Adventures in Humility

Adventures in Humility

 

As I’ve crossed the one year mark at my site, and things are finally active and underway, a lot has changed. Whereas before I kept adding on more and more hobbies and interests to eat up the time, I’m now trying to prioritize what’s important and what I can drop as there’s not enough time to do it all. Whereas before my main effort was poking around the community to find potential projects, I now find myself looking at an ever growing task set before me.

If you look around the web, you’ll see scores of stories of Peace Corps Volunteers who realize that their Peace Corps service isn’t what they expected it to be. Bureaucratic systems that weigh you down like a sea of molasses, working at a job where soon can mean a week and later can mean months, and struggling with cross cultural communication where knowing the local dialect is only half the battle are all common aspects of service. Dreams of helping with true development become more and more distant. For many, the journey becomes more of a personal one, than one about their adoptive community, and in truth there is no shame in that. It’s defined most of my service so far.

As I stated last time, one of my major projects coming up has been to organize the out of school youth. I’ve met with seven out of fifteen barangays, and introduced the program, recruited to people to help lay the groundwork, and received a lot of input about the situation with out of school youth. I’ve tried to emphasize at the meetings that the Unlad ng Kabataan (name of the project) isn’t a set in stone program. I want it to adjust to the community’s wants and needs. As such my role has been more of a facilitator than a manager, and the direction of the Unlad ng Kabataan is being shaped by the local officials and community members. When left to their own devices, they’ve chosen development as the main purpose, addressing the poverty in Dupax del Norte.

So, it appears that I have stumbled on the Peace Corps dream in many ways. On a project focused on underprivileged youth, the task set before me is to help coordinate the Unlad ng Kabataan to address the cycle of poverty that is stagnating the community in some parts, and in others making it worse. After being in the Peace Corps for over a year, and learning about development work in a much more profound way, I find myself filled with a great sense of humility, not because I feel honored, but because I do not have the ability to do this as things are now. I can organize youth, I can train them, I have both the knowledge and experience. I have neither when it comes to what is now being asked of me. However, I do have the ability to learn what I don’t know, and I have a lot of resources at my disposal starting with the Peace Corps. The Unlad ng Kabataan has grown much larger than I thought, and I feel a deep calm as I know that it’ll take the very best out of me for this to have a fighting chance.

Sally Forth!

I’ve learned a lot more about my community in the past weeks simply by travelling to as many barangays as I can. When geographically most of the barangays don’t have phone service, I have to resort to paper notices to communicate. Without a clear cut system to distribute notices, I’ve had to wait between half a day and a week for those notices to get distributed as people come and go to the municipal hall.

I’ve also seen first hand the transportation problem. Roads are not cheap. In fact, read any Econ 101 and you’ll see that when discussing the purpose of government, it always lists roads as a bare necessity as they are too costly for individuals to pay for, but roads are necessary for a thriving society. Dupax del Norte is doing what it can to make roads, but as we are far from the richest municipality and the mountain barangays make for some serious challenges for road construction, not everywhere is easy to get to.

One such case was Barangay Bulala. Our head officials were off on a budget meeting the other week, and with them went the municipal vehicles. Try as I might I could not find a transport, until one of my coworkers got a trike driver to agree to take me. So off we went the next morning. First we climbed the steep, steep road. Then we crossed what to most Americans would appear as a hiking trail when rocks and grass jutting up. Finally we went through the stretches of mud, having to get out and push the tricycle through it. Oh, and what is a tricycle you may ask?

 

 

A tricycle, or trike for short, is a normal motorbike with a side compartment welded onto it. Not exactly the most ideal vehicle for rugged terrain. Still, we made it, and got back. Most of my community thinks I was crazy for making the trip.

Foreign Service Exam… or Not

I talked to our Country Director (head staff person in Peace Corps Philippines) about potential jobs after my service. I know I’m at least a year out, but I really don’t want to leave the Philippines without a job knowing that student loan payments will be coming, and knowing the economy’s probably still some years away from being smooth again. First, he verified what I had been thinking all along and that it is hard to get a more career oriented job right out of the Peace Corps. To be fair, several of the volunteers in my batch who ETed (early termination) found work quickly, one getting their old job back, another two doing different things for the campaign season. Still, I feel the need to look around while I can.

