One Year and Thoughts

This post is going to be a little different. It’s going to be more stream of consciousness. I’ll talk about some of my thoughts on being in the Philippines for over a year now, about development work, and about me. I’ll give a forewarning that a lot of it’s not positive. Then again, if everything were bright and sunny I wouldn’t exactly be doing my job. Whatever I say below are challenges I’ll either be taking head on, trying to move around, or accepting as a part of life, probably in that order.

I’m still committed to being here, and I don’t regret joining the Peace Corps at all.

One Year

I’m not the kind of person to hold a lot of weight to anniversaries. I’ll probably celebrate my birthday but only because my coworkers are insisting. The one year mark in the Philippines came and went, and the day wasn’t that different than any other. I’m of the mind that if you want to celebrate or party, do it for the sake of itself when you want. Don’t wait for special days, and don’t be afraid to make days that aren’t special more meaningful.

So of being here a year in and of itself hasn’t really offered any revelations, no deep insights to pull from.

My Role as a Development Worker

The first thing is that the Peace Corps's primary goal is not development. Of three goals the Peace Corps has worldwide, only one is sustainable development, and it’s the least important to its mission. The other two are about cultural exchange. The Peace Corps is primarily about improving relations, about making a better cultural awareness on both sides. During my service, I will be an ambassador for the US, when I come home I’ll be an ambassador for the Philippines.

Of course to many of us volunteers as individuals including me, it’s the development aspect that drew me to the Peace Corps. However, whatever I accomplish on that front is really extra credit to my organization.

Most of the projects I have proposed on my own have failed, or are still having trouble getting off. From morning stretches, to teaching about presentational skills, to trying to youth to do service projects, they’ve yet to be successful. Those that have worked, or show more promised have come from my coworkers and community. It makes sense. They know a lot more about their culture and wants and needs than I do. My best bet is to use the people of Dupax to come up with what they want changed, what they want the end result to be. My role then is going to be to show them HOW to do it. How to organize, how to recruit volunteers, how to create a system of responsibility to ensure people go through with what they say. It’s the one area where I have more experience than them, running successful programs and projects.

The Hardest Part

The hardest part of a Peace Corps service isn’t cross cultural communication. I just try to learn from my mistakes, accept that I won’t always be right. Not a big problem. It’s not the work. Once again, not everything I do is going to be successful. Things get pushed back, things turn out differently. It’s all okay too. The problems that really plague us are the same personal issues that affected us back home. Strained relationships, dealing with our own personal shortcomings, losing faith now and then. In the end the thing that kicks our asses the most is just daily living. There’s one small twist though.

In America I have family and friends to fall back on. I have my favorite food and relative luxury to cushion me. I know my place in America, and that supports me. Here it’s not so easy. When I’m so clearly on outsider by my appearance if nothing else, when the food’s for sustenance more than comfort, when sometimes all I have is the four walls of my apartment, I have only myself to look at, and my own thoughts to dwell on.

And boy do I make amazing company to myself!!!

But seriously it has made me question a lot of myself. My own hubris for one. Questioning my passion for both development work and politics and the general direction I want to go after my service for two. Whether I’m up to accomplishing my goals personal and professional for three. I know these question are a hell of a lot better than if I’m going to have enough to eat, how can I pay the bills, the sorts of things many people here, and back in America are asking. Still, it does weigh me down from time to time.

Then there’s unrequited feelings. I’m not going to go into a lot of details, but just to say that in the Peace Corps, there’s only so many people you know who share your culture, your dreams, and who can understand you when you talk about the challenges you face. We’re not the saints the media sometimes likes to portray us as, optimistic (or naïve) young people giving up our luxury to live in squander. Most of us are here to build up professional experience, and though we’re lacking a lot of luxury from home, we have more going for us than you’d think. However, there are still a lot of special people here, and though we’re not saints, it does take a special kind of person to do this. It’s a shame that things don’t work out sometimes, and it’s damned hard to find peace within oneself and the world when the wind stops pushing your sails, but it’s those times when I can see myself more clearly.

And boy am I perfect!!!

Or far from it. Regardless, the past few months have been the most challenging, but I think I’m getting myself back up. In fact…

What I Want to Do

I really want to get cracking and work right now. The whole municipality is pushing the Child Friendly program now that we have some regional evaluators. Naturally I did not find out about it until the day before, still needing a week to get my own ideas together. My goal is to push the municipality towards dealing with problems I’ve had the local youth tell me about. Youth alcoholism, lack of opportunities, child illiteracy. If I can point the Mayor and the others to speaking about that, I can help. If not… back to square one.

