Week in Photos

I caught these fellas washing up in the street at 7 a.m. when I was walking to the shoreline to go out working with the fishermen. Their crate reminds me of a bushel barrel that sat under my grandmom's downspout on the shed out back that I would splash around in on hot summer days.Don Don, the association president, as he disembarks from his boat after washing seaweed for the day.

We put up raintarps that we will roll down when guarding the fish cages and seaweed during rainy times. it makes for a nice place to come in and hide from the weather.

Romeo De Jesus, our association secretary, who is always working hard. I don't know what keeps him going..literally..I see what he eats. I don't know what, metabolically, keeps him going. He's an enigma.

One of the thousands of little fish that love living in and on the seaweeds. Providing great habitat and cover against predators, the fish seem to like the taste of seaweed, much to the chagrin of some of the fisherfolks.

Mano Robin, seaweed cleaner extraordinaire, he has a talent for long hours in the sun cleaning the rubbery stuff. He is very excited for harvest, and the two of us will be bringing the crop to town to sell in 3 weeks, he has reminded me several times.

As the bamboo has continued drying out, our guardhouse, once frigteningly close to being submerged, is about a foot out of the water, on top of what seems to be a sufficient number of drums at this point. We will be making permanent moorings next week when the huge bamboo poles for the fish cage construction come.

Philippines floating guardhouse - 101

As the second phase of my project with the fisherfolks, we have constructed a guardhouse for members to take turns sleeping out on the water keeping watch over the seaweed and eventual fish cages. (Slight problem with theft here) We finished the seaweed farm two weeks ago, and since then, have been building the floating guardhouse. The seaweed project was pretty straight forward, just cut up pieces, keep it in salt water, and tie it to nylon lines with buoys on the ends, easy enough. However, I've never built a guardhouse before, much less anything floating, or made of bamboo and barrels. For technical expertise in building such things, we called on two of our members who consider themselves carpenters and told them to go to it. I went to Tacloban with the association president and bought 20 big blue drums, and we got a shipment of 40-foot long bamboo poles from Samar Island for the main chassis of the structure. (All of these purchases were long, drawn-out ordeals, usually ending with me saying, 'Okay, well maybe we should just wait until I'm gone in October to get the stuff.') When I left town a week and a half ago, the men had the corner barrels tied to bamboo with thick 300-pound test fishing line. When I got back on Monday, the guard house was floating, all of the Bamboo tied down, and a central roofed-structure built in the center of the platform with round timbers, since they're cheaper than actual legitimate lumber. I was really pleased with the structure, especially since I had no idea what to expect when I left the week before, the men all randomly tying bamboo poles together. The only real structural defect with the guardhouse is that the heavier middle area where the little shack is so heavy with lumber that it bows the entire platform inward, so we asked for 6 drums from my supervisor, and hoisted the structure up, with an extra barrels holding the center up. All of the work is done with ropes, machetes, 1 saw, and a kilo of nails, along with nylon, bamboo, and drums. After adding the supporting blue drums to the center of the structure, we went to the market and found a man who makes shingles out of the local mangroves of Nipa trees and bought 200 shingles to cover the roof. Since no one has a truck or car, we carried everything by a pedicab bicycle which took a few trips. After another day of work, we had the roof done, the nipa shingles tied with Uway, a native cord made from tiny slivers of mangrove wood. Finally, I went back to the market and bought 4 pieces of plywood yesterday. We laid down the rest of our round timber on the floor as a foundation for the half-inch marine plywood, and then the guys got to work, tying the floor down with remaining nylon. I don't know why they didn't just nail it, but I'm sure there's a good reason, they seem to know what they're doing. We finished the structure off with a metal roof cap of bent galvanized steel. There still are some major ideological issues with the guardhouse, like the fact that it's sitting right over a coral reef, something I have mentioned time and time again, how they are killing the polyps and their symbiotic algae, but, unfazed, the men nod their heads and smile, and say they will move it, just not today. I simmer down, knowing I better quit while I'm ahead, and leave some of the world's problems for tomorrow.