One of his suggestions was to look into the Foreign Service, the people who work at embassies worldwide. To get in, there are several steps to take, the first of which is the Foreign Service Exam, a three part test, one of General Knowledge, then English Comprehension, then an Essay section. Luckily for me, I tend to do better on essays than multiple choice, and I do have a Writing Minor (I took a writing minor in college on the advice of a friend on what would be useful for a career, I think the advice was solid [because even if your job is technical, you often still have to write for it, and explain it to others]). The General Knowledge test, at least for me, is probably the most challenging covering things like US Politics, History, Culture, Management 101, geography, world events, and more. Luckily, most of that fits into my International Relations degree.

The real challenge was to decide on a career track. As you sign up for the exam, you have to choose one of five career tracks, and that career track sticks with you for your entire career (and therefore lives up to the name ‘career’ track). I had little interest in consular (the people who do visa work and work with Americans living overseas [even though almost all Foreign Service Officers start off doing consular work]) or management (pretty much typical management work only in a very different environment). However Economic, Politcal, and Public Diplomacy (works with the press, does a lot of outreach programs) all had their strengths and weaknesses to me. Of the three, economic is the least competitive, and the more I learn and read, the more crucial economics seems to me (just look at the Unlad ng Kabataan and what that’s turned into). Politics really goes to the heart of what people think diplomats do, and are the people who provide information to our policy makers. Public diplomacy is the one where cross cultural communication comes to play the most, something I’ve learned to revere and respect. In the end I chose political for several reasons I may go into at a later time. However, by waiting I missed out on getting a seat for the exam at the end of this month held in Manila. They almost got me in, but not quite. It’s okay though, there’ll be another one end of this year, or early next year. It’ll give me more time to study for the general knowledge section.

That being said, I’m not sold on whether it’s something I want to do. It definitely has my interest, but I’ll continue to look for alternatives as well. More than anything, the challenge of getting in is enticing. Even if the Foreign Service isn’t right for me, I still want to be a qualified and capable enough individual to be able to do it if I want, and I’ll only know if I take the exam.

Money, Money, Money

Financial, number one. That is what every barangay has told me so far as the cause of out of school youth. It is not the only one as broken families, lack of interest, negative encouragement from peers, and a few other things are also contributing factors. However, most youth drop out of school because they cannot afford to go. It’s not that school costs too much, it’s that their family does not make enough to support them unless they pitch in as well. It’s that a high school diploma, unlike in America, rarely offers a better job with more income than if they drop out in the second grade.

Six barangays told me this, and my response was the same. I encouraged them that yes, money was needed, but that first we needed organization. We don’t need money to get organized, but we need to get organized before we can get any money. We need to be organized so we can get money from the local government or a NGO. We need to be organized so we’ll know exactly how much we’ll need, and what exactly the money will be going towards. I also assured them all that no, I do not have oodles of American dollars just waiting to give to them.

Then came the seventh. This barangay receives the plurality of aid work. It is the third furthest barangay away. They are all too familiar with projects and aid, and when I met with their officials, I found we were all on the same page. It was refreshing for them to denounce a single, one off program, how what they need is something more consistent, a project that follows up, that is year round. However, they also brought up funding, but they did so in a way that wasn’t just asking for money, or assuming the American was there to give them funds. They’ve organized the out of school youth before, even as recent as last year. They’ve had trainings before. Their youth have been trained to be tailors, but they cannot afford to buy the fabric and materials needed to start. They’ve learned about farming techniques, but do not have the resources to get things started. No one follows up with them, and the project dies. It’s like the old Chinese saying ‘catch a fish for a man and he’ll be fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll be fed for a lifetime’. However, they haven’t been given a fishing rod.

