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.