I will be heading to Japan (courtesy of my frequent flyer miles) for ten days to visit some very important people. So please don't expect an update for a couple of weeks. (Yes, I know they have internet in Japan, i just don't plan to use it while I'm on vacation.)
In the meantime, i leave you with an open letter to Brian Eno:
Dear Brian Eno,
Not so long ago (the second Friday of November 02003) I attended your Long Now Foundation Seminar. You asked the audience for some help coming up with ideas for your book tentatively titled "250 Projects to Induce Long Term Thinking."
I arrived to the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer in late January, two weeks prior to a corporate-sponsored, record-breaking 5,122 couples locking lips in unison. (They broke the record set less than a month earlier: 4,445 couples in Chile.) I believe the Philippines also holds the current record for world's largest barbeque grill.
I got to thinking how pointless these records are. They have little to no intrinsic value and soon enough they'll be broken. Yet people love being record-breakers, and the media loves their feats.
It's taken me forever, but I've finally come up with an idea which may have some potential: "Break a Record for the Future."
Screw the mass makeouts and cookouts, let's shoot for the largest coastal mangrove reforestation, the most-bountiful compost harvest, the longest caravan of vegetable-oil-fueled vehicles. The competitive nature of people will inspire the records to be broken time and time again, which can only be a good thing.
It's now easier than ever to begin the official process of record-breaking. The good people at Guinness have supplied an application link at their site www.guinnessworldrecords.com.
And if the good people at Guinness lack interest in such records, the Long Now website may be a fine place to keep track of these tremendous accomplishments in honor of the past, present, and future.
so long,
daniel
It’s been quite a whirlwind week, though the most recent highlight/lowlight (riding the garbage truck around Inabanga) will have to wait for later, because before I forget all about it, I want to tell you about our International Coastal Cleanup Day.
Nothing starts on time in the Philippines, aside from prime-time television junk. (I saw a lesson in an old textbook that attempted to motivate punctuality in Filipinos, to no effect. I’ve heard the same problem exists in Ecuador.) Still, I can’t seem to help myself. I show up on time all the time, and do a lot of waiting. (In America, I don’t think I was ever on time, except for at the movies. I was definitely not the guy with an overflowing bucket of popcorn, looking for two seats next to each other, ten minutes into the movie on opening night. I take after my dad in that I don’t even like to miss the previews.)
I was told to arrive, with an appetite for cleaning, at the barangay captain’s house at 8am. Then, before bed the night prior, I received a text message informing me to show up at 7:30 instead. Surely, I figured, this must be for real. So I set my alarm a little earlier. I ended up snoozing it, so had to hustle through my morning stretch and breakfast routine. Sure enough, I made it there by twenty-five past seven. The captain (Papa Mario as the kids call him) was still in his PJs, and nobody else was there. Embarrassed, embarrassed, surprise, surprise. The moral of the story is never be on time in the Philippines, even when you think maybe you should be.
Around 8:30 we finally got going on our hike through the jungle to the coast. At first it seemed nobody had remembered to bring a garbage bag to the cleanup, but someone found an old rice sack. (A tip to remember: amidst all the trash here, there’s always some trash you can use to put other trash in. You put the case in the case just in case!) I felt useful right off the bat when I explained to a guy that it would be perfectly fine if he didn’t put a water-logged, muddy coconut husk in the rice sack. (100% biodegradable—if you leave it there it will decompose and perhaps provide some nutrients.) He explained my advice to the others. (I got a text around that time from another volunteer informing me that they mostly picked up sticks where he was “cleaning.”) After that we concentrated on picking up mostly plastic stuff, and a few odds and ends, like bullet casings (used for illegal dynamite fishing, I think) an umbrella, a sneaker, and batteries. One guy spent most of the cleanup smacking mud with his bolo (machete) in search of crabs.
When the tide rose a bit, we jumped into little paddleboats, and made our way through the mangroves. I rode with the Papa Mario, and the barangay treasurer, who had eagle vision. I think we cleared out every plastic bag in the place…and there are tons of plastic bags. (For one thing, people love nothing more than putting water in a plastic bag, biting off the tip, and sucking out most of the water. Even if I wasn’t a white guy rarity, I think I’d still draw awkward stares for carrying a Nalgene bottle. For another thing, the market is a veritable plastic factory, but I should save that for another post.)