I found myself in a room of people who not only knew more about their community (which is what I expect, and why I need their assistance every step of the way), but people who knew more about development work in general. So what do I say to them? What can I offer them? Clearly I’m in over my head.

Or not. Maybe, just maybe, this is where it starts.

They convinced me, and I told them exactly that. And then I told them what I can do, and that’s to use what resources I have. First and foremost to that is being a Mr. Whitey, Mr. American. Although they are the ones who know better, if I’m the one to speak as their voice, to give their reasoning, potential funders might just listen to me more as the ‘foreign expert’. I can learn. I just read a book last month about microfinance. As I’ve grown older it seems like everything I’ve learned has a practical use that shows up quickly. I don’t think it’s fate, I think it’s that once we learn something new, we see the possibilities and potential for its use in our daily lives that otherwise was no different. I can, and have emailed my Sector Manager for what resources Peace Corps has. I can talk to other volunteers. I can get connected to not only my municipal office, but the provincial and regional offices as well. Once again I go back to how I’m filled with a sense of humility, that I will need a lot of assistance to make this possible.

And Me

I said earlier that for many volunteers, their journey becomes focused on the self. Just because I have stumbled upon this new project doesn’t mean my own life is suddenly out of the equation. As my life has become busier, I’ve struggled with my own schedule. I’m trying to learn Tagalog but I’m seeing how much more difficult it is now that I have my work and my own place to maintain than it was to learn Ilocano when I had formal classes and a host family. I’ve had trouble finding both time to work out and time to read, as I increase one to the level I want, the other drops.

And I’ve been tired.

However, I do feel with this new sense of humility I may be on the right track. I started the Unlad ng Kabataan in a big hurry. I was trying to go full steam. Study for the foreign service exam, get in better shape, keep reading, get the barangay meetings done quickly and move to the next step. Now I hear this voice telling me to wait, step back, and look at what’s important. I’m now fully invested in a project which is beyond my capabilities. What do I need to do to make up for that? What do I need to do to support myself so that I’ll stay healthy, ease my stress, and generally just enjoy life as I move forward? I’m still working on those answers, but I feel they’ll come in time.

I’m so not a perfectionist. Heh.

So What’s Coming Up

More barangay meetings. Seven down, eight to go. I have a date set for my training of the youth government this October 18^th. Our Mid-Service Training (MST) where we get our medical and dental exams after a year in country, and where my batch of volunteers will all meet together for the last time until the end of our service is the week of October 22^nd. Hopefully some answers on what’s important and not so I’ll have an active (but not too active) life beyond the work. No doubt a lot of learning as I into the full swing of this development gig.

Oh, and facial hair. We’re doing the time honored tradition of “Stache Bash” for MST. I’m growing a full beard out which after almost three weeks grown, and a little over three weeks to go, is filling in well enough. At MST I’ll shave the beard and leave the mustache which I’m sure will be quite the look. Yep.

 

 

Walking with Fire

One of the twenty or so Peace Corps mottos for its volunteers is that our attitude is the most important thing in our work. I don’t know if it’s true for other countries, but in the Philippines I have to agree. I think I have the opportunity to get a lot done now because I’ve established relationships. I can get involved with the community because I do have a good reputation. Even when I was going through my low points, I tried to keep it confined to my apartment. When that was impossible I tried to throw myself into a book or online, and let the day pass me by. Basically, anything but to take my low points out on others.

I feel that I have the potential to get a few very special things accomplished at site. From my experience over the past year, I know it might not happen. The projects I’ve lined up could fail like half of what I’ve tried to run already. However, the potential is there, and I think I’m up to the challenge to do my part.

Disclaimer

In my last post I didn’t revise or edit it, and I accidently worded a sentence very, very wrongly. If you’re curious to read the sentence, you can check it out yourself. In the event anyone read my last post before I edited it, and didn’t check back in, it was a typo.

