Death at Sea

This past Wednesday, I went to the town market here in Babatngon to get my usual, 1 kilo potatoes, 1 kilo carrots, ¼ kilo green beans, 10 bananas, 1 sandwich bag holding about 5 tablespoons of curry powder, and 2 heads of garlic. I picked through the vegetables and fruit, negotiated the price down to what I always pay, and turned to go on my way when I noticed a crowd had gathered at the shoreline. Babatngon's market faces the ocean, you can see the other islands that are right off the coast, the market is about 20 yards by ten yards in all, a pole frame open-air building with a corrugated metal roof and always has a stale odor of fish guts, sweat, and pork cuts that have been out too long. There is always a row of pump boats, fishing vessels and the like that are docked at the shore, waiting to take passengers to nearby islands, or fishermen out to sea.

This day, though, the crowd gathered around the shore area where boats are docked, and the fixed gaze of a wondering, murmuring crowd focused on one of the small fishing vessels tied with fishing line to another of the pump boats. I walked over, pushed through the little crowd of 40 or 50, and saw what they were looking at. Two fishermen had been out fishing the night, before, and found another boat, floating, kerosene lamps burnt out, and the boat owner sitting, listless, slumped over his little two stroke engine, dead. The men presumably tied fishing line on the dead man's boat, and towed it in, then, to the market area, where the crowd was looking at the contorted body of the fisherman. He was still slumped over, his right arm straight out, wrist twisted upwards, left arm flung over the side of his boat, bent at the elbow, both arms weathered, the sinews of tired muscles apparent, and fingers still soiled with his toils in life. One shop owner, Jimmy, whom we buy our eggs and elbow noodles from, walked past me, just shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said, 'The police will come, they will know what to do.' I looked around, saw two of the police standing in the shade of a cacao tree, chatting idly with a group of men, smiling and nodding. I doubt they were carrying out any sort of investigation of the man's death.

As soon as it had gathered, the crowd of people began to disperse, their curiosity gone and no more questions answered than when they had come. All the while, the tide continued to lap at the little concrete storm wall, the ice cream man, box slung over his shoulder continued to ring his bell, and the little market continued its business. Still, the man's body remained in the boat, awaiting some sort of official examiner, its only movement being that of the breeze on his thinning hair and the current on his little boat.

I tried to process that scene later, all of the pieces and how they must all fit together in this culture. My initial impression was that of someone seeing, for the first time, a dead body, one that was not inbalmed or hooked up to tubes in a hospital room. It struck me how little anyone cared that here, in front of them, was a dead body, it seemed no different than if the crowd were looking at a beached whale, and the temporary intrigue. I thought about all of the loud, painful, overbearing ways of dying, and how, compared to all of the wars and suffering, this man died in one of the most peaceful ways I can imagine, out on the ocean, doing what he did all his life, without a care in the world. After thinking about it for a while though, I think that is all wrong.

The people in the crowd around me saw themselves, a man fishing to keep his family fed, in poor health, who died without anything but a Nipa Hut, and a small, broken down fishing boat. I realize now that the more time those people spent looking at that body, trying to find out what happened, who he was, where he was fishing, the more they would have seen a reflection of the lives they live. The man in that boat probably didn't die peacefully at all; he was working his hands and arms raw to fight for a livelihood in the ocean, in the unknown. Maybe to die in the middle of the ocean fishing would be the dream of Bill Dance or some other sports fisherman, but for this man, fishing may have never been his avocation. Without a choice of doing something, I don't think we can ever be satisfied with it. Maybe he lucked out, and loved his life of fishing in solitude every night, rain or shine, but most likely, that man led a life of struggle, resenting the choices he never had.

As I turned to go from the crowd on Wednesday, I hoisted my bag up on my shoulder, and said goodbye to our vegetable vendor. She looked at me, smiled, and gesturing to the man in the boat, said in Waray, "Maybe he caught a huge fish that was so big he had a heart attack trying to pull it in." I agreed maybe, smiled, and rode away on my bike.

