sprawling roots. The ball itself used to be orange. Now it is black. Miraculously it still retains air, but it’s not so easy to dribble on mud.
The challenger is at least three or four inches shorter than I, and the same age as my mother (who never sends me email,) but he is much more adept at the game my fellow American invented. (Another reminder of my time in Japan, except there the game was played wearing upmarket Nikes, not dog-eared flip-flops. And once there I walked into the gym, nailed a 3-pointer…swoosh…and walked right back out.) I try my best to pull out all my Harlem Globetrotter moves, such as guarding him with my buttocks, passing the ball to kids perched above the net in the tree, screaming gibberish, but nothing works. Final score: 12-3. 12 minus 3 equals nine, so my punishment for sucking so bad is having to crawl through his legs nine times. With half the neighborhood looking on. Before the kid a foot shorter and well-qualified to earn a shutout can challenge me, I go home and stand under the garden hose nozzle, which provides me a cold shower.
Last night, Fernando Poe Jr., the Arnold Schwarzenegger of The Philippines, unschooled action hero turned presidential candidate came to town for a big rally, right where Papa sells his peanuts. Mama spent an hour filling small plastic bags with water, which she chilled. She told me Papa was going to come home to pick them up, but I offered to help her bring them to Papa. But Peace Corps policy states we are not allowed to attend political events, since we are officially apolitical when it comes to host-country politics. (We can say whatever we want about George.) So I waited with the environmentally- unfriendly bags of water while Mama went to fetch Papa from his stand. The point of the story is that for all the work, at 70 centavos per water bag, then subtracting the cost of the baggies and the trike fare, the final take for all the hard work was about one U.S. dollar. (But the McDonalds dollar menu here only cost 20 pesos, or 35 cents. Thank you Ronald!)
This week takes us on another boat ride, to Dumaguete City for two days shadowing actual Peace Corps volunteers and some authentic Mexican food. Then next week I’ll fly up to Manila for probably the only Passover Seder in all these seven thousand Philippine islands. So as they say here, kadiyot lang or “for a while” when they translate it to English, but what they really mean is please wait. It might be a couple weeks until the next update. This one was long enuf.
The youth entrepreneurship workshop felt a lot like sleep-away camp, except I’ve never been a counselor, and some of the campers were my seniors. Like camp because we were at the beautiful, rustic Bohol Bee Farm…away from chores and responsibilities and parents and annoying siblings…for many of our participants it was probably the first time in their lives they spent the night apart from their families, a rare chance to eat a dinner someone else cooked (with organic vegetables and organic red rice!) Like camp cuz all the youth stayed up gossiping way past bedtime. Like camp cuz nobody knew each other at the beginning, and by the end nobody wanted to leave each other. Plenty of times for games (a.k.a. teambuilding exercises/icebreakers) such as the human knot and the game with no name.
But there was also the workshop part of it, which I think I’ve explained to some extent before. Business is not for everybody, myself included (sometimes I’m not sure how I’ve earned the title “business advisor,” but there were some there who seemed very enlightened by our modules on production, marketing, etc. At the very least, all the participants can return to their communities and provide advice to those who are in business or who are contemplating starting one (and brag about the organic veggie lasagna.)
At the workshop we also watched one of the saddest videos imaginable. “No Time for Play” is about child labor in The Philippines. It would be bad enough if these kids simply had no time to play, but there is also no time for school.
Worse still, there are many jobs reserved for kids that provide tremendous health hazards. Kids at gold mines often suffer broken bones from falling debris. In order to extract the small nuggets of gold, barehanded handling of mercury is required. To make brooms, children must wade through swamps to gather the fibers. Their wounds and scabies never get the chance to recover. Fireworks factories experience explosions on a regular basis. Sardine canneries are staffed by child slaves, lured away from their families by false promises of big money.
There are laws in place prohibiting child labor, but it takes brave politicians and non-government workers to do anything about enforcement. The employers are very powerful, and like cheap labor. And the families need income to eat. It’s a complicated problem, and I have no idea what to think about it. Neither did anyone watching the video. At least we know the problem is out there. I know I’ll try to think harder and be more aware of the sources of things I buy.
On a happier note, about six years ago, Vicky at Bohol Bee Farm decided she wanted to garden on her land. But the terrain is very rocky, and many people told her she had no chance. She began composting, and she tossed the compost on top of the rocks. Viola! She now has a gorgeous, thriving, fragrant garden, capable of providing edible-flower adorned organic salad for upwards of 50 people a day. And the honey squash muffins are da bomb!