Not only did I relearn the importance of revision, but I also discovered that there are people I don’t know who read this blog, which is actually pretty cool. In the vast ocean of the web, I’m a bit surprised I’ve gotten a few readers. Since some of you don’t know me personally, I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt if I write something you find offensive. Point it out to me certainly, but wait until I respond before you think less of me (though feel free to think less of my typing skills). Also, I’m curious to how people found the blog. As I said, I think it’s a positive that people are reading my blog, but I’m interested to see what brought people here.

Standing Up

As I’ve said before, one of the challenges in the Peace Corps is the unfamiliarity. Back in America when you have a hard time, you fall back on friends, family, food, and habits, things that have been built over years. Abroad, not all that is available. So when I hit my slump back in April, and let all my good hobbies and stress relievers slip away, it didn’t leave much to go besides stubbornness (luckily my stubbornness is as vast as the night sky). I did have two things on my side though. One was time, and lots of it. The other was an increasing familiarity with my home in the Philippines.

I worked through my problems one by one, starting with the easiest such as getting the kitchen clean, to harder issues like getting the rest of my apartment clean, and then I fretted over the big stuff like personal relationships, and my role here. As my good habits from reading, to keeping up with the news starting to become regular again, it made filtering through the list of problems I was facing a lot easier. As for the familiarity within my community, still getting better in Ilokano bit by bit, and just getting outside more helped a great deal. I still don’t have what I’d call a very active social life in Dupax, but I’m friends with my coworkers, and there’s quite a few members in the community I stop and talk to when I see them. I also have plenty of me time before and after work to just relax and pursue my own interests. Whereas when I first got to my site, a party or fiesta was even more stressful than work, with everyone staring at me, and having to stretch my Ilokano to its limits, I think I can actually sit down and enjoy a social event now.

So really as I think about it, time and being comfortable in your environment is pretty much the same way I dealt with problems back home. It’s just tweaked here to fit the culture.

Birthday

My birthday was last July. I first celebrated with other volunteers on a Sunday, at our favorite restaurant. I got three gifts that day. The first was vegemite from an Aussie volunteer. I haven’t tried it yet, but from what I’ve heard it’s something else. Perhaps I’ll spread some on Balut whenever I get around to trying it.

The second gift was a cardboard, laminated, dress up clown. There was clown outfit, tux, casual, and prison uniform. So I thank fellow PCVs Becky and Amber for that gift. I had received a text the week before whether I wanted a clown or a stripper for my birthday. Naturally I said both in one, not realizing that it would actually have any impact on my life at all. Oh, and did I say it’s laminated? It’ll be lasting for awhile. Woot.

The third wasn’t exactly a gift, but it came the same day. At the end of our pre-service training last year we wrote a letter to ourselves for the one year mark. I had no idea what I had written, and I was expecting something fairly goofy. However, I was floored by what I had written to myself. I was on cloud nine at the end of training. I was one of the top trainees at learning one of the dialects, I had a good relationship with staff, and with many of the PCVs. I excelled in a way that I hadn’t before in any other job, and certainly not at school. Yet, despite having every reason to pat myself on the back, and to say well done, my words were brutally honest and humbling. I’ll give a small sample of what I wrote.

“Humility is said to be the greatest virtue and it feels like anathema to me. It fills me with great joy, yet a deep troubling feeling given compliments such as that all of me impresses, or I light up someone’s life. Perhaps I am just scared that if I accept these compliments, these friendships too willingly I will falter from myself and no longer deserve this love that has been given to me.”

At the time I wrote it, I was expecting that perhaps in one year’s time I would be arrogant having ridden that cloud the whole way. I was trying to tell myself that even though humility is hard to swallow sometimes, not to lose myself to pride, and to always make sure I earn people’s respect, and don’t abuse it. Suffice to say I wasn’t on that cloud any more when I read it, but it was a good reminder to who I was, and to who I wanted to be.

On my actually birthday the next day I went to work as usual. I skipped the flag ceremony cause well… the flag ceremony’s boring and it was my birthday. For lunch, I cooked up some non-Filipino spaghetti. Noodles, Italian style sauce, ground pork, and oodles of spices. Whereas in America we get treated for our birthday, in the Philippines you treat others. When I told people at my office about American-style birthdays, they thought I was joking at first. They liked the spaghetti, and that was it. I’m twenty-five now.

