Sunday, April 14, 2013

Stories and Translation

Had a bit of a lull at the end of March. It was a good reminder that even when things are moving forward, sometimes all one can do is wait. Gave me a chance to catch up on the world news. Got back on a solid workout routine. Finally discovered a place to do pull ups (you’d be surprised how difficult it was to find a random horizontal bar I could use).

Have a few fun tales to share, and some more thoughts on service.

Adventure 2.0
Going to Bulala (a far off part of my municipality) is always a blast. I described my last time going there as going through the gauntlet, three epic trials. This last time proved no less interesting.

Once again, I had trouble getting one of the municipal vehicles, so I turned to the trusty dependable tricycle. This time the driver was a younger man, and we took a different turnoff. I had thought “oh, this must be an alternate route”, which in hindsight was kind of silly of me. Out in the rural areas they don’t have the luxury of alternate routes, there’s one road and one road only. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, but the path we turned off on was quite steep, and riddled with rocks and crevices. We were off-roading.

It was about ten or fifteen minutes going down that I finally asked the driver if he had been to Bulala before, and he said he hadn’t. So we stopped, and I took a look around, and said we’d better turn back. Only… we had a spot of trouble actually getting back. The trike didn’t want to go uphill, it kept getting stuck. What followed was forty minutes of pushing the trike up the hill, and jogging after it when it got ahead of me. The young man was pretty embarrassed about it, and kept apologizing, but I waved it off as good exercise.

Truth be told I wasn’t actually too concerned. We eventually got back up the hill, and though I was a good hour late to Bulala, I’m in a country that lateness is fairly common. I apologized and explained why I was late, and it wasn’t an issue after that. I talked about the out-of-school youth organization, gave the forms that needed to be filled out, and got the papers back two days later.

When I first came to the Philippines I would have been seriously stressed, checking my cellphone every couple minutes as I was more and more late. This time though, I just went with the flow. I did what I could, I learned a valuable lesson (speak up if we take a wrong turn!), and it turned out all right in the end.

Progress on my Project
Currently five barangays (barangay is an area of about 2,000 people) have supposedly gotten a list of interested out-of-school youth who want to be a part of the youth group. Three of the five have turned in an actual listing. I’ve gotten in touch with a microfinance group based in a city about four hours south of me (Cabanatuan), which hopefully I’ll be visiting in the near future. I read a book on microfinance during my stay here, but I don’t have any practical experience, so it’ll be a chance to learn from them, and see what we have to do to provide loans for our youth.

I may also finally be able to get to the two furthest barangays, two places I haven’t made it to after over a year-and-a-half at site. Barangays Yabbi and New Gumiad have their own unique situations, compounded by their distance. However, I may be able to visit them through the Department of Agriculture at my LGU at the end of May. It’ll be a chance to assess their own situation, and see how we can best include them in the project.

Speaking Out
One of the problems in the Philippines is the prostitution. It’s a cause of the spread of HIV in the Philippines. It’s a cause of human trafficking. There’s a growing sex tourism industry. When I’m in the provinces most people think I’m a missionary before talking to me. When I’m in Manila, the assumption is I’m there for sex. As someone who’s been trying to create opportunities to the disadvantage youth, many of whom resort to selling their bodies, it’s not a good feeling when people assume I’m part of the problem.

I was talking to another volunteer when he showed me a blog that an American expat had about living in the Philippines. The particular post the volunteer showed me was of several pictures of American men, with younger Filipina wives, and their respective ages, the largest age gap I believe was 35 years. I further looked at the blog and in his general “about the blog” section he said the Philippines was a good place to go, with the strong implication that it was also a good place for people to come to for sex. I thought about it, and decided to post. I brought up that maybe encouraging sex tourism wasn’t a good thing, and brought up a few of the reasons.

The man replied defending his position, but also removing the offending piece as a compromise. We went back and forth a couple times and then he suggested maybe that I, or someone I knew could write an article for his blog about an alternative view to his own. I’ve been asking around for a few volunteers who know more about it than me to perhaps help.

The main point I want to impart is that when I challenged the man’s viewpoint, I did so respectfully. I didn’t attack his character, I didn’t push him into a corner asking him “how could he possibly think that?!” It was tempting, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Instead I kept my criticism objective, and because of that started a conversation, and it’s maybe led to an opportunity. It’s something that I encourage other people to do, to challenge the accepted norm, but to do so in a way that engages, not alienates, the opposing side. Although I certainly didn’t convince the gentleman to turn a 180 on his views, I did make him more open to mine, and I may have made him question what’s happening, which is a good start. It’s exactly the kind of work I’ve been doing in my community, only I’ve applied it to another American in this case.

Communication
Going back to my project with the youth, when I visited Bulala, and another barangay that day, the main topic of conversation was communication. One of the encouraging things of my service has been going from being on a whole different page than my community, to working towards the problems that exist, before they tell me. It’s because I’ve been experiencing the same obstacles and challenges they have in the past, and my community and I have reached the same conclusions of what we need to do because of that similar experience. Here’s a diagram of what I’m trying to accomplish with communication.