Last Monday, I showed up a few minutes before 8am to the DTI office. The last office I worked in was actually a Japanese public school, where the day began with everyone standing up and a loud, in unison “OHAYOU GOZAIMASU” followed by very important announcements I could never understand. So I was expecting sort of expecting that here. But no, everyone just chika-chika (small talk, gossip) for a while and then eventually the work begins, interspersed by much more chika-chika.
My new mustached supervisor, Blair (named for the U.S. Ambassador at the time of his birth, thirty-something years ago,) standing tall for a Filipino at 5”10, brought me to the conference room for orientation. He told me I’d live in Tagbilaran City, (the provincial capital, where I am now) sit at a desk 8 to 5, and go out in the field when I have to. I told him I’d been told (by the wonderful Stella in the Peace Corps office) that it would be the other way around. He looked at me incredulously…Do you want to live out in the sticks? Mahimo . (That’s possible.) Simple as that. No need to argue. I was scared there for a second. I guess he just figured coming from New York, I’d prefer the city life.
Then as he was explaining to me my role, a rat scurried by. I shrieked. Just kidding. I didn’t bat an eyelash. It made the air-conditioned office (with a nostalgic 28.8 kbps internet connection) seem a little more Peace Corps-like.
At half past four, everyone packed up and left their desks. I figured it was time to go home. But no, just time to crowd around the time clock and chika-chika. Then at 5:01, a commotion ensued as everyone battled to punch out first. Fun to watch but sure glad I don’t have to do that every day for the next two years.
On Tuesday morning, Blair and I (along with Rey, Blair’s assistant) took a van a hundred miles up the coast to Inabanga, my primary site. It is a simple town with pleasant people. They fish and farm and have market day every Tuesday.
It was raining when we arrived. Not much goes on in The Philippines when it’s raining. People just sit around and wait for it to stop. We sought shelter and once the rain subsided, we walked over to visit the mayor. There was a long line of citizens waiting to solicit all sorts of things, from financial assistance for funerals to job recommendations for overseas work. We skipped right over the line. I hope those waiting in line don’t take it against me. I’d have been glad to hang around and chat for a few hours.
The mayor is a jolly lady, whose husband was mayor for the maximum three terms prior to her election. She’s just completing her 2nd term, about to begin campaigning for her 3rd. She seems thrilled to have a Peace Corps volunteer here. We didn’t stay long cuz the long line was growing longer.
DTI chose to send me to Inabanga to better organize the loom weaving project in large part because the mayor is very cooperative with DTI projects.
Next stop was a courtesy call to the police chief. I promised him I have no criminal record and that I plan to behave myself. Then down the block to the market (remember, Tuesday is market day.) Many fresh produce are sold there, as well as piles and piles of second-hand clothing, which I’ve heard is often surplus from the massive Hong Kong Salvation Army. I don’t know if tofu is available, but it’s doubtful. I’ll try to make friends with someone who can ferry it in from Cebu. (Inabanga is the closest point in Bohol to Cebu, the second largest city in The Philippines. There is tofu there, as well as a decent Mexican joint and even a vegetarian restaurant.)
Wednesday we had two meetings with barangay weavers. Blair outlined the current system. They routinely weave 8 or 9 meters when the order states 10. They figure if someone orders blue, the customer won’t mind green or even pink. An order due by this Friday means next Thursday. Blair politely explained to them that these are not good marketing practices.
They all understand marketing and its powers. Everyone drinks coca-cola here. After all, you can’t go fifty feet without some sort of coca-cola promotion reminding you to drink it. There are even coca-cola brand red schoolhouses here. There is a great Philippine myth that coca-cola aids digestion of meat and fish. So the trick will be to help them believe marketing applies to them, and aid them in developing good practices.
Actually, a more basic challenge will be meeting attendance. Of the six meetings we had scheduled in a three day period: the first barangay didn’t know we were coming, the second had only 25% of the weavers show up, the third had only barangay officials and zero weavers show up, and the fourth took an hour to rally everyone together. The fifth and sixth barangay cancelled due to a more important meeting with the governor.
After days of expressing my concerns about short-term profit motives compromising the environment in the long-term, Blair promised me he will contact the PTRI (Philippine Textile Research Institute) to ask their assistance in setting up an experimental vegetable dye farm in Inabanga. (There’s a second factor which will come in handy: All-natural handicrafts can command a premium.)
Vegetable dye extraction could also create a new local support industry. And it turns out, back in the day, vegetable dyes were used by loom weavers in Inabanga. Some of the older folk waxed nostalgic discussing which plants they used to extract various colors. Somewhere along the way, chemical dyes became cheaper and simplified the process.