I feel sad about the plastic bags. The only people who usually travel these waters are fishermen, and they are leaving trash that will kill the very things that provide their livelihood and sustenance. Coastal cleanups are good, but only if there is some hint of continuing effort to stop making a mess, and I didn’t sense that at our cleanup. I don’t even think too many fishermen were there. If they even know about the event, they probably just figure we’ll be back again next year to clean up their mess again. I’ll try to bring it up in a meeting or two.
A guy climbed all the way to the top of the coconut tree, threw down some coconuts, and the guy with the bolo sliced them open. We ate and drank coconut, but still hungry and quite grimy, we called it a day, and headed home for lunch and a shower.
All in all, we managed to gather thirty-five kilos of trash. The rice sack was knotted at the top and tossed into the jungle. Great! Actually, it’s a serious problem here on this pocket-sized island. What do you do with the trash once it’s collected? (Hence, my ride on the garbage truck.)
Papa Mario asked me to come back at 4PM to play tennis. (His barangay has two of the three courts in town.) I told him maybe. He said whether or not I showed up, he’d be there. For perhaps the first time in the past eight months, I showed up late, a full forty minutes late. Nobody was at the courts except for a few kids. They looked at me like I was a Martian. Maybe it was the bike helmet that did it.
Word must have gotten to Papa Mario that I was ready for some serious action, (the first time since volleying with a Japanese junior-high school girls soft-ball tennis club, circa 2001) cuz he showed up shortly with a couple of rackets and a couple of balls. We volleyed for a while and then another couple of guys showed up and we had a doubles game going. I was alternately the best player I’d ever been, and the most awful screw-up.
It was the first time I’d ever played with the service of a ballboy (make that three ballboys) and I definitely sent them running. At one point, in a botched smash attempt, I sent the ball sailing over the fence, and through the front door of the house across the street. ‘Tis a good thing Filipinos have a good sense of humor.
I should add a couple more firsts. I was the only player wearing sneakers (first time in sneakers since January.) Everyone else was in flip flops. There was no game on the adjacent court, just a baby cow (calf?) taking a nap.
Ok, Daniel, that’s enough.
I have been without internet connection for nearly two weeks. Not by choice, although it hasn’t been half bad. The internet here in Inabanga just done gone and broke. Apparently the ports or cabinets are being uncooperative. (I am now in Tagbilaran City, where the internet is alive and well.)
In terms of email concerns, there are two, albeit minor. First, Hotmail deletes my Junk Mail after it has sat there five days, so if anything got misdirected here, it’s probably gone now. (Unfortunately for the mortgage lenders and porn purveyors, their kind solicitations have fallen on deaf ears since my internet ceased to exist.) Second, my Grandma Lili just got on the internet bandwagon. She is planning to come here, and wonders if she needs any inoculations. I didn’t write her back while I had the chance. I fear she might decide to cancel her trip AND stop using email if she gets no response. (Fortunately, she’s a pretty patient lady, and on top of that, might very well assume it takes two weeks or a month to arrive in my inbox all the way in the Philippines.)
In terms of the World Wide Web, no internet sadly means no update of www.danielbowmansimon.com, and no keeping up with Indecision ’04. (I don’t believe in polls anyway, and wish the pollsters would just be outsourced to New Guinea or Greenland, and thereby be eaten by cannibals or freeze to death.) There are also drastic research limitations with no internet. For example, I’m been waiting patiently to Google “twenty-four harness handlooms.” The introduction of such looms here could allow for much more intricate weaving designs, which could command higher prices. (The standard looms here are two-harness. How anachronistic is that?)
But I still have tons of stuff to do outside the virtual world. Like read about the history of roller coaster fatalities, the unique qualities of ketchup, W’s long term tax gimcrackery, and the ridiculously complicated tragedy in Sudan. All in the New Yorker. (It’s definitely easier on the eyes than staring at the internet, and equally as random. As if that weren’t enough, it’s well written, nicely edited, and comes with ads for all sorts of luxury goods I’d otherwise forget about here in the Philippines.)
Like going for a swim in the sea, just beyond the fishponds, when the tide is high. Swimming laps in the sea is what I imagine those “endless pools” advertised in the New Yorker. It’s probably not the cleanest sea, but if I position myself just right I can see nothing but trees, clouds and a couple small islands in the distance. Usually I’m the only person around, so I can enjoy the sound of nothing but the sea. The other day some kids came along, and I swear they must have thought I’d swam in from another planet or at least from the United States.