In Defense of Reading Two Books At The Same Time…

I feel that I am the poster child for someone with ADHD. My mind wanders from topic to topic, idea to idea, and it drives my wife crazy. One of the symptoms of my problem is that I often find myself reading more than 1 book at the same time, something that is easy for some people, but a bad idea for me, one book the distraction for too long with the other. So, this past year, I have made a kind of pact with myself to try and abstain from multiple books at the same time.

This past week, however, I have been deviating from my little oath, reading two books at the same time. One of these is called 'The Control of Nature' by John McPhee, a book mom brought to me when she visited just a couple weeks ago, and the other, a book entitled 'Sleeping with the Devil' written by an ex-CIA Agent, about our addiction to crude oil from the Middle East and subsequent shady relationships we pay to maintain in the hopes of keeping the Saudis happy.

Now, these are two books that one wouldn't normally put in the same category, but I was hit by some striking similarities in the subject matter. In 'The Control of Nature,' the author spends the first part of the book detailing our control of the Mississippi river, one of the top ten largest rivers in the world, a river that drains about a third of the continental United States. It tells of how the first settlers in the Southern Louisiana area staked their claim on hundreds of thousands of acres of low lying swampland, shifting alluvial floodplains that were home to some of the best farming in the world due to periodic flooding and the shifting riverbed. They looked at this area, and shortsightedly, unknowingly, built their cities, first New Orleans, then Morgan City, and others, in one of the most volatile and difficult-to-control river systems you could imagine. To guard against floods in their new found civilization, the inhabitants first built earthen and rock dams at high cost. As the cities have flourished since, and real estate has become more valuable, a system of earthen dams and levees that was once merely expensive has become a fortress of millions of metric tons of concrete built higher and higher to control more and more water as impermeable surfaces all over the Midwest put a higher volume of stormwater runoff in the river. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to control a river system that wasn't meant to be controlled, but the sad truth is, that we cannot go back and move the cities and industries that are now established in a virtual river bottom. We have no choice but to build the levees higher and higher, the dams thicker and thicker, and spend more and more tax money to maintain our version of what ought to be.

The second book, 'Sleeping with the Devil,' is an incredible peek into the alliances that we have built with rich Saudi princes and royals to maintain assured energy reserves. Just like with Southern Louisiana, we staked a claim a long time ago in the wealth that is sitting in the middle east, namely Saudi Arabia. We built friendships and strategically placed military installations to maintain the balance of power, to keep those families in control so that we could protect our interests. In effect, we took a snap shot of the political and cultural climate of the middle east, and chose to freeze it, keep things the same as long as we could, much like we decided to do with the Mississippi river delta. But here's the thing that I think is the epiphany, culture and politics, just like a huge shifting river delta, moves, and has a natural progression, and if you try to halt it or control a natural process, there are monumental costs that will have to be paid to maintain that balance. In 'The Control of Nature', the Author alludes to the reality that there will be a storm that will undermine the dams to such an extent in Louisiana that they will fail and there will be massive destruction. He says that even the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledges that they cannot keep this up in perpetuity.

Much in the same way, the author of 'Sleeping with the Devil' charges that we have held the cultural and political progression of Saudi Arabia at bay for a long time, but it is inevitable that the Sultans, rich, stupid, and behind the times, will be ousted, and the United States, with its incredible assets at stake, will experience a massive economic meltdown as 60% of the world's oil is suddenly is in the hands of a populace that has endured the punishment of a totalitarian regime for the past 60 years while the U.S. was abetting the whole thing. He, too, claims that this situation is inevitable, and the signs of a frail regime and boiling constituency is already there. He states that it may be in the United States' best interest to take the oil fields in Saudi Arabia by force before they fall into the wrong hands during political conflict, but whatever the best strategy, it is clear that our situation is not very solid. These past few weeks as we all have been watching the situation in the middle east unfold, it has become very clear that the less dependent on assets in that region we can be, the better.