Two Big Projects

So I mentioned that I now feel like I have the potential to really get things done. There are two projects I have that will be great if they can be accomplished.

The first is the training I’m training to arrange for the youth government (SK) in the province. I got a list of ten things that the SK is struggling with. Most of them are ways of self improvement such as communication, time management, ningas cogan which I’ve mentioned before and will talk about below. A few are from outside their organization such as lack of funding, and no guidance from those who know about governance. The first part of the training will be to create a list of strengths and resources the SK has, and using those trying to come up with a solution to their challenges one by one.

The second half will be a modified project design and management session. I’ll give them as many organizational methods and strategies I can, give them hard and digital copies for reference, and try to give them the confidence to give them a try. I feel confident the training will happen, the question is how many members I can get to come. I’ve asked two from each municipality to attend. Hopefully most or all will. If successful, I have a feeling I’ll be asked to help organize a similar training for the different municipalities which is a step below the province. That’s a lot of trainings, but we’ll face the hurdle if it comes.

The other project is to help build a PYAP from scratch. The PYAP is an organization similar to the SK, but for the out of school youth. It’s an organization that is supposed to help out of school youth get opportunities for leadership and critical thinking, and for them to use those skills to help younger youth as well. It’s an organization that is mandated by law to exist where there are out of school youth, but sadly there is no enforcement. This is a project my supervisor at site and I have talked about a lot, and I’m going to start now. I’m going to work with all fifteen barangays (perhaps just fourteen as our furthest one may not be reachable right now due to the rainy season [barangay=community that has government officials]) and to facilitate the organizing of the youth in the coming months. I’m going to need partners in every barangay to help me, and to eventually be the adult leaders that assist the PYAP once its formed. It has to be every barangay individually at first because I’ve come to learn that each one is unique, and each will need its own approach. If we can get this to be successful, it will give opportunities to the youth who currently have none, and create leaders out of many of them. I think many of the future successes of the Philippines are going to have to come from the out of school youth, and this is the best organization for that right now.  

Batch 271

I had the privilege of being a resource volunteer for Batch 271 during their Supervisor’s Conference. In part because I have a great supervisor who came with me, in part because I have really close beliefs to the Peace Corps staff about our work in the Philippines, and in part because staff has yet to find out about my mysterious, dark, and alluring secrets, I was chosen to help facilitate some of their sessions. There’s quite a few changes that have been made in the past year. One is a focus on getting more older and experienced volunteers. Another was to only teach Tagalog this year as opposed to half Tagalog, and half other regional dialects. At the request of PNVSCA, the Filipino agency that coordinates all foreign volunteers, and the Department of Education (in the Philippines), the majority of them will be clustered in Romblon, Bicol, and Negros. None of those are close to me. The nearest volunteer is in the province of Tarlac, and is probably about a four hour drive away. So on one giant positive, it was great to actually meet them, and talk a bit, knowing that I wouldn’t have met many of them otherwise.

I think the session went well. Some of them were pretty dry (the importance of monitoring and evaluation!!!), but I tried to joke when I could, and to be as casual by treating the trainees as equals to me rather than the new kids. When you’re in the position of training others, it’s very easy to slip into a dominant role and to talk down to the people you’re teaching, but I did my best to avoid that and make it more like I was having a conversation. I’ve had a lot more success with that approach. For me, my job that week was fairly easy. Many of the session were conducting by our staff in Manila. Some of the sessions I ran were to simply give instructions to the new CYF volunteers and their supervisors, and then to let them work one on one. My last session with the new CYF volunteers was a forty-or-so minute question and answer, giving them a chance to clarify things, and to get an honest answer for some of their concerns.

