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!
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