The Problem

After our vacation last week to Kuala Lumpur and the unexpected night aimlessly walking like a zombie through the Singapore Airport (long story), I made the seemingly 200-year leap back in time to Babatngon. It's easier now than in used to be to come back here after time away to other, more developed places. The more I get to know the people and places of Babatngon, the harder it is to categorize the place. It only 'felt' like the third world here when I didn't know Lolo Teting at the waiting shed, or little Joshua who never seems to tire of saying 'Hello Tito Peter!' over and over again, alliterating the consonants every time. It just feels like, deep breath… home..well, not HOME, home, but it feels like 'a' home. I've criticized the length of time of our service a lot, mainly because 2 years seems like too long a period for the vacation that some people see this service as, and too short to make a real difference in the lives of the people we are trying to help. However, I've come around to believing that 2 years is just right, long enough to make a lasting impression on the people here, get into a working rhythm, but short enough that you only go crazy so much. Although my bad balance and pointy nose will never blend in all the way, the fishermen that I work with every day have gotten over the fact that I'm always around. Their hyper vigilance at my every move has subsided, so that I can go off swimming, cleaning seaweeds or walking through the island jungle when there's a lull in the work. At times, I would like the attention, like when I sliced my finger on a machete sticking out of a tree the other day. (After I got the guys' attention, they brought a boat around and took me back to town where I ran to the rural health clinic to get bandaged.) Most times now, I can just sit and talk, or listen to the hum of voices, laughter, and work. Our senior member is Mano Manning, aged 77. He is constantly mumbling about something or other, and for the first few months of working with the men, I didn't pay him any mind. Then one day, he came up to me, talking, and I tried to hear him for the first time. He just kept mumbling in an English/Waray mix that I really didn't understand. At one point, I thought that I understood him to say 'Global Geopolitics.' I knew that couldn't be right, since Mano Manning has a 5^th-grade education, and, let's face it, we're in the middle of nowhere. When it was apparent that I wasn't getting whatever it was he was saying, Mano Manning hobbled slowly over to the shade of a banana tree where he had left his tattered Nike backpack with a Tupperware of rice. From it he took a plastic folder, and brought me the contents. He showed me a book. "The Iraq Report" – by somebody Hamilton and James Baker. I was dumbfounded, and just looked at Mano Manning who, unfazed by the look on my face continued mumbling about Weapons of Mass Destruction and troop surges and the like. I still don't know why Mano Manning cares about these things, or where he even got the book from. Since that day, we spend time discussing some of the larger issues in the world. The other fishermen are focused on the work at hand, with very little concern for other matters, at least as far as I can tell. I now try to be more in tune with Mano Manning, and more appreciative of his older perspective. Sometimes he just won't stop rambling, driving the other guys crazy with his chatter. They don't say anything to him, no matter how irritated they are, and maintain respect for him no matter what.

Today, while all the fishermen and I stood in a circle at 7 a.m. discussing purchasing more large bamboo from a local for the fish cages, I saw a sour look on Mano Mannings old face as he sat quietly talking to himself, hunched on the beach in the circle of men. While I talked business with the men, about how they need to speed up their work to adhere to the grant guidelines, the conversation got a little heated (Filipinos don't like being emphatically told to speed up work), and Mano Manning sat, slowly shaking his head. Mano Manning has been around for a while, and I thought that he probably could see a rift happening within the group that I just didn't pick up on. As the others continued talking, I walked over and sat beside Mano Manning, and asked him if there was a problem.

"Conflict," he said, concerned look on his face.

"What conflict is there? What is the problem, I would like to know." I pleaded in whispers so the others wouldn't hear while we both sat, hunched on the shoreline.

"Big problem between the two groups. May ada ang dako nga problema na (There is a big problem now)"

I was getting worried now, I really didn't want to have dissent among the members, at such a critical moment in the project, when we're almost done with the first big phase.

"Who are the two groups?" I asked in Waray Waray.

Mano Manning just looked down at the sand, shaking his head, and slowly continued, "China, invading Philippines waters, lots of Oil, big conflict. Navy warship there."

I suppressed a laugh of relief, nodded understandingly, rose to my feet and smiled. I took a step back from the crowd and just listened to the discussion, where to get bamboo, how many sheets of plywood we need, how many more kilos of nylon we need, all the while, Mano Manning stayed put, staring into the dark sand, slowly shaking his head.