Anyways, that is a long, drawn-out explanation for why I think it may be okay for even the most attention-deprived people to read multiple books at the same time. If any of you have read the books and have another take, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Sitting on a Bench

This past Wednesday, between an excruciatingly mind numbing meeting with the local clergy (long story) and a brief period of nausea dealing with ineptitude at the Municipal Hall, I walked down to watch the ocean. Babatngon, if I haven't mentioned it enough, is a gorgeous place, like much of the Philippines. The islands are riddled with jagged rocks coming out of beautiful aquamarine water, all this with a mountainous backdrop of lush green cogon (tall grass) strewn hills, and from the shore of district 1, where I chose to sit, you can see the peaks of Volcanoes on the nearby island of Biliran. I count 5 nearby islands that you can see while just sitting there.

I sat down on a wooden coconut lumber bench with 6 other men, the oldest men in town, hanging out, as they do every day, on the bench, watching the tides relentlessly rise and fall. The group of old men, their white hair and laxidasical conversation remind me of similar groups I've seen, old guys sitting outside country gas stations in Briery Branch or Keezletown or Woodstock back at home in Virginia. The way they just sit, in a hurry for nothing, and seemingly content to sit the day away, talking with old friends. Two of the guys are pensioners who used to work at the municipal hall, one of them was a politician back in the day, and the other three guys are fishermen, guys with money attained from their children who support them financially. To be sure, these guys wouldn't have been in the same social or economic circles when they were younger but these six guys now spend most of their days talking together, as time, the great equalizer, has brought them full circle.

The old fellow closest to me, a man who sometimes makes crab traps in his spare time, asked me a few questions, about what I'm doing here and when I'll be going home. I told him a little bit about Peace Corps and what we hope to be helping with here in the Philippines. Then he asked me if I read the Bible, if I had ever heard of the 'Babelli.' I didn't know at all what he was talking about, so I asked him to repeat a few times until he finally said, 'The story of the tower of Babelli. Everyone understood each other before that, and then masina hi God (God was mad))' I told him that yes, I had heard of the Tower of Babel, and we talked some more about it. Then he asked me if I am Catholic, I said no, and I explained some of the differences between the Protestants and Catholics, and the different protestant denominations. He seemed relieved because then, under his breath, so the others couldn't hear, he told me that the town is full of Catholics, but they are sinners, are on a very dangerous road. Sure that he was talking about the excesses of alcohol, or the propensity of people here to be less than honest, I asked which commandment the Catholics are breaking. He turned to me, and in the same low voice, with eyes wide and vehement, said 'Engraven images, many many engraven images!' I put on my best serious/consoling face and agreed 'Yes, many many engraven images indeed.'

We continued to sit for a few minutes, and then I left for my afternoon class at the high school, the six old men still talking away with one another, about the weather, or their wives, or the latest news, or something else, and I just wondered if the old men sitting in front of 257 grocery in Briery Branch, Virginia, might have been doing the exact same thing.

Field Trip!!

If you've seen my pictures and posts up 'til now, you would probably have noticed that I have become enamored with teaching science to a first-year class of high schoolers these past 8 or 10 months. Several projects and ideas, for one reason or another, have not gone as I had planned during service. However, I offered to teach this class since the usual teacher was unavailable, and I have developed a real affinity for all of the students. I know where many of them live, I have fished with some of their parents, and have taught environmental education to many of their siblings in other schools where I have gone. While teaching science, I have also discovered the incredible lack of opportunities that hinders the students' educations. Many of the students literally walk up to 5 kilometers through the rain just to come to school. Several of those who live further away have to cut out a day or two a week so that they will have fare to ride the jeep to school. After they have arrived to school, the students don't even have the basic assurance that their teachers will make the effort to come and teach them. So I decided that we would take a field trip.

Within the large municipality of Babatngon, about 20 kilometers away from the high school, there is a regional Agricultural Research Station. Many of the students have driven by the facility on their way to town on special occasions, but none knew what the facility is there for. I started going around town, trying to find out who would be willing to rent out their jeepney and driver for half a day so that we could take the kids on a field trip. I went to the Research Center to schedule the date and see about some sort of tour or presentation. I bargained with a driver I met one day until he agreed to take us, for 4 hours, to and from the Agricultural Research Station for 1000 pesos($22). When I told the kids we were going on a field trip on Wednesday in 2 weeks and how they had to get signed permission slips, they were ecstatic, begging to know what we would do and where we were going. For a couple days, it was the talk of the class. Then, as days wore on towards the trip date, excitement waned, kids stopped talking about it, sure it wouldn't happen, that I had forgotten and things would fall through. On the Tuesday before the trip though, I reminded the students to bring their permission slips, still excitement was low, but the kids treated the permission slips like an assignment, not something that would really be happening. I was even unsure of how the whole thing would pan out.