Like watching movies. I have a small collection of DVDs but never get around to watching them. But recently I’ve checked out three awesome films. My Life Without Me, directed by Isabel Coixet, with a rambunctious supporting role by the lead singer of Blondie, is about a young mother who learns she has terminal cancer, but doesn’t tell anybody. Paris, Texas is about a guy who doesn’t know what to say (directed by Wim Wenders, with a brilliant, drifting acoustic soundtrack by Ry Cooder.) Loves of a Blonde is an old black and white Czech film about a dirty old men and a stunningly gorgeous (blonde) girl who goes looking for a boy she met the week before, and gets an earful from the boy’s mother. Director Milos Forman (who also directed my all time favorite, Hair, scouted out the mother character on a crowded bus. What a catch!)
Like call up customer service and try to get the internet up and running. Customer service here is all about calling the customer “sir” or “ma’am” at least twice per sentence, reciting such phrases as “don’t worry, sir, I will be sure to tell the repair department about your concern, sir,” and “I suggest sir, that you try rebooting your computer, sir.” It’s the sad state of affairs here that the job market is so bad that call centers can be very selective. They generally only hire college graduates who have a functional command of English.
While I wish I didn’t have to call customer service, I do enjoy their adherence to the scripts. When I decide that the call isn’t going anywhere, I request to speak to the manager. There’s a brief moment of silence (perhaps confusion) then I hear a rustling through a script, and then, in perfect textbook English, read at a steady pace “I’m sorry, sir, but the manager is unable to speak with you at this time, sir, because he is speaking with another customer, sir.” (I wouldn’t doubt the “sirs” are in the script.) What really throws them for a loop is when I tell them I’m prepared to hold “for a while” for the manager. I get the feeling customer service folks here are used customers who have an endless supply of patience, who don’t expect their problem remedied anytime soon.
I don’t want to give the impression that all I do is read, swim, watch movies, and wait on hold. No, sir. I am a professional, and professionals are put on this planet to get work done. We have finally gotten within a step of releasing funds for the massive weaving project. All this waiting has allowed us to rethink some facets of the project. For example, we were planning to construct a comprehensive center for raw material preparation, dyeing, and loomweaving. One of the main reasons for this center is consolidation of quality control. (Quality is a recurring concern with handicraft livelihoods aimed at the tourist and export markets.) The original plan was to build fifty looms in the center – to accommodate fifty weavers simultaneously.
Along the way, it came to light that a similar setup was recently been on nearby Panglao Island, and that it is largely unused because the fare to get there eats into the salary, and anyway, the women need to be near their homes and children. We got to thinking the same fate could arise here. There are plenty of far-flung barangays (neighborhoods), from where it is expensive and time-consuming to reach the center.
Therefore, we are focusing on developing small satellite weaving centers, housed in barangays where the women live. If we provide the skilled weavers with high-quality looms and give them a good understanding of quality standards, so as to minimize rejected goods, we will all be in a good place. After all, quality control is most effective when there are no rejects. No rejects means getting paid for everything you’ve produced, with no muda (that’s Japanese for waste) of time or materials. As a bonus, we will locally hire a municipal quality assurance dude (or dudette) who can ride around on a motorcycle, to do spot-checks and make sure everything is running smoothly.
Now, we are at the stage of identifying interested barangays. We will set up meetings with the weavers and barangay officials, to assess their exact needs and current capabilities, instead of just showing up with a prefab weaving center and telling them to get to work. Wish us luck.
International Coastal Cleanup week is here. Inabanga has plenty of coast, so I will join in and do some cleanup. (We are even supposedly going to separate biodegradable and non-biodegradable “waste,” although I’ll believe it when I see it.) This event has been going strong for eighteen years, so if you’re anywhere near the coast, care about water and the future, and don’t mind getting a little wet and dirty, get involved!
Coming up: Filipino stereotypes of foreigners, and some of their absurd concepts of life in America.