No romance for me that week. I say this because several volunteers from my batch asked me, so I figure it may be a question out there for people. I kept it professional. Over seventy volunteers applied for like twenty or so resource volunteer positions. Being there was a privilege, and I was there to help  the new volunteers get through the trainings and to be a resource for their concerns during a stressful time, not to put out a single’s add for myself. Besides, I’m holding out for Toni Gonzaga, famous singer, and talk show host in the Philippines! It’s destined to be! :P

I found myself at the end of the conference questioning how good of a job I did despite glowing feedback from many of them, though. I think that in part it tied back into my letter to myself that although the compliments meant a lot to me, I always am hesitant to let it get to my head too much.

There is one compliment I received in particular though which was moving, and which does make me think I’m on the right track, is hard to fully accept. The oldest volunteer in the new batch is in his early 80s. Whereas I was working mainly with the Child Youth and Family volunteers, he was an Education volunteer. However, he spoke to me in the hall when I was walking out of my room and going to the lobby. He told me that I had a way about me, that there was a subtlety there. The expression on his face was the same as if he had said that I’m going to go far in life. It was an indirect way of him telling me I was a good person, but the way he said meant a lot more. I don’t know how to fully capture that compliment, but I think I’m doing a lot of things right to have gotten it, and hopefully I’ll continue to earn it.

If I had one regret from the conference was that I didn’t get to know the new volunteers well enough. I got to know some of my fellow resource volunteers a lot more than before, as well as the staff, and I did have many conversations throughout the week with the new group. I suppose it’s that I’ve gotten to know people from my own batch so well after over a year, that meeting a new group and only having five days felt like it wasn’t enough. Obviously I can’t be best buddies with all 67(?) of them, but hopefully I can stay in touch with many of them, cause we’re all in the same boat, just not with the same timing.

Fire

I’ve mentioned ningas cogan a lot before, but I only just found out its literal translation. It means buring grass in Tagalog. The fire is there, but grass burns quickly. I learned that there’s also an expression for the opposite, ningas bao. Bao is the tagalong word for coconut shell, which takes a long times to burn. I had been debating internally on how much I wanted to talk about ningas cogan. I do think it is one of the biggest challenges at site, and it is an acceptable excuse for things not to get done in the Philippines far too often, but I felt a lot of the times when I brought it up, I was giving power to the term, that I was giving people an excuse by telling them I knew what I was asking for might not happen. I think ningas bao gives me what I want. Using that term instead can help me address the issue, to do it with the positive instead of the negative, and it will be a term that was coined by Filipinos to inspire them.

For my projects with the SK and the PYAP, I feel like I’m walking with fire. I’m trying to ignite to interest and the enthusiasm of the community to accomplish more. I’ll encourage them, motivate them, get them together, help them think through challenges, help them organize, but they are either the grass or the coconut shells, the success is up to how long they’re willing to let the fire burn.

And that’s the Peace Corps. To offer my unique skillset and perspective, but to ultimate let the real work lay in the hands of the people themselves. If there was another way where I could put it all on my shoulders I would in a heartbeat, but I’m going to trust the people I’m working for and with, and if these two projects fall through, I’ll go back to the drawing board and try again.

What’s to Come

I’ve just started learning Tagalog. My Ilokano isn’t perfect, but I can run just about any session I want in Ilokano, and I can communicate pretty naturally as I go about my errands, or talk about work, or even joke with people. However, when I travel down south to other sites, or to Manila, I feel pretty much like a tourist. Between that, and knowing the national dialect is a good talent in and of itself, I’ll give it a whirl.

I took a look at a T’ai Chi book. After reading a bit more on it, it seems to be quite difficult to get good at, so I’m going to hold off on that one, and maybe get an instructional video for Christmas or something.

Mid Service Training is in October. It’s the last training we get, and the last time the entire batch is together until our closing of service.

My dance instructor moved to Baguio. Need to get a new one.

Also got an email saying that I’ve finally been matched with a teacher in America to communicate back and forth between me and their students. It took a year about for it to happen as I heard most teachers want volunteers in Spanish speaking areas. So we’ll see how it goes.

As always, thanks for reading. Hopefully another update in a few weeks. Maybe one with a lot of short stories.