On Wednesday, I walked to school like every day, and saw a small jeep sitting beside the road, driver standing with a big smile, ready to go on the field trip. I went into the classroom, and started checking off names of students who had their permission slips and 5 pesos as their contribution. 35 of the students turned in everything and we went out to the small jeepney sitting beside the road. I hesitated, seeing how we could never fit all of the kids inside, but the kids rushed to the jeep, girls jumping inside and filling it up, and boys, as is the culture, clamoring up the ladder of the jeep and piling on top. I was horrified to think how quick a teacher in my position in the states, taking a jeep full of kids, half of whom were riding on the top, would get fired. But, the apprehension went away when the principal piled in right beside us, eager to go along, oblivious to the safety hazard. Selena, free from classes for the day, climbed in the back with the girls serving as chaperone #3.

We arrived at the agricultural station at 9:00 am. We played simon says and talked about rice fields until our tour guide came and fetched us 30 minutes later. The students all were invited into the main conference room of the Eastern Visayas Agricultural Research Station and sat down in swivel chairs in an air conditioned room with a powerpoint slideshow playing in front. They were blown away, shivering from what was the first air conditioning many of them had ever felt, watching a series of pictures on a piece of technology none of them had ever seen before. It was a really big moment for many of them, and as the manager of the research center spoke, many of them were in such a new environment, it was a little to much to be taking in. (Before giving each of the students a banana for snack, I gave everybody a squirt off purell which really threw them off. )

After a short presentation, we went to see rice fields planted with different hybrid strains for higher germination and faster growth. They showed us ornamental plants, genetically modified fruit trees, and one man even showed everyone how trees are grafted. Boys in class who I have never been able to reach suddenly were alert, intensely watching as people were working with their hands, employing new scientific ideas and techniques to make agricultural production more efficient. I realize activities like the field trip are unsustainable and last for only a short while, but they were learning things about their community, its potential, and professional life that I could never have shown them in the classroom. It was a huge day for 35 kids who don't have many opportunities and it cost about $26, bananas included.

Bookshelves and Organizing

I started the week with work at the Public High School, talking to the principal and other teachers about the need for bookshelves, how we need a place to put extra books since we just received a generous shipment of used books from Virginia and Pennsylvania, and we need new, durable bookshelves in which to house the novels and picture books. Throughout a couple of agonizing conversations, I convinced the others of the need for new bookshelves, and my need for a companion to go to the city and help me buy lumber on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, I met my companion, friendly Mr. Cadano, a thirty-something guy with a huge smile, bowl hair cut and big gut, at the school waiting shed, and caught a jeep to town. We got there after an hour-long bumpy ride and we immediately met with a man at the front who took us to look at available hardwood boards, approximately 1 inch by ten inches wide, and 12 feet long. Sounds simple, but you'd be surprised. First of all, hardwood is taboo here. Since a moratorium was imposed in the 1970s on cutting any trees but those designated by permitted, licensed personnel, on any land, people have been afraid to buy, sell, even travel with quality lumber. Illegal logging is rampant, but it either goes on at night, or under supervision by people paid to not care. So anyways, it was weird to be buying this lumber first of all, but secondly, to find transportation back to my place in the countryside was going to be hard seeing as how everybody is afraid to transport lumber. I ordered 6 – 12 foot boards, enough to make 4 bookshelves for right underneath the chalkboard in the school library. I ordered, and then left Mr. Cadano with the clerk while I went out to see that the boards they chose were the right ones, and that they put them somewhere so that no one would steal the lumber before we came back. Seeing that everything was secure, I returned inside, there to wait at the receiving section, (an area 5 feet away from the ordering section (this is a small place)) where I would be awaiting my change, along with lumber, screws, metal brackets, and sandpaper. After about 30 minutes, the receiving clerk came back with a little box of ¾ inch screws, and another box of 1 ¼ inch screws. Now the clerk told me that if I bought my 100 screws in singles, the screws would cost 2 pesos apiece (4 cents), but if I bought them in 'gross' I would receive 144 screws for 95 pesos, a savings of about 2 bucks, so naturally I said yes. Well, my 'gross' purchase entailed a stockboy counting out all 144 screws for the next 5 minutes. When complete, he gave them to the receiving clerk, who proceeded to double check, counting out 2 boxes, 144 screws each. Around 35 screws into her 288 count, the receiving clerk received a phone call from her sister, talked about her husband for 10 minutes, then hung up. However, after the phone call and supposed urgent news, she had lost count, so she emptied the box again, and started counting. About 100 screws in, she found a flat head screw, the wrong type since I had ordered Phillips screws, so she had to find the correct box to return the screw to. The screw saga continues, but I'll just let it go and say it was mind numbing, putting it mildly.