I also want to really pick up on my reading. Fiction and non-fiction. Use the time I have here to learn as much as I can. I have some books on entrepreneurship, appied economics, work with children, ecology, and a couple others. Break it up with some fiction, and hopefully I’ll start reading more and more.  Also, want to make my dance lessons more regular. Really want to get good at that. Enough to where I can show off some stuff and look good and confident while doing it. I want to pick up some capoeira cause that stuff looks really fun (though that’ll be on my own, we don’t have it in Dupax). Finally, I’m going to try to be modest with my working out, and build it up slowly. It’s a far cry form my usual push myself until I burn out, but I am trying to adapt and learn from past mistakes.

To do it I’ll have to drop time on the internet. Having regular access to internet at my site is a blessing and a curse. Drop most (but not all) of the frivolous stuff, and replace it with being more productive. Need to sleep earlier and quit staying up late cause I’m thinking about too many things. Also going to need some more self discipline to pull from somewhere.

The Philippines

Never, ever underestimate anyone. It’s one of my credos. Filipinos are NOT* stupid, they’re not ignorant. The Philippines is infamously known by the development community as not growing in proportion to the aid given compared to other countries, like Mongolia who’s soon looking to end the Peace Corps because they’re doing so well.

A lot of the problem is corruption. I feel confident saying this because it’s what Filipinos tell me. If you look it up on your own I’m sure you can find more information on it.

There’s also ningascogan, a Tagalog word that describes people saying they’ll do a project, or act interested, but then don’t show up or give up. There’s not a strong emphasis on getting the job done. The intent is there, the ideas are there, but following through takes a commitment that isn’t taught to them. It’s the thing I keep stressing to people in my community as the problem, at least the one I can help with.

There’s also critical thinking. Ask an American child their favorite animal or color, and they’ll go off on what it is and why. Ask A Filipino child the same question and they’ll be confused, or they’ll point to whatever color they’re wearing. Once again, it’s not that people don’t think critically, but to do so one has to step outside of what they’ve been taught.

I’m not sure how to address the above yet. The corruption I can’t touch, it’s strictly against Peace Corps policy. The other two… I’ll be having a lot of conversations with the locals to get some ideas.

It’s About Making Things a Part of Who You Are

It’s not a big deal to go to ride in a jeepney, or to have a conversation in Ilokano. I went to a 4^th of July function where the Ambassador was. Shook his hand, and took a picture with some other volunteers. That wasn’t that big either. Definitely cool, but not eye popping or jaw dropping.

I’m trying to live as part of the Philippines to the best of my ability and background, as opposed to living opposed to it, or even beside it. It’s by making those little things day to day natural, that I can focus on what’s really important, like all of the above. Cause frankly, if I let the little differences weigh me down to, you may here of  a case of spontaneous combustion in the Philippines.

What’s to Come

More than any other time I’ve been here, I’ve had less of an idea of this. Knowing the unpredictability of things, and with so much potential for success and failure with projects, and choosing my priorities for my own goals of self improvement and growth, a lot’s up in the air. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll help train the new batch which have arrived already at the end of August. Humility will be the word I’ll emphasize.

I don’t think my second year in the Philippines is going to be anything like my first. I do think it’ll be better, and I think I’m heading in a good direction.

Also, send me recommendations for music. I’ll check it out on youtube. Music’s antoher thing I’m trying to get more into.

‘Til next time

PS And forgive any typos, I’ll try to edit those out next time. Figured I’d post it now while I have the time, and revise later.  

*My original posting of this update lacked the word "not", which made it look like I was calling Filipinos stupid, the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. Suffice to say my experiment of posting without revising proved why my English teachers were right all throughout grade school.

Still Moving Along

My Place

Finally some pictures of my place! It’s a lot like the apartment I had back during my Senior year of college. Rent is 2500 pesos a month, and it falls under the rent allowance by Peace Corps Philippines. I just recently cleaned it up, and rearranged things. I have a lot more room now.

Due to odd formatting reasons the pictures are on the bottom of the post.

Piercing the Veil

Community work is all about building relationships. Doing my job eight to five doesn’t cut it. I’ve been trying to open up more and more with people, and it’s paying off. I feel I’m finally getting truthful and in depth answers about my town, and I’m starting to understand the challenges they are facing and why. As much as I wanted the answers to be clear and cut, the people here are not ignorant. They live in a situation where there are no easy solutions for progress.

I had an idea for the out of school youth. If the municipality would pay for poor youth to go to school (reimbursement for not contributing to the farm or shop), then the kids could get a high paying job after high school and the money would come back in taxes. However, the answer I got from everyone was that kids don’t make more if they graduate high school. College maybe (though jobs are competitive for college graduates too). No doubt going to school still has so many benefits, but when trying to convince people to send their kid to school which won’t give them more money, when they could learn their trade now isn’t easy, especially considering the lack of quality in education here.