Weiner’s Weener’s Saga

I know what you're thinking. ' Haven't we talked this to death enough already? Why can't he post about something else?' Well, the answers are, definitely, and, because I have something to say. This guy is no doubt an idiot when it comes to his preoccupation with his own anatomy, with pretty women, and women who are way too young for him. He made mistakes, yes, for sure, no doubt. But really, give me a break. I think it says something about our national culture when we can fein a huge outcry at a politician's personal indecencies, and we can have him out of office, form bipartisan support for his quick removal, and tar and feather him so that he never will see the light of day again. We can do all this, but we can't pass a budget, find a way to end another military escapade in Libya when our time is constitutionally up, and when we still can't stomach the thought of imposing restrictions on wall street boneheads whose greed got us in an economic ditch. I hate to burst everybody's bubble, but the whole Weiner thing, it's a big charade. Republicans want to make a huge deal out of his tighty whiteys, and democrats are too scared of seeming light on family values to say, "Who really cares?" Charlie Randall stops paying taxes, another guy gets caught with $90,000 of somebody else's money in his freezer, and the politicians proudly wipe their hands after 3 weeks of outcry and a speedy removal from office for a wiry guy with hormone issues. Really? All the wasted money every day, the no-bid contracts going unquestioned, foreign aid into deep pockets, people dying in unjustified battles to keep the military machine humming, and this is our preoccupation? None of the politicians care about this. Behind closed doors, they probably joke about their idiot friend who sent stupid pictures, but it's all a game. When we're spending time on this trash, having press conferences to talk about his sex addiction rehab, when the president is talking about the Weiner weener issue in interviews instead of the real stuff, our infrastructure and tax dollars sit idly by, waiting for some attention. From where I'm sitting, our government seems locked into a chess game, moving pieces to assert power over the board, but without sight of the issues that led us to play the game in the first place. I am confident that the vast majority of politicians in our government get into it because they feel that they can be part of the change, effecting real progress, but when they get into the game, and start playing the pieces, they are like farts in a whirlwind of beaurocracy.

I digress. I guess my point is, we elected Weiner to do a job. It wasn't to be a good husband, or father. It was to be a politician and make good policy change. If a construction worker lied on his taxes, he should be punished for sure, but I don't know if it would be logical to fire him from his job. There's no relation. I would like to think that we hire politicians for the work they can do for their constituency, and not for their propriety in social networking circles. We need to get back to the issues that actually matter, and this doesn't.

Stew

We're now on the last leg of what has been a great week in a truly amazing city. This past week, while in Kuala Lumpur, Selena and I spent time with people, animals, foods, and cultures that are very far removed from what we know. We met people from some 25 different countries, people who are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and all different shades of belief in between. Every night, we ate the food of a different country, various mixtures of herbs and spices telling the stories of ancient heritage. Some foods made our eyes water, and other foods shocked us with super-blandness. We drank masala chai one day at an indian deli, members of Malaysia's impoverished Indian working class all around us, and the next, we were in a starbucks in the shopping district, watching Chinese descendants of the countries founding merchants walking by in their business suits. One day, we shared a cramped elevator with Japanese tourists hailing 'chokrit bangas a Aloha gwill faw dinna' in one corner, a muslin couple discussing who-knows-what in the other, and a hindu man smiling broadly in the center. I met a South African couple with thick accents who wanted to get the skinny on everyone they met, talking relentlessly about how they loved Thailand, and how they hated Dubai, and their relief at not bringing 'the kids'. I sat with them one morning as they tried to pry a conversation from a friendly, quiet physicist from Germany who was visiting in Route to a conference. We didn't see but 1 American all week, but met many Australians in the streets and stores. As opposed to other places we've been in the past couple years, the people were really, really nice. Not one cab driver tried to scam us, and every doorman would greet with a large grin, and raise his right hand to his heart, a Malaysian greeting. Maybe this says something about the Philippines, about a culture there that is not quite as warm, but I would rather believe that the warm spirit is a product of relative prosperity that Malaysia enjoys, and the fact that money and basic necessities are not as immediate concerns for the people here, as they are for the people that we work with in the Philippines. I really have no idea. I just know that Kuala Lumpur is a gorgeous city in a seemingly gorgeous country. It's a place where you can find all the amenities of a western, U.S. life, but with Islamic and Malaysian heritage intact. Instead of the melting pot we like to boast in the U.S., I see this place as more of a stew, where the different ingredients still stick out, where you can still make out the sharp edges of carrots, the vibrant colors of peas and corn, but where they all still can come together to create a flavor that could not be achieved in any other way on their individual merits.