After receiving my screws, sandpaper, receipt, and brackets, I went back outside where my lumber was laying, and Mr. Cadano exclaimed that something must be wrong because there were six boards.

"Well, that's the amount I ordered" I said.

Mr. Cadano: "I told the lady to just give us 5 pieces because it costs over 600 pesos ($12) apiece!"

Me: "Yes, but I told you we need 70 feet of wood, and if we only have 5 pieces, that is not enough wood, that is 10 feet short."

Mr. Cadano: "But 1 board is over 600 pesos!"

Me: "You wait here, I will go get one more piece of wood to build the bookshelves properly."

Mr. Cadano: "Agi!(Ouch!)"

Thus began another 30 minutes, from explaining that yes, I wanted 1 more piece of the same type of wood to the lady at the front desk, to ordering, to waiting again for the receiving section (just 5 feet away from the ordering desk) to answer phone calls, write down multiple receipts, and give me change.

I finally got all of the stuff, convinced a jeepney driver to take me and the wood back to Babatngon after a lot of haggling and 300 pesos, and had some neighbors help me haul it down our muddy lane by hand in the rain. I have spent the last few days building the 4 bookshelves, things have gone well, and they look pretty good, considering I have no hand tools, and am just using my new little hand crank drill to make holes for the infamous screws. I have never had to exercise so much patience for 6 pieces of wood, and I hope to never have to again. All this said, it has been so nice to smell fresh sawdust and do some manual labor for a change. The wood I have had to use is Lawaan wood, a reddish wood the shade of cherry with the grain of birch. It smells like Red Oak and sands like Mahogany. The experience of making the shelves has provided me with a great outlet for stress as well as the opportunity to meet several neighbors as I ask around to borrow a square from one person, a hand plane from another, a screw driver from another, and a saw from someone else. Various members of the family downstairs poke their heads up from time to time to check my progress, offer comments like, "Your saw not sharp" or "You now a carpenter?!"

Lunar Landing

This past month, I haven't updated the blog much, but there's been plenty going on. The first couple weeks of November, we continued teaching classes at the Catholic and public high schools. One of the most meaningful moments I got while teaching this month was introducing my beaming class of 58 1st year high schoolers to the fact that humans landed on the moon. This doesn't sound like a groundbreaking task I'm sure, but I found in really humbling to be endowed with the responsibility of conveying the importance of the event. I started with the size of the Earth and the Moon, and the distance traveled by the spaceship (238,000 miles) put in terms of the distance to the closest city, Tacloban, which is 24 miles away from here. We talked about the mass of the two floating rocks, why gravity is so much less on the moon. One day I tried, with two big balls of paper and an old globe from the library, to depict the moon's revolution around earth, the monthly phases. One night, I asked students to sit outside and just look at the moon, record the phase, and think about what they saw. Then, on one of the final days of the moon talk, I told the students about Neil Armstrong, and how he walked out of the ship, and uttered the famous line 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind..' I got students to stand up, come to the front, and one by one, I surrounded them with my arms, made a big "sssshhhhh" sound (an aweful imitation of what I imagine a spaceship door to sound like) while I spread my arms, the students then took one step, and slowly read from the chalkboard the unforgettable saying.