In our meetings, Blair gave me the opportunity to explain vaguely the hazards of chemical dyes and express our shared concern for an environmentally friendly Inabanga, Bohol, Philippines, Planet Earth. (At one meeting, I spaced out a little and watched the women gather their harvested rice after it had finished drying on the basketball court.) Treating the earth right will ensure a fertile crop in years to come.
Sorry if this seems garbled or confusing or even idealistic. I usually just type as I go, and rarely have the time or patience to edit much. I feel I’m off to a great start with my supervisor and the good people of Inabanga.
Now, back to training with the rest of the gang for a few more weeks. By the way, one of my fellow trainees stays with a family whose pet dogs are named Bush and Saddam.
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.
I’ve chosen a secondary project for my Peace Corps service. I intend to bring more organized videoke catalogs -- properly alphabetized by artist, and cross referenced by song -- to the good, melodious people of The Philippines. (joke, joke, joke!) Seriously, The Philippines is the first place I’ve encountered where informing your peers that you’ve just been funny is part and parcel of the art of joke-telling. (Unlike those irritating Americans who have no sense of humor but add “just kidding” every time they think they’ve said something funny. Agreed?) Saturday night was videoke night here in Bohol. It was my first visit to “Chicken A.” Picture a greasy cafeteria with dim lighting, and a Ms. Pac-man machine in the corner, but instead there are sing-along words on the screen, backed by semi-risqué footage. Videoke does indeed mean exactly the same thing as karaoke, it’s just the local term. My trilogy comprised of:
*Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones (a classic time has forgotten…it was not received very well, and I do a perfect true-to-the-original rendition)
*??? by Bryan Adams (the soft rock hit of 1991, the one from Robin Hood…I was dragged into this one by Myles, one of the language instructors.)
*Oh Bla Di Oh Bla Da by The Beatles (a duet with fellow Peace Corps Thomas Schultz, who had earlier in the day found himself locked out by his host family who went on a week-long vacation…since it was the end of the night, we tried to convince the three staff members to join in, but they must have been frightened when I ran behind the counter with the mic, because they abandoned their post and hid in the back.)
The next morning, papa told me over breakfast “I want to hear your voice.” He hooked up the huge old speaker to the TV, plugged in the staticy mic, and before I was done with my mango, I was belting out “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Later on, it began to pour. My host sister informed me it was raining because I sang. (joke, joke, joke!)
Last week my group stayed in Tubigon for three nights. If you’ve been following, you know that’s where I will spend the next two years. The verdict is: it’s awesome, I can’t wait to move in. The people are extremely hospitable and kind. The air is a bit cleaner there and the landscape is striking, from the sea to the rice fields to the green hills.
The women (and men) of the loom-weaving co-op are busting their backs to sustain their wonderful project. Their creations are fabulous and vibrant. Believe it or not, they have an outstanding order from Pottery Barn for custom-made raffia table runners. Personally, I’d like to see their stuff sold through Global Exchange. (As my internet access is severely limited and slower than the slowest internet connection I’ve ever had (since 1992) if anyone cares to do a little research to find out how to interest Global Exchange in one’s handicrafts, I’d appreciate it. Just email me the info.)
As I see it, the biggest challenge will be explaining to them the hazards of the chemical dyes they’re currently using. There are no laws here (or maybe just unenforced) requiring disclosure of chemical makeup of dyes. And the manufacturer refuses to divulge said info. So, maybe the water sanitation crew will run an analysis, but odds are it’s nasty stuff. The current setup has the excess dye seeping into the soil, mere feet from a shallow bathing and drinking well. (Digging deep wells is too costly.) The banana trees in the immediate vicinity look unhealthy.
Importation of vegetable dyes is currently prohibitively expensive as too is a proper waste disposal system for the bad dyes.
Dynamite fishing in the name of short-term financial gain has devastated the aquatic life in the area. (The struggle of fishermen was a major impetus for the formation of the co-op.) Seems to be a good analogy to the situation facing us now. There’s only so much destruction our earth can handle.
I wonder if the formation of a livelihood project charged with making vegetable dyes might be a feasible solution. So here’s another call for research, this time regarding vegetable dye production. Anybody?
I’d like to send a special shout out to my Gannie. At 92, she’s online for the first time, keeping up with my life. She even opened a hotmail account to email me, but I hope she still sends me Airmail letters.
I am posting 29 photos today. Check them out. See if you can tell what they’re all about. Picture yourself here. And plan to visit. I’ll show you around.