June 8-13 in Pictures

This is Jason, the boy who lives with his uncle and aunt on the island where we work. He doesn't go to school, but is smart with a pride that I don't see in other kids. With Machete strapped to his waist, he comes by daily, checkin our work. I took this picture of Jason on Monday, when he was climbing a coconut tree to cut us down some coconuts to eat for snack. The tree is 35 feet high, and he scampered up and down with ease, no ropes, no shoes, just ease.

Monday morning, our bamboo finally showed up, so on tuesday morning, we began tying the giant poles to blue plastic barrels to begin work on the floating guard shack that will serve as a place for the men to take turns and watch over the seaweed and fishcages that we're making. They are skilled at hand work, using sticks and ropes to do the job of vices and clamps. They hack bamboo at right angles with precision, every successive slice with the machete in exactly the same cut as the first.



In and of itself, the essence of working together day by day, eating off the same banana leaves and tugging at the same bamboo poles will pay divedends for the future sustainablity of the project. Every addtional day the men work together is another day of accountability that I hope they will have for making the project last.

Here is a picture of Jason and his uncle, 'Boy' coming back from collecting tuba in an adjacent island.

At one point, I grabbed a piece of nylon and started binding bamboo poles together, tightly wrapping the thick cord first across, then over, then across again. Edwin, the man on the left came by, smiled apologetically, and took the slack line from my hands and started the process over, making my first attempt seem amateurish. That's how it is working with the men here, everything is taught by example, I never hear repromands, just see people working, and if that work isn't sufficient, someone will come behind them, without word, and do the task over.

So far, a third of the guys have broken their flimsy sandals while working in the water on the project. Many times, when people are not working here, it is out of a pragmatic need to avoid strenuous labor that will cause them to either get hurt and need expensive medical attention, or mess up shoes or clothing that they cannot afford to replace. I'm now contacting chaco, teva, tom's, and some other manufacturers of water shoes to see if I can replace the men's shoes with footwear that's more durable. So far, no luck, but we'll see how it goes.

After they got the 4 sides of the guardhouse built, I noticed how enormous it's going to be. The men are excited to be building such a big place, and I joke with them that while they are guarding the seaweed farm, their children can come and excercise by running laps around the guardhouse platform. We jokingly discuss where the living room will be for the mammoth undertaking.

Friday night, Selena and I stayed at some friends' house nearer the airport, and got up on saturday and flew first to Manila, and then to our vacation destination for her birthday, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The city of Kuala Lumpur, often referred to as 'KL' is bustling with life from many different cultures and religions. Along the skyline, you can make out both western and eastern architectures, the KL Tower with it's muslim design, along with familiar businesses like DELL, McDonalds, KFC, and Kenny Rogers Restaurant. I've counted 8 different Starbucks locations so far.

KL Tower was made to enhance the nation's telecommunications advantage in the region, so they have a telecommunications museum that we hit up for our first destination.

We also visited this cultural center, atop a forested hill where the KL tower stands. In this place, we learned about many of the cultures that are present in this part of the world.

I even met this guy, a pakistani student, who let me wear his traditional hat, and a scarf with the pakistani design that means hospitality. He was an extremely nice guy, and teaches about pakistani culture on weekends, and goes to school at the local university for his MPA during the week.

Several times in the Mangroves in the Philippines I've seen these lizards, called Halo Halo in the Philippines. However, they're always too fast for me there, so this guy was a little slower and I was finally able to get a picture to show everybody!

J-E-L-L-O

Many times I've reported on the status of fisheries here in the Philippines, about the fact that illegal fishing is still rampant, with lots of cyanide fishing, trawling of coral reefs, even dynamite fishing is still a common illegal fishing technique. In some ways, the situation here is really improving, with large infrastructure projects going on and some promising stuff happening, but in terms of fishing laws, especially when it comes to enforcing those laws for rich commercial fishermen who are politically connected, this place is like the wild west, with very few serious laws, and a small percentage of those enforced to any degree.

While the fisheries continue to plummet here (with some progress being made), the population continues to skyrocket, especially in coastal areas where the main staple foods come from the ocean. This holds true for Babatngon, where the fishing catch, according to locals, has fallen dramatically in the past 40 or 50 years, and the 17,000 people in coastal areas, most of whom are families of fishermen, have an average of 6.4 kids, according to a socioeconomic survey I produced last year.

