Friday, October 21, 2011

Dupax del Norte (My site!)

But first…
One last thing before we get into the first month at my site, there are two very special people who I haven’t mentioned yet, and who deserve the spotlight before I go forward. In the Peace Corps, there are several positions for permanent staff from the medical officers, to security, to administration, to sector and regional managers. However, there are also positions just for training. My cluster group of five had a Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF) and a Technical and Cultural Facilitator. Their job was to train us and get us ready in three months (and by three months I mean two-and-a-half due to budget cuts).

Ester

Ester was our LCF, and has been teaching different Filipino dialects to Peace Corps Trainees for the better part of a decade. She gave us a lot of room to practice and internalize what we learned, and she constantly asked us what we wanted to learn. Although she ignored my request for such translations as ‘your red lips are as two crimson angels beckoning for my embrace’ and ‘I dream of an age where all street children have castles atop of candy mountains’, she helped with everything else.

Ester was sharp, and knew what she was doing. It was thanks to her that I had the opportunity to give the Ilokano part of the volunteers’ speech during our swearing in ceremony. Thank you Ester.

Annie

Oh Annie. Nicknamed by the others as ‘our little monster’, she ruled us with an iron fist. When we would come requesting more time, or to suggest an alternative she would just laugh and say ‘Okaaay’. Translation=NO. However, she did this because she wanted to prepare for our sites where we would have to do things last minute, where we would have to sometimes do things in a way other than what we wanted. She was always on the ball, and helped us when it counted.

Full of laughs, and caring, she helped me understand conducting community service in the Philippines, and the differences and similarities to home. Thank you Annie.

Dupax del Norte
Dupax del Norte is a third class municipality in the province of Nueva Viscaya. Third class essentially means it’s certainly a lot more poor than a 1st Class Municipality, but it does go down to 7th Class. It is an agricultural based municipality with rice fields in the lower part of the area, and vegetables up in the mountains. Tricycles are the main form of transportation. Caribou can be seen everywhere, and wild dogs roam the streets.
There are chain stores of any sorts, all the businesses I have found family owned. There are just under 28,000 people spread across the lowlands and the mountains, belonging to eight ethnic tribes.


When Rain Stops Smiles
I’m a bit of a ham. Actually, I’m a big ham. This not only speaks to my humor, but to other facets in my life. I love drinking tea because a hot drink relaxes my shoulders… AND it makes me feel intellectual. I love speaking another language because it makes communication easier and more fulfilling… AND I feel all worldly and stuff. I love listening to the rain outside and reading a book because it’s a picturesque moment, and knowing that I can be that person in that moment makes me all right with me. However, I come from a place where the rain seldom comes, and when it’s gone, the grass turns a little greener. If only that was the case here.

Dupax has been hit hard by two typhoons straight now, the second of which caused the worst flooding in seven years. Luckily our municipality suffered no casualties, but I’ve heard further north in the neighboring province could not boast the same. Houses were lost, bridges collapsed. Mud covered everything in the aftermath. My host family and I even left the house to go higher ground in the event of a flash flood. The river did not reach that high, but flash floods are not something you wait to happen.

I found myself helping with the relief efforts. Taking part in the assembly line making food packs, riding in a dump truck to deliver the goods, observing the aftermath as my coworkers assessed the damage, it was an eye opening experience seeing as the rain which I took for granted, used to calm myself and listen to like a melody, cause so much damage.

What am I Doing Here?
Imagine you are in a field, and you pluck a single blade of grass. The single blade of grass has suddenly become the most important blade of grass not because it was special, and certainly not that it has more potential now that it has been plucked and will soon turn brown. No, it’s the most important blade of grass because that is the one you are focusing on, the one you are touching with your fingertips. It is the most important one because you make it so.

To anyone with the sentiment that I am ‘in the middle of nowhere’ or ‘on the other side of the world’ consider it may because you are holding up a different blade of grass than me right now. To anyone with the sentiment that I won’t be able to accomplish much, consider that just because the mainstream media may not cover my leadership camp in December, doesn’t mean that it is less impactful than which party Paris Hilton went to (back in La Trinidad, it was all over the news when she visited the Philippines). In America, we have become so obsessed with our eyes, what we see in front of us, that it’s so easy to overlook that there’s a field around us.

My role at site will be changing minds. It will be convincing adults that the youth are fully capable of running events, projects, having a voice in the community. I will also be convincing the youth of the same.

My role at site will be multiplication. If I can run a youth camp between 50 and 100 youth, and if they can each teach two to three others, and if each of them can impact a score, suddenly a difference is being made.

My role at site will be empowerment. Sure, I can run a bunch of projects, and I am more than capable of doing things myself, but what does that leave Dupax with when I leave? No, it’s more important that I have others take the lead so that when I leave the people here, the people who live here will continue on. I’ll just wave my arms around yelling ‘Look at me, I’m an American!” to get everyone’s attention to begin with.

I could name a few other things, but I think the point has come across. This place I’ve come to is important, there are people just like you and me there, and that I will be helping them realize their own potential.

Upcoming Projects
I have a few things going on now. Everything will take time, but here’s a taste of what will (hopefully) come to fruition.

The big project is a leadership summit coming around the second week of December. Right now I’m trying to distribute a questionnaire to the potential candidates. The first reason for this is to let them have a voice in what they want to learn before I make the module for the summit for them. The second reason is I want a better understanding of what the youth know and don’t know. I don’t want to assume they know certain aspects of leadership and skip it, nor do I want to regurgitate what they already know. From there, I’ll design the summit based on their responses and the suggestion from my superiors and coworkers. From there, it will be training the staff for the camp to make sure they are all on the same page, and can run the same session as one another when the youth break down into small groups. I may also build an obstacle course.

I’m also fiddling around with a stress management project for the entire LGU of give or take 150 employees. A tool that I learned during training is a 24 hour schedule, where people write their typical daily schedule. This can help me learn more about the culture. It can point out differences between men and women’s daily lives, youth and senior’s, etc. In this case, I want to use it to pinpoint particular issues which may lead to stress (such as always being busy, everyday) and generate thoughts from that. Maybe all that will come of it is the suggestion of some basic yoga for ten minutes at the office, but we’ll see if anything more profound is revealed.

What may end up becoming my primary project is on the horizon, that being working with the Out of School Youth (OSY [by the way, let me know if it’s okay to use the acronyms, or if I should just spell it out for the sake of readability]). I’ll be meeting them sometime later this month, and will begin running activities sometime in January once I’ve had time to get to know them, and have finished the leadership summit.

The provincial youth leaders are also running their own summit and have asked for my help. Not sure what they have in mind (wave my arms around and shout ‘Look at me, I’m an American’?), but that may be interesting.

Also just finished with a ‘children’s rights packet’ to be given to one of the committees who requested it. Since they are already familiar with all the rights they have in the Philippines as far as I can tell, I included information about UNICEF, assets that lead children being successful and well rounded, and a tool that describes how much youth are participating in any given project or group. The first two work well with the theme, the last goes more along with my own goal. Besides, three things looks so much better than two.  

That being said, I actually do have more free time than during pre-service training. I get some off time to relax, read, workout, etc. My schedule’s been go to bed at 8:30, wake up at 5:30

In Sum
In sum, things are going well for me. There’s been some tough days, but that goes with the job, and just life in general. If you have any questions, shoot them my way. There’s been a lot going on this past month, but I think the above covers what I think the majority would be interested in. There rest is just flavoring (like hierarchy of toilets in the Philippines!).

I’ll try to post more often than once a month. Also, pics will be added later when I have the time to let the pictures load.