I honestly don't know if the students got it, if they understood what Neil Armstrong said, or why we wanted to fly up there in the first place. The students are coming from a background where it is hard for them to imagine any type of innovation like that. Without the historic context of Sputnik, or JFK, or the race to be the first, I haven't much Idea of how important they perceive the event to be. I do know, however, that I finally got it. It's one of those things that I've read and heard and seen, but only now do I get a feeling for what a huge time that was for everyone who saw it happen.

It gave me so much pride to tell these students that man is capable of such a feat, and that even the sky isn't the limit anymore. I have a pretty good idea now of the obstacles, financial, social, psychological, that face the studetns. It gets really discouraging sometimes to think about the lack of resources that were, are, and will be here for them, and what that means for these students' futures. But I was reminded while making spaceship sounds and lumbering around as if in a spacesuit in front of 58 Filipino students that really anything is possible.

This week, I was able to participate in the 8th annual exploration of Calbiga Cave in Western Samar, with 10 other cavers and 4 porters who live near the cave. We spent the better part of 3 days hiking in and out, and exploring the interior of the cave, and two nights camping in the cave.

There are many caves that are longer in distance than Calbiga, but it ranks first in Asia for sheer volume, as most of the rooms are so large that you cannot see one side from the other, and at most places in the cave, even the brightest LED cannot illuminate the ceiling, which in some places, is over 100 meters high. The locals here in the Philippines do not venture inside caves, as they are seen as places where demons and 'fairies' reside, so therefore, many caves are still not mapped here, and the ecosystems, largely undisturbed are relatively pristine, with huge cave crickets with adapted long antennae and reduced eyes, blind cave crabs, blind fish endemic to this one island in the Philippines, as well as cave snakes, huge spiders, tarantulas, and, ofcourse, cave sparrows and millions, (literally) of bats of all kinds.

The first day, we got inside the cave at around 1:30 after hiking about a kilometer in off of a dirt path where we rode to the drop off. We hiked about a kilometer down into the belly of the cave to the campsite where we laid out tarps, tents, cots, and hammocks for our first night inside. We immediately saw a snake we estimated to be 7 feet long on the campsite where we would be spending the night, gingerly chased it off to another area, and hoped it wouldn't be returning. The snake was identified by our guide as a Philippine Cobra, a venemous, but rather subdued snake. After a few hours ciesta, we got up, and walked into the cave, over thousands of boulders trekking to the back of the cave, past walls of flowstone, and past ruins of harvested calcite stalagmite towers taken by koreans before protected status came to Calbiga in the '90s. (We were told that Koreans paid 6 pesos per kilo of calcite harvested from the cave and would use raw calcite for industrial processing, or would just sell stalagtites for souvenirs or whatever) Anyways, that's when my shoes fell apart. I'm not embellishing, they literally fell apart, after months of use and rebonding with superglue and shoe goo, they just fell apart, first the rubber soles fell off, then the fabric bottoms of my shoes, so then I was just walking in sock feet over a boulderfield of jagged limestone. Now you might say "Wow, that sounds awful", and basically, you would be dead on, it sucked. One of the porters, a guy about 20 years old who was carrying our rubbish and urine (we were packing everything out, as any nutrients from foodscraps, trash, or our bodies could disrupt this fragile ecosystem) gave me his rubber boots, didn't even think twice, and although I tried to refuse, since it was my lack of good judgement that brought badly suited shoes, he gave me his shoes. He was left carrying about 40 kilos of weight on his back, walking through the cave on boulders in bare feet. He wouldn't take his shoes back, so although my feet were about two sizes too big, I squeezed my feet into the rubber boots and walked on. We got back to camp around 11:30 and all went to sleep, hoping that the snake wouldn't return and the crickets wouldn't get too rowdy.