All of this means that the fisheries are in real trouble, and the people who depend on them are in really real trouble. In an effort to affect change on this issue, I have taken on a multifaceted approach that will hopefully simultaneously protect a set-aside marine sanctuary and increase livelihood for the local fisherfolks without hurting the stock of marine fishes in the area. Our plan in Babatngon to combat the growing problems associated with a diminishing fishery is to grow seaweeds for food and export as carrageenan, a livelihood project that has shown some success in recent years in the Philippines and Indonesia. Part of the project funds will go to building a guard shack that will overlook the seaweed farm and a nearby Marine Protected Area, and the members will be deputized as local law enforcement personnel to keep an eye on things. Additionally, as a challenge to myself as much as anything, I wanted to see if we could get some bottom-rung folks who have no political ties some assistance from the government for an additional project, so we have gone through the arduous year-long process of applying for and finally receiving project support for fish cages in the project area as well. We're keeping our fingers crossed that those funds come through some time in the next few weeks.

The group is composed of 36 men, all fisherfolks or people involved in subsistence farming. They're a rag-tag bunch of guys; some are smart; some are not; some are honest; some are not. They all come from the coastal area of Mombon, a stretch of the village that fronts the ocean, with a bunch of little huts out overlooking the water, basically a squatter area. When I first got here, I remember looking out at the cluster of shacks and shanties, wondering how anyone could live like that. Now, I know half of the people who live in this little corner of town, everyone calls my name as I walk through the little dirt pathway between the homes, going to fishermen's homes for impromptu meetings or to say hello. No one has glass windows, but rather hinged plywood slats that swing open, rusted in place, so I see everyone's faces, women brushing children's' hair, singing karaoke, or men drinking with a group of friends. A lot of the homes have a hog that lives in the area under their stilted shack, a few root crops or sweet potatoes planted in the sandy stinky soil in front, usually a slatted bamboo fence around the place. There is one little communal area in Mombon, probably 20 meters by ten, where the guys, most of them members of my association, have a pool table. When they're not fishing or drinking, they're usually at the pool table, placing 5-peso bets on a game of nine-ball or highs-lows.

Using funds we received from an environmental program through USAID, we bought buoys and nylon, bamboo for the guard shack, nails, nipa shingles for a roof, blue drums for the ballast to keep the guard shack afloat, and our seaweed seedlings from Guiuan, Samar, 4 hours away. The guys all underwent 2 days of training by the regional Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and since then, we have been meeting every day, from 7 am to 4 pm, tying lines, attaching the seaweed seedlings, filling sacks for mooring, and enjoying our time together. Every day, I get an $8 snack for all the guys, and for lunch, another $22 for everyone to fill up. We cook on the little island that faces the project area. In the shade of coconut trees and nipa fronds, we cook rice and squid over a wood fire and when cooked to perfection, dump everything out onto banana leaves and dig in. We haven't yet remembered plates and silverware, so we all eat traditional Filipino style, with our hands, communally, on the banana leaves. Somebody always brings me a glass to drink from, and I always appreciate the gesture. This is a real 'eating' culture, so right after eating snack, all the guys start talking about what we will get for lunch, how much grant money they will use. It really annoys me, but I realize that this is just the way it is, planning from meal to meal, making sure that you've got your bases covered so that you can think about other things.

Sustainability will always be hard to attain, but in hopes of making the project last, I've continued to put pressure on the government officials to come through with the additional fish cage project and after a lot of hassle, it looks like that will come through. The additional funding will mean additional training for the men, additional direct livelihood support now, and funding source that will outlast my service here, affecting the men into 2012. While they talk about women and coconut wine and Manny Paquiao, I'm trying to throw in some conversation about how to start a bank account for transparency with revenues in the future, why it's important to protect the fish santuary, and the overall purpose of generating income from things other than fish because we're trying to bring sustainable fishing back to Babatngon. Some of it is lost on them, partly due to my subpar language skills, but some of it gets the guys thinking, and slowly, some ideas are taking shape.

The project is coming along nicely. I know, having been here for some time, that things are bound to screw up, there's gonna be some politician who wants a cut, or somebody is going to get hurt feelings because of perceived inequities, but for now, it's a lot of fun just being one of the guys.