The PYAP is the youth group, and the groups of the left are the different agencies and organizations I want to aid the youth.  The most important aspect of my job is to make the arrows a reality. For example, if the MHO (Municipal Health Office) wants to promote family planning for disadvantaged youth, I want them to have an easy connection to the municipal youth group, who in turn will have an easy way of informing the youth group in all fifteen barangays about the program, who in turn can reach out to the rest of the out of school youth. Poverty, distance, lack of electronic communication (phones, email), and a lack of this kind of organized communication system already existing are just some of the complication we’ll have to confront. More updates as we attempt to tackle them.

Translation
As part of my growing fanaticism over communication, I’ve been thinking of ways to better describe the Peace Corps experience to people who haven’t been a part of it. Like so many other things, common phrases are “you have to experience it to understand it” and “every service is different”. Yes, to a degree actually experiencing it will give the clearest picture, and my service is vastly different from other volunteers both in the Philippines, and I can only imagine in other countries as well. Still, I’d like to make an attempt to help people picture Peace Corps better.


The video I’ve linked is about a young Korean man who grew up homeless, inspiring the judges and the audience with his incredible voice. It’s clear by the end of the video that the young man has a good future ahead of him. I enjoyed watching it.

Not every disadvantaged youth has exceptional talent, not every youth can get the opportunity that he did. Part of what makes his story touching is that he was the exception, not the norm. One of the strongest revelations in the Peace Corps is coming to understand that we are working with people, wonderful people, who are bright, caring, hardworking, but who don’t have the same opportunities. I don’t possess the power to turn people into stars. I’ve talked at length about humility before, and this is really where it comes into play. Because Western society shows us these exceptional stories, we want to duplicate it, but the reality is when we come across a community member who touches us, who makes us care, the help we try to provide is done with the limited resources available.

I’ve seen stories of people who feel guilty over this. They see the absolute poverty that exists in the world, and seeing their limited ability, feel immense guilt. In my opinion, feeling guilty doesn’t help, and I think it’s missing the point of the Peace Corps. Being a part of the Peace Corps is supposed to inspire people, to give them hands on experience, and if they want to continue to work in development, they can do so. Even if they choose another career path, they have lessons learned they can take with them. We do our best, and feeling guilty isn’t going to bring the best out of us. My community doesn’t feel guilty I’m here, they’re happy I’m here, and in turn I’ll be happy I’m a part of the community as well.

The other thing I’d like to translate this blog post is how you can be “right” but actually be very, very wrong when in another culture.

Every so often I have other volunteers asking me for advice for a problem they’re having with their coworkers. I’m known for having a good relationship with my own office, and am generally a positive person. When a volunteer tells me what happened, as often as not my response is, “you’re right, that was a problem, but you should go back and make things up yourself”. For example, a long time ago another volunteer had mentioned a case where their coworker was upset with them. The Filipino coworker was supposed to help with an activity with the youth, but kept holding back. In the end the volunteer went ahead without the coworker.

It makes logical sense, the coworker wasn’t helping out, so the volunteer just moved on and made the best of things. However, it was a loss of face for the coworker. It made her look bad to her peers, and although she may have considered taking a break from her paperwork and helped with the activity, pushing off the optional activity with the youth to do mandatory paperwork is more acceptable here, it’s what is expected of her. So although the volunteer didn’t do anything wrong by American standards, they still needed to be the one to say “hey, sorry about that, we’re still cool, right?” It’s what the volunteer did, and it worked out.

Another example is the acceptance of stress. For Americans, it’s okay to show it if you’re stressed. A heavy sigh, rubbing your temples, being unhappy, etc. As long as the American does their job, that’s what matters most (though in the service industry I suppose a chipper demeanor is part of the job). My experience in the Philippines has shown me that that behavior is taboo. It’s hard to describe it exactly, but it’s kind of rude here to be sullen. Whereas an American might shrug it off and say “Oh, they’re just stressed”, a Filipino might say instead “That person is moody”. Whereas acting stressed is considered a temporary condition in America, it’s seen as a characteristic of who a person is here.

In that way, much of the Peace Corps experience is having your own culture challenged. Talking to other volunteers, we’ve seen that the best thing we can do when we make these mistakes is to laugh it off, say that we’re being a crazy American, and to try to do better next time. The thing I wanted to get across is that cultural differences aren’t always so clear cut as food preferences or language. Sometimes the differences are very subtle, and we do have to be constantly mindful of that. Even if we feel we are in the right, part of our job is to be the one to relent, because as volunteers in a foreign country, it’s up to us to change, not our hosts. After our, our goal is to work with the community, not against it.

Coming Up
Should find out if I get my extension May 1st, or maybe a few days after. Have my second Youth Leadership Summit. Trying to learn Tagalog, the main Filipino dialect. I’ll post again in a month or two, thanks for reading!