I’ve also learned a lot more about corruption in the Philippines. I’m not going to go into too much detail on this one as you can read up on it pretty easily on the side, and it’s something I can’t really address in my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Politics is a no-no for volunteers. One example I’ll cover briefly is the illegal mining. In the mountainous, rural areas, there’s a lot of illegal mining going on, it’s the best source of income for people there, but the environmental damage is quite tangible as flooding over the past years during the typhoons have sharply gotten worst due to deforestation. However, without a strong enough infrastructure to enforce the law, and without a strong desire to enforce it either, it continues.

Also related to learning about my community more, I asked our new interns to make some SMART goals (specific, measureable, acceptable, realistic, and time bound) for our child friendly municipality program. As youth form Dupax I thought they were most able to come up with ideas. I finally got them to create goals that met the criteria, but I still didn’t like them. The issue was that there wasn’t a lot of passion behind the goals. So, I’ve asked them not to focus on the goals, but to think about what changes they want for youth in their community, what do they feel strong about. We’ll see if that yields better results.

The Hardest Part of Service

You’d think that typhoons, inter-cultural communication, or living in a hut in the middle of nowhere would be the biggest problem a volunteer faces. At least in my case, the typhoons are manageable, communication is steadily improving, and as you saw from the pictures above, I do not live in a hut in the middle of nowhere. The hardest challenges I’ve had to overcome have been just regular life problems that can happen at home. Struggles of friends, news from back home, personal feelings, all make the new problems I’ve faced in an unfamiliar place pale in comparison. Life is still life in the Peace Corps. Things don’t go on hold just because I’m somewhere else.

Where the change of scenery comes into play is when life hits hard, the safety net to fall back on isn’t as strong back home. It’s why it’s that much more important to keep doing whatever’s good, whether it’s working out, reading, learning new things, getting projects underway, and talking with friends made in service.

I’ll admit that I’ve had better days than as I write this, but I do have enough going for me to turn it around. Still wouldn’t trade in my service for anything.

What’s Happening and What’s Coming Up

A few knew hobbies I’m picking up. Started dance lessons. One of the interns (the bakla of course [look up what bakla means]) knows how to dance, and I’ve been learning from him. So far just the cha cha, and a little swing. Mostly it’s so I can participate during the intermissions at our functions, but also dancing’s one of those things that is pretty cool to watch when someone’s good at it, so why not be good at it myself? Also want to pick up Capoeira and T’ai Chi. Got a T’ai Chi book from our resource center in Manila, and I’ll scrounge through youtube to see if I can’t find some videos for the Brazilian dance fighting. I got seven other books mostly about development work and entrepreneurship ship to get through as well as a draft of a story my sister’s working on. Start with the latter, and start binging on reading to get through them all.

For my birthday July 30th I’m asking my mom and dad for an I-Tunes gift card. Since sending packages from there to here have gotten more challenging, I think the gift card will suffice. I’m all ears for any recommendations on what I should get.

Also, I’ve been selected to be a resource volunteer for the incoming batch. The new volunteers show up the first week of July. I’ll be facilitating the Child Youth and Family sector of volunteers during their Supervisor’s Training in late August. It’s when they’ll find out their permanent site and meet their new boss. My own supervisor Nereo will be helping me with the sessions.

Besides that I’ll just keep plugging away at getting things done at site. On Monday I’ll try to start three days of morning stretches for anyone who’s interested. An easy way to improve health in the municipal hall, or if no one comes, just an excuse for me to get to work early and get off on a good foot myself.

Oh, and yesterday was my one year anniversary of coming to the Philippines. I’ll have another post in a week or so about my thoughts on that. I’ll try to get some pictures of the community too.

Cheers.


PICTURES!

 Here's a look at the main room from the front door. I just rearranged things a bit to have more space.

 

Above is a closer view.

Below is a look into the bedroom. I cut my mosquitoe net into piece to cover the windows. I need to find some duct tape to secure it on the walls though.

The kitchen. On the left are the plastic bags I use to put trash in, and behind that my rack where I keep spices and a few other things. The fridge at the end doubled my electric bill, but that's the sacrifice for not needing to go to market every day.

The outdoor deck. You can actually see the street from here. Whenever I take a shower in the bathroom (or as they call it here, Comfort Room), I have to crouch really low so anyone driving or walking by can't see it.

And here's where the magic happens! On the right is the basin I fill up to shower, and in it is my dipper I use to pour the water on. The smaller green bucket on the left is for the mop when I clean, or to pour water into the toilet to flush it down.

Here's the view outside from the front. If you see the mountains in the back, that's where the far flung barangays are.

Here's a look at the building. On the ground floor there's an internet cafe and small snack shop. My place is on the second floor, furtherst on the left.

And below is a look at the street heading to my workplace. It's about a minute and a half walk away. Now that the rain's coming again, the proximity is nice.