Day two, we rose, took down camp, and ventured on to our next camp site, about 2 kilometers away. The site was in the wet area of the cave, where the cave is still 'alive' since water is still flowing, leaving the calcium deposits which basically build the cave. It is estimated that the process of stalagtites growing by means of calcite deposits, or gypsum, or whatever, takes, on average 100 years to produce 1 centimeter of growth. We saw some stalagtites in the cave that were over 10 meters tall, do the math and thats a 100,000 year old work of art. It's really something to see such incredible pieces of nature that have emerged over millenia, and just think about all of the time and history and birth and death and growth and regrowth that they have supported, the beauty that has emerged out of absolute darkness over years and years of flowing water, drip by drip, molecule by molecule. We hooked up ropes and hooked in to descend a short portion of vertical climbing, but for the most part, the going was much easier than the first night, with much less bouldering to do, and much more walking around forests of columns and stalagmites.

In the early afternoon, we arrived at the lagoon where we would be camping for the night, but found that the typhoon which came through here last week had made it into something more like a lake, and we would not be able to camp where we normally would. Our porters swam the lake and went outside to find bamboo to construct a raft that we could use to portage perishables and cameras across the water while we swam. The raft was a success, and at about 5, we had arrived at the exit of the cave, larger than the entrance, about 200 meters across, and about 120 meters tall, with a towering jungle falling into sight, it was really someting. At this point we were surrounded by the sound of bats preparing to exit the cave for the night and we found a small overhang in a pocket of the cave where we could set up camp for the night without the threat of getting covered in a layer of gwano by morning. We then witnessed the exit of hundreds of thousands of bats around 6:30 p.m. and prepared for our night exploration of the live cave.

We spent the night going to the lower portion of the cave, where there were many pools lined with calcite, many tarantulas, much more fauna overall, and cool waterfalls where we were able to swim a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of this part of the trip since we wer fully submerged during a small sump where I was afraid my camera would get wet, but take my word for it, it was a great experience.

Sunday morning, after a chilly night and not much sleep, we took down camp, and climbed through the jungle for around 5 kilometers to a spring where we got fairly clean, and waited to rendezvous with our transportation. It was great to be going back, and since I didn't have much money to give him, I handed my favorite Carhart working jeans that had seen me through the trip to the porter who had given me his shoes without hesitation. He looked at me as I held them out, and I explained in broken Waray that since he saved my feet, I wanted him to have my pants. He didn't thank me verbally, but took the jeans, looked me straight in the eye, and went to washing the cave dirt out of them in the stream while we relaxed in the cool water nearby. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and by the time he was done with them, they looked as good as new.

I have been to many caves in Virginia and West Virginia, where the limestone bedrock of the Aleghany Plateau gives way to some of the best caving in the world, but one huge difference is that the ecosystems of the eastern United States Caves have, for the most part, died. Lots of the terrestrial life has died or been reduced dramatically, and right now White Nose Syndrome, a non-native fungus probably spread by well-meaning humans just visiting caves, is systematically killing the majority of colonies of eastern bats. I have never seen as many snakes and critters in Virginia caves as I did in this one cave in Samar. I don't think we are more careless with our caves in the US, it's just that we like to see everything, to 'look' at everything, to 'experience' everything, and it never seemed so bad until I got to see the ecosystem as it used to be, fully functioning, without the endemic species having been extirpated through 'exploration' or 'study'. It reminds me of Thoreau's saying that 'Man is rich in proportion to that which he can let alone.' I don't think he was referring to caves in Samar when he said this, but his statement definately fits.

One part of the trip I keep thinking about now is when I was down in the bottom of the cave on the second night with about 5 of the others and one porter, and we all were washing in the waterfall coming from one of the huge calcite-rimmed pools. It was like a paradise, cool, refreshing, clean water, and just the sound of our voices and the rush of water. Everyone of us was washing, shirts off, heads submerged, as one of the porters sat and watched. Concerned that he felt ashamed to wash in the same water, to have fun with all of us, I asked the man to come and bathe with us "Pwede makarigo ka liwat?", he looked at me and laughed and said "Hilo it tubig"(Poison water).