I was uninvited from my highly anticipated trip to the mountains. Instead, I was supposed to attend a two-day dyeing training close to home. On the first day I showed up late, because I was waiting for my old language instructor to stop by. (He was on a sales trip with his SUV-driving uncle. Unfortunately, when I introduced his uncle to Bebie, Sonny’s wife, he spewed his fear-factor sales pitch: “Buy this TV radiation screen I am selling for the low price of 50% of your monthly income. Or you will die. Don’t worry you can pay next month. See, I already installed it.” After she agreed, he told her that if she badgers her friends into buying one too, “I will give you a 10% discount.” I felt pretty bad that I had brought the salesman into Bebie’s home, but she told me not to worry, when he comes to collect, she will just return it.) After they left, I biked over to the dyeing training to find out they’d started early (which NEVER happens in the Philippines) and their pace was so swift that there’d be no need for Day 2. Go tell that to the mountains!
Please follow the link to open a photo gallery regarding this post in a new window. Mangrove Gallery. (My first new gallery in over four months! I was happily forced to work fast for a local newspaper deadline. I have some more galleries in the pipeline. I just need a kick in the rear.)
The weekend brought the 23rd birthday of Casey, the only other Peace Corps in the area. To celebrate, Casey organized a mangrove reforestation. (According to Mangrove Action Project, which is a great website, “mangrove forests are one of the most productive and biodiverse wetlands on earth. Yet, these unique coastal tropical forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world. They may be disappearing more quickly than inland tropical rainforests, and so far, with little public notice. Growing in the intertidal areas and estuary mouths between land and sea, mangroves provide critical habitat for a diverse marine and terrestial flora and fauna. Healthy mangrove forests are key to a healthy marine ecology.”)
One of the science teachers Casey teaches with is very eager to raise awareness amongst the next generation regarding local abuses of natural resources, and to inspire the youth to not just learn about it, but to take action. Casey has latched on to him in a big way. After all, it’s not every day you find someone whose salary barely allows him to feed his family to be enthusiastic about securing the environment for the generations to come.
Edwin is the man. On an exceptionally hot weekend, he donated his free time, and joined Casey to give a mangrove lecture to interested students and community members. Under the mid-day sun, Edwin’s armpits oozed copious amounts of sweat, and churned up all sorts of excitement. The guy was more passionate about mangroves than the aforementioned salesman was about TV radiation. It was great. Little kids stopped playing with old bike tires, and women came out of their homes to hear Edwin preach reforestation.
If I’d ever heard the word mangrove before I came to the Philippines, I probably thought it was a Jim Henson creation. Now I know mangroves are important for a number of reasons. Fish like to lay eggs in mangrove areas, and young fish learn to swim there. Birds enjoy hanging out in mangroves, and mangroves provide a filter for pollution. Over the years the mangroves here have vanished as the peaceful people of Bohol have used the wood for building homes and for cooking, without any consideration for reforestation, leaving the coast desolate and muddy.
After a fast, fun, hectic mangrove improvisation game, we all headed for the mudflats and let the planting begin. Everyone was happily planting the propagules (seedlings) stomping around in the mud. (It’s pretty easy considering the mud. No need to dig a hole, no tools necessary except your own two hands.) After we covered the planed quarter hectare, the kids insisted on planting until we ran out of propagules. I can’t wait to do it again, and I plan to invite Casey, Edwin, (and how could I forget Turning, the fisherman who plants mangroves with his pint-sized kids, almost everyday, and with no financial compensation) to Inabanga for a lecture/planting here.
To cap off the birthday weekend, Casey prepared a huge feast, including the best vegetable curry I’ve ever had outside an Indian restaurant, as well as all the coconut wine we could find (most sari-sari stores sell out on the weekends.)
Filipinos are always delighted and a little confused when they encounter foreigners who can speak or understand Cebuano (a language that isn’t used officially in schools or legal documents.) Usually, their first guess is “you are a Mormons?” The second guess is “you are having a Filipina wife!” They usually proclaim to anyone around that they’ve found a kano (short for “Americano,” which is the term for anybody who is white) who can speak Cebuano. Then they warn “di pwede molibak” or “you cannot backbite.” talk behind theback!”
So when Casey and I get together and make small talk in Cebuano, they often inform us that when we go back to America, we will be able to talk dirt about our friends and family, and they won’t have a clue. Any sort of conversation about using Cebuano in America brings an abundance of laughter all around. Little do they know that acquiring this backbiting skill is the bona fide joined Peace Corps in the first place!
It’s storming here in Bohol for the first time in a few weeks. Someone just asked me if there’s lightning in America. Yup! And thunder too?