Where I Live

This is about where I live in the Philippines.

My Bed

My bed was originally not very comfortable. As a 6-foot tall person, Im maybe slightly taller than average in America, and have no problems being comfortable in places where things are uniformly designed. Whether in a bus seat, a plane seat, walking through buildings or on the sidewalk, or even in my one-size-fits-all beds in college, everything in America was pretty comfortable, as it was designed for the comfort of people taller than me (though several of my larger friends have spoken in the past about not fitting or being comfortable in certain places.

Not so in the Philippines, where, according to Google, the average woman is 4' 11" and the average man is 5' 4". I've bumped my head into countless things. My knees constantly band into the bus seat in front of me, the plane seat in front of me, the pedicab seat. On the light rail train, I can look over people's heads to see all the way down to either end. Public transportation, or, for that matter, even private transportation is designed for someone smaller than me, and my comfort levels are often much lower than almost everyone around me. Being slightly taller than everyone is nice in some ways, and it's certainly nothing I didn't experience in China, but it means I stick out even more with my height than I do with my white skin and brown hair (and perhaps my kind of touristy clothing).

My bed is along these same lines. It's a metal frame, with a thin (3 or 4 inches?) mattress. It is perhaps even less comfortable than my bed in college, even, and the frame, built for a Filipino, is annoyingly 3 inches too short, making my feet dangle just the tiniest bit off the edge, regardless of angle. Luckily, I bought the mattress pad that was a necessity in college and lifesaver here, and my dreams are quite sweet again, along with my extra pillows, etc.

I might add that my bed is the only one in the apartment that is elevated from the floor, or is really even padded. Every other room has floor mats, but that's about it. Almost everywhere else I've slept has been wood, bamboo, or just concrete, some hard substance with just something thrown down to keep your body from direct contact to the floor. This is usual sleeping in the Philippines; I'm certainly the weirdo for having so much padding (and, might I add, for sleeping 8 hours. My roommates are often heard still talking at midnight, and are awake making breakfast around 5.)

My Room

My room is not too much larger than my bed. The bed sits in a corner, and the room extends probably 2 feet from the foot of it and 2-3 feet on each side. There are plenty of cabinets and shelves, but with shoes, a fan (because no AC), and a garbage can, maneuvering anywhere is a hassle; even leaving is akin to Knowshon Moreno dodging around the offensive linemen to find a hole and break for a first down (go Broncos, thinking about the upcoming Superbowl). As I'm not the cleanest person, and seldom expect to entertain guests in my, for lack of a better word, cell, unless you are sitting on my bed, there's not a lot of room in my room to do anything.

There are 2 windows, with interesting bathroom panes, allowing me breezes and natural light. Since this is Manila, they are of course barred, but in an intricate and kind of artsy style which I see on most windows here. There is also a small balcony, which I used to use as a workout/chill spot, which wrought iron ledges and tiled floors. The balcony has a window on it that puts me almost in the lap of whomever is in my roommates room, which makes it less a place of privacy and solace and more a place where I am on zoo-like display to the fellow computer users next door. It also has a habit of getting absolutely filthy, dirtwise, which I guess is to be expected in outside areas in Manila.

All in all, my room is quite cozy, and it's where I spend the lion's share of my time, since work is slow and going literally anywhere costs money that I don't have. So it's my home in Manila.

My Apartment

No matter what the girls say, my place is an apartment. Alright, so maybe it's a duplex or something, but I consider it an apartment, whereas they were calling it a house. We have an entrance room, which functions as the den, living room, part-time dining room, whatever. These days, with the house full of Lowell's family and friends from Mindanao, there is usually at least 2 people lounging on the cracked leather sections of couch that were given to us by the guy across the driveway from us. There is a TV which has a cable cord (I think?) attached to a fork, which is taped high up on the one window, I think to get a signal? I don't ask too many questions, especially because, depending on who I ask, there aren't a lot of answers, or, for some, a lot of comprehension of my "really fast" English. One thing that is common here is people saying they are very bad at English, and me saying that that is nonsense. If you can have a conversation in English, about anything, you are good. I can barely have a conversation in French, which I took for 6 years, and I have been to France and all that. I won't even mention how good my Mandarin, Tagalog, or Bisaya is, because I can basically say hello and haggle with people and that's it. English is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, so my expectations aren't super high, but everyone I know that says they are bad can understand almost everything I say, which is almost fluent in my book. One guy in Mindanao said that he was so sorry because his "English is an endangered species", to which I replied that if he knew the words "endangered" and "species", then he was being overly disparaging.

The apartment has 3 official rooms: one is mine, and there are 2 which are larger, but also house more than one person. There are 2 bathrooms, which both have a shower head (which is rare) that must have worked at some point but don't anymore. There are also two Western-style toilets (aka not a hole in the ground, have a toilet seat, and can flush on their own), which is nice. There are officially 3 floors, but we really only use the first two. There is a wrought iron spiral staircase for each floor, which I originally thought was cool until I bumped my head and my knees and my feet every time I went up or down. It's a tight, tight squeeze in width, and the spiral stairs are, as I said, a Filipino height apart from each other, so there is a lot of ducking on my part as I go around and around and down and up and down.

The third floor really belongs to the landlady, Mama Mary, who lives next door to us. Literally everyone calls her Mama Mary, including the Pastor at church. She went to Silliman University in Dumaguete, so shes has some connection to Lowell, who attended there, and Cobbie, who teaches there now (I think, Im still unsure).

I want to add that I make fun of Lowell sometimes because every time he talks about Dumaguete, at the end, he looks wistfully into the distance and says "Yes, Dumaguete, it's truly a very special place. It really is."

Anyway, since Mama Mary and here large extended family live next door and own the complex, they have a door connected to the hall just outside my room. It is used largely for Mama Mary's husband, a tall, bald, smily, and bespectacled man, who comes through, smiles and says hello, then heads to the third floor/roof. The roof has lots of plants and things, which could be called a garden, and provides a nice view of basically the surrounding roofs. There are also frequently lines of drying clothes on laundry lines, and a supremely low ceiling. We really don't go up there much.

My Street

I really don't know what on earth my street address is, and I'm not sure I ever will. Our apartment opens onto what I guess could be called a driveway or alley, and all the houses/apartments around us are owned by Mama Mary. