Getting back into the rhythm

View to the North from our house

I’ve been home for a little over a week now, and am using a snowy Saturday afternoon to catch up on my blog and tell about how it has been for me to transition back to the way of life here in Western Virginia from the way of life on the Island of Leyte, Philippines. It has been odd, because, as with Peace Corps Service and the unexpected changes that life in the Philippines entailed, the things I expected to shock me haven’t been that earth-shattering, but I am caught off-guard at times by small things that I wouldn’t expect to hit me.

Me, incredulous at the unexpected weather

As I was taking a run around my community here in Dayton, Virginia yesterday, I cut across a corn field and stooped down to pick up an edible mushroom when the black spores on its underside stained my hands like the ink of squid I was eating just two weeks ago in the middle of the ocean with the fisherfolks. I didn’t break down or anything, but it caught me off-guard, the divide between my home in Virginia and that in the Philippines.




Friend from the Philippines,
RPCV, Leah Ettema

My Cousin Clair
As the snow fell today covering the eastern and western mountainous horizons with a sheet of shiny white, I was taken aback at this beauty that many of my friends at site would never see except in pictures. Don Don and Ben Ben and Jimmy will never know the sting of winter cool on their fingers, or the smells of crunching red and yellow oak leaves underfoot as they walk through millions of acres of shared public lands.

I miss the fresh tropical breeze that is felt from the top of a jeep hurtling through an expanse of rice fields, and I miss the togetherness of those awfully huddled vehicles as we would ride to town. The constant sunshine and the lazy way of life as a volunteer already feels like some sort of dream, because things feel so much different here now. As is our human nature, the hard parts of life, the constant barrage of mosquitos and sweat, fear of bad water and lack of entertainment fade to the back of my mind as I’m reminded of all the good parts of being in the Philippines. My failed projects and frustrating conversations take a backseat to successes and friends I made.

Sunrise over the Massanutten Peak

Since I’ve been home, I’m had a lot of fun catching up with family. We’ve gone out to catch concerts and sit by rivers and picnic and walk. Everyone seems really busy, distracted from the fun of life by a sense of responsibility to keep going, working, striving for stuff.

The ‘reverse culture shock’ that Peace Corps often alludes to in literature about reentry to the country is real. Returning from the independent way of life that has become the norm abroad back to the politically correct, regimented, often stymied way of life in the states is hard, and should not be underestimated by returning volunteers. I’m afraid I did to some extent.

I look forward to all of the new things that are going to be happening as I (hopefully :) ) get a new job, and move to a new place. However, I will try to take with me the lessons learned and the new perspectives from service abroad, as they are priceless and were hard-earned.

Mom and Dad on a Picnicing Trip

View from Shenandoah River State Park

Coming Home

Last Thursday, I flew into Charlottesville Virginia at 10:00 p.m. after 5 flights and 4 layovers, lots of coffee and interesting conversations with fellow travelers. My 24-hour journey home started with a final flight from Tacloban, Leyte to Manila, where I stayed for three nights while paperwork and medical issues got finished up and logistics were finalized. I said goodbye to many of the friends who would be going their separate ways in the future, flying to a different destination, resuming different lives with different ambitions, horizons, obstacles.

My final night in the Philippines, two good friends who were also leaving joined me at an excessively overpriced immaculate buffet at a nearby Hilton in downtown Manila. It was an ironic ending to Peace Corps service, the notorious Hilton buffet beside the giant Pagcor Casino. The buffet had all-you-can-eat steak, rump roast, shellfish made to order, bottomless drinks, cheesecakes of all different types, really everything you could ever imagine. We wined and dined, laughing and joking about how outrageous we were, treating ourselves to such a lavish feast. After supper, we went back to the Peace Corps’ Pension and sat around laughing and talking with all the other departing volunteers until the wee hours, saying goodbye with hugs and smiles, one by one, until everyone had gone to bed and silence filled the air.

The next morning, the three of us, Bryan, Kristine, and I, got our bags together and jumped in cabs, and later flew out to Tokyo together. We excitedly talked about how we will stay in touch in the future, all of our future exploits, the mountain biking trips, hiking excursions, reunions, all the ways we would stay in contact. After a short layover in Tokyo, we all said goodbye, and went our separate ways. (Kris and Brian are a couple, so they’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the future.) It was sad, and as I said goodbye to my final traveling companions, I was reminded of a birder I worked with in Arizona back in 2002 on a bird crew.

Although only 3 months, the rustic living conditions of our birding field crew up in the remote mountains of Northern Arizona had fused our little bird crew together in much the same way as Peace Corps has done. One day, as we were departing the field site, after taking down the canvass cook tents and packing away the last of the equipment, I went to say goodbye to my friend, Jean Carpenter, a 60-something seasoned birder from Northern Oregon. As I went to hug her goodbye, I began to talk about exchanging addresses, staying in touch, phone numbers, emails, all the ways we could maintain the great relationship we had developed. Jean just looked at me, “We won’t write, and it won’t be the same, so why should we try? Let’s just enjoy the memories of how good this has been.” It felt cold and I was momentarily hurt, but we smiled, and silently parted ways without another word. Jean was a wise lady, and I think I’ll remember her smile and those words more than I would ever have remembered Christmas cards and birthday wishes that we could have insisted upon.

This isn’t to say that I don’t look forward to staying in touch with all of the great friends I’ve met while in Peace Corps, but if it is too hard, and our paths diverge to such an extent as to make it impossible, these great memories have been priceless, and I am satisfied with all of the good times we have had, without the need for platitudes and occasional remembrances.

The Peace Corps experience is one that is not for the faint of heart. It will stretch a person in very unexpected ways, often unsettling ways. It will amplify a volunteer’s good traits as well as the bad. I don’t think I would ever suggest that a person not undertake service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I would just suggest that nothing be assumed, to be ready for mental, physical, and spiritual change that will bend a soul until it splinters. And while all of these changes could take place, while unexpected loss and struggle can and will occur, the experience offers a chance for personal and professional growth that can not be obtained in many other ways.

To all of those future Peace Corps Volunteer Prospects, remember that you won’t get paid much, you’ll probably get really sick a couple times, Peace Corps is just a Beaurocratic as any other federal organization, you’ll miss home, your family, and you may not get much affirmation, people may not respect or understand you, but at the end of the experience, you will have gained insight and understanding into a culture and way of life that you could never have seen and understood otherwise. Whether or not The Buddha said it, I think it holds true that “In order to gain anything, you must lose everything.”

Last Impressions

Today is my last day in Babatngon, this place that has become my home for the past couple years. It’s a town at the end of the road, past the handicrafts of tourist towns, past the hustle and bustle of Tacloban City, 25 miles further, a seemingly forgotten, sleepy town, with gorgeous views and tough, proud people. It’s a place where fat people wear skinny jeans and skinny people wear next to nothing. A place where kids still play outside by themselves, where mothers still suckle babies in the cool shade of leafy trees, where pudgy hometown politicians waddle out of the nicest cars, and skinny farmers carry thrice-used feed sacks on their shoulders, full of produce for town. From this vantage point, I can’t even imagine the shift of perspective that will occur in the next couple weeks as I settle back into the states’ lifestyle.

I hope to remember most of the best parts of this place, some of the many lessons learned, but will take none of the negative feelings home. Most of those feelings were born out of frustration anyways, out of alienation and the fact that I was so far away from family at home. So many things have happened, and I’ve learned so much from this place that I can’t afford to take the negative with me anyways, because I’ll be doing my best just to remember all the good stuff. There are still many years for me to learn from others, to experience all there is in life, but I know that I’ll never forget this time as one of the most important of my life. I’m sure that 99% of volunteers would agree with me. The lessons are hard-won and some days just basically suck, but it’s unforgettable in every way.

The people here that we work with will never see the way we live in developed places, and many of our family and friends at home will never experience the profundity of living among a totally different people, and trying to adapt to their customs and ways. The challenge now for all of us volunteers is to return and relate this experience back to people at home so that they can understand part of what this culture is like, how people here live. In some ways, we’ve spent a couple years developing ourselves into liaisons, translators, who can help these different cultures understand each other. Hopefully I can do this place justice as I talk about it with friends at home.

Babatngon, the place at the end of the road, the town that I couldn’t pronounce for a couple weeks at the beginning, has grown on me. Since I’ve been here, Babatngon got its first gas station, first franchise marinated chicken joint, first bonafide videokye bar, there is a new micro finance business, and the local officials extended the pier by 100 feet or so. It’s not exactly the progress that I would have wanted, and it still seems far less than what will be necessary, but it’s progress nonetheless.

The people here, (some of them anyways), continue to toil, working to make the place better, with more infrastructure and better roads. Kids walk for miles to get educations that will ultimately create the future of this place. The District 1 Fisherfolks Association members throw feed to our little fish, small handfuls of hope for the future of their children. Farmers continue to climb coconut trees and drag plows behind karabaws in the fields, making their livelihood from rice, one kernel at a time. Everyone works for progress in the best way they know how.

I’m so happy to be going home, seeing my family and friends next week, take some warm showers, drink some orange juice, watch some TV and go hunting in the beautiful Virginia mountains, but this place and all the lessons will stay with me wherever I go.

Guarding the Fort

Every night, 5 fishermen go to our fish cage out in the middle of the ocean and sleep on the rocking guardhouse overnight to make sure fish are not stolen by passers by. Since this week is my last chance to pick a night and go with the guys as they do their ‘guard duty,’ I decided to go with them to sleep on the bamboo platform Monday evening. As is the daily routine for these guys, they went to buy 2 gallons of coconut wine and then went to a friend’s backyard and picked out the fattest chicken wandering around, and brought it with us, squawking on the boat as we made our way to the guardhouse. Don Don, the association president also brought a big cast iron pot for the cooking and a 5 gallon container of clean drinking water.

The 6 of us got to the guardhouse at about 6 p.m. and the guys all set to work, making camp for the night. Godofredo, a slender man, tattooed and quick-witted, set about lighting kerosene burners for the night to provide us with some light under the cloudy sky. Don Don, president of the organization started arranging cinderblocks and a little bundle of wood for the cooking fire. Jimmy, older brother of Don Don and local fish dealer, went to sleep on the bamboo floor, snoring loudly. Lakay, pedicab driver, and a good friend of mine, set about preparing the squealing chicken, first killing it with machete and then scalding feathers with hot water from the little fire and plucking them meticulously. Edgar, village politician and a jolly fellow, sat beside Lakay, critiquing his plucking technique, making sure not to get his hands dirty. I just took pictures.


After the chicken was plucked, Don Don put on a fresh pot of water, put onions, ginger, lemon grass and salt in, a began stirring our broth, a bigger pot of rice on the fire just next to the water. Lakay, using our boat paddle as cutting board, was busy chopping up the chicken that had been clucking around his back yard earlier, machete in hand. We ate supper with our hands, sharing plates and pot lids as saucers for the stock that we sopped up with rice. As we ate in a circle squatting on our haunches, the men all joked and said ‘Parehas Boy Scouts Kita,’ (We are just like boy scouts!) Boy Scouts are kind of the epitome of hard core for these guys and they often say something about ‘Boy Scouts’ when we’re eating with our hands, cooking over fire. I’ve known a lot of boy scouts, and these guys live a lot more hard core than boy scouts I’ve ever met. It’s funny to hear them say something about the tough boy scouts when I think most boy scouts would shriek if they saw how people live here. It think it’s funny.


After supper we all sat in the moonlight on the side of the guardhouse platform, the guys smoking cheap cigarettes and passing around a single shot glass of tuba, taking turns drinking the sour stuff.

We talked for a couple hours, sharing stories, talking about family and friends, neighbors, wives, eating, the fish, the upcoming harvest, everything. I was asked at one point to share a ‘traditional’ Virginia song, and after racking my brain, realizing that I couldn’t remember the words to ‘Carry me back to ol’ Virginny’, sang ‘Oh, Shenandoah’ for the guys, not really knowing any other traditional songs. Godofredo told us stories of his work and the people he had met in Manila when he used to work there. Everyone shared, and around 10:30, the coconut wine dried up, our heads full of conversation we’d had, we went to sleep, sprawled out over the platform, clouds moving in, crowding out the moonlight. Since I was a guest, I got to sleep in the big harvest box that blocks the cool night air. Everyone wrapped up in empty fish feed sacks for warmth, and slept soundly, except for me. Unaccustomed to the uncomfortable conditions, the stinky fish feed sacks, the uneven bamboo, I lay awake most of the night, listening to the snoring of the other men, enjoying the experience, knowing I’d regret the lack of sleep, but not the memory.

A low pressure front rolled in around 1 a.m. and it began to pour on the little guardhouse. As the ocean started to boil with tiny white waves, water began to slosh against the sides of the bamboo structure. We continued to try and sleep, but eventually, water was everywhere, even soaking through the grass shingles on the roof, and everyone was awake, watching sheets of rain run across the water.

Around 5 a.m., we all packed up our things, flash lights, matches, my book and camera, and hurriedly got into the association boat, covered up dry feed as best we could and headed back to the town to get warm and let the next shift of fishermen come and sit in the rain.

 

Despedida!!

Part of the Filipino tradition is to have a party for any member of the family or community that is going away for an extended period of time. This tradition is called the Despedida party, and in the Visayas part of the country, it means lots of coconut wine, a heap of rice and shrimp, and a ton of laughter. This past Sunday, I hosted my Despedida party at the guardhouse for fisherfolks and others here whom I have worked with over the past couple years. Despedida parties are usually on dry land in a big barangay hall or somebody’s house, and although it made logistics a little more tricky, I thought that it only made sense to have the going away party at the place where the men and I have worked together tying bamboo and chatting and feeding fish for the past couple months. (It also cuts down on random freeloaders coming by to eat to have the party in the middle of the ocean on a floating platform.) The party was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. but it just wouldn’t have seemed right to start it on time, so, as usual here, everybody began rolling in at about 10:30. Most of the association members came about that time, holding a gallon of coconut wine in one hand, a Tupperware of rice in the other.

 One friend of mine from the local high school brought a bowl of eel cooked in coconut milk that his wife had sent for me. Several of the members who didn’t bring their own food began fishing with a piece of nylon thread, hook and nail for sinker when they arrived, and by 11:30, they had caught several more fish, one of which was over 3 pounds, to add to the food for the day. The weather was nice, and all day we talked and ate and drank as the guardhouse gently rocked on the current. My supervisor, Nimfa came around lunch time with a couple other women, a large box of rice in tow, along with shrimp, Kamote, and Cooked Pork. In all, we probably had around 15 gallons of coconut wine between the 40 people at the celebration as well, all of which was consumed by 5:00 p.m. when most of us went home. One really neat thing that I saw was everyone talking. We had persons from the local government, the regional government office, the high school and the fisherfolks association all at the party, all talking and eating together. I feel that in this place, people from differing socio-economic background aren’t accustomed to ‘hang out’, but at the Despedida, they did, and they all seemed to enjoy it.

Amongst the spread of food and wine was a huge case of coke, 12-1.5 liter bottles for the celebration, which I found out later had been a contribution of the fisherfolks themselves. Each man gave around 25 pesos to purchase it. When I asked a couple of the guys about the big case of coke, some of the fishermen just smiled, and didn’t say anything, winking. It really struck me as special that these guys who make less in a month than I will be making in a day put in for such an extravagant gift. Twelve bottles of coke isn’t a big deal in most situations, but it was to me at the Despedida. They all know by now that I am returning next week to wealth that they will never experience, and comfort that they will never have the privilege to feel. The men ask me when I will return and if I can come back to harvest fish with them. They want to send coconut wine and dried squid back with me, along with coconuts and pineapples. They get it. They know I’ll probably not be back, at least any time soon, that we’ll have sparse correspondence if any at all, but they still ask, just making small talk.

As an afternoon wind began to blow and the guardhouse platform began to rock a bit more, most of the guests stumbled onto boats and headed back to the mainland. Some of the fisherfolks stayed at the platform until 2 a.m. the next morning, laughing and singing and drinking more coconut wine.

Week 110 of 112

This week, I have been continuing to say goodbye to the  people I've gotten to know here, taking my lense and zooming back out from the minutia of the day to day to a larger focus on my experience here, the overall feeling of things, the sights and smells and experiences.  At this point, I feel that if I don't zoom out and look at things from a larger perspective, I'll wallow in wondering what will happen to all the people I've come to know.  Many of the people don't have much of a future to look forward to, with an uphill climb ahead.  I've seen progress in our little town, the first fast food joint opened up a couple weeks ago, along with the first gas station.  A couple new micro loan businesses have opened since I've been here, banking is more accessible, and international aid is more of a reality with more and more access to the internet.  Despite the progress, there's a lot of people, namely the fisherfolk and older community members that will never realize the luxuries of the progress that's happening all around.  The divide grows, and while elementary-educated rice farmers toil in the fields pulling a plow with a Karabaw, wealthy kids sit in an internet cafe  in town just a couple miles away, playing interactive video games with people half a world away.

When I came here a couple years ago from the states, I knew that I would see my American family and friends again.  I didn't worry that they would someday lack food on their tables or be at risk of assault and being mistreated.  However, I'll go home now, and most of these people will remain frozen in my memory as they are now, and I'll never know what happened to them.  That's what makes leaving here hard.  I won't miss the food or the heat or the confusion, but I'll miss knowing that things are okay.

 Bathroom at the Barangay Hall.

Nimfa

Today I found myself thinking about all the worthless information that’s on the internet, the ubiquitous prose that abounds in cyberspace about every little thought and action of so many people that really doesn’t matter at all. About 99% of people in the United States under 50 can probably google themselves and get a couple mindless hits, a facebook profile, a customer review they wrote on some useless product ten years ago, maybe a thesis or dissertation abstract for the more productive of us, insignificant rankings of 5k runs in rural corners of the country, mentions in school newspapers, blogs, whatever.


For every person that lives in infamy on the internet, a raving review of an ergonomic dish scrubber or myspace profile with obscure homemade music that will never be heard, I bet there’s another 50 people that will never get mentioned, who live with integrity every day, working hard in some office, doing work that won’t get the recognition for meaningful accomplishments we’ve come to sort of expect.

One of the people that won’t come up on a google search, who isn’t caught on tape dancing to the Macarena at somebody’s wedding, is Nimfa U. Machate.

Nimfa has been my supervisor here in the Philippines for two years now. She is about 5 foot 1, with a great big smile and a wonderful presence, usually in jeans and high heels effectively ordering a couple other Agriculture Officers around who are a head taller than she. There’s been a lot of the time here when I haven’t been on great terms with her though. We haven’t seen everything the same way. To get projects through the red tape and beaurocracy, I have pushed at times when she would rather have waited. At times, I’ve felt taken for granted, that my time here has been wasted in some ways, and, she’s probably felt that I am a little too forceful, and a bit disrespectful of the culture I signed up to come and serve. She’d probably be right too, because at times, I’ve gotten lost in my American drive to produce results with work, to toil with utmost efficiency and objectivity, when a little bit of patience may have produced better results.

No doubt we’ve learned from each other, and expectations that we both had of our relationship two years ago have produced a reality that is considerably different. Amid our differences, the little spats we have had trying to reconcile our different cultural ways of working the system, we always come back to beliefs we have in common. Nimfa and I both believe in the importance of honesty, the value of serving others, and the significance of following through on our commitments to the people here who we are answerable to. These three similarities have forged a bond between us despite heated texts and my snippy comments, and extreme frustration on the bad days. Nimfa does her best, and she has been doing her job to the best of her abilities for over 25 years now in a place where it would be really easy to just sit around and collect a pay check. She’s my ‘nanay nga filipinas’ (Philippines Mom) and I’m really going to miss her.

When asked about how it is to work together, Nimfa laughs and says we are both workaholics and want to help the fishermen and protect coral reefs here. That about sums it up, (and now Nimfa U. Machate is googleable.)

Panorama

The Philippines is a country with beautiful oceans, vast bright green expanses of rice paddys, and gorgeous mountain ranges, jagged peaks of adolescent volcanic rock poke out of many inland spaces, covered with a turf of banana and coconut trees on the gently rolling areas, and huge seldom-harvested groves of Narra, Jimalina, and Avocado in the upland areas. All of the wild jungle areas are thick with Balukawi Vines and unforgiving nettles in between the huge trees. These ecocsystems are beautiful by themselves, but when taken in with the entire panorama, when viewed together in one, they present a staggering combination of different forms of beauty. All at once, you can see vast soft waters on the horizon, steep forested mountains in the background, and verdant green flats carved with sweat and blood over centuries at the fore.


I’m still in my photo stitching infancy, but have started to try and capture some of the beauty of these combinations of landscapes here in Babatngon, Leyte, Philippines.

 This is the view from the guardhouse and fish cage project looking back on the town of Babatngon, and mountains in the background.  Every day it is a beautiful sight, on cloudy days, the myst gives the mountains a mistique, and on clear days, it really is a great view.

This is the view from the side of a road in a neighboring village of Babatngon, called Pagsulhugon.

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A gorgeous rice field I wanted to capture one day as I walked by.  I can't seem to get this picture to do it justice, but take my word for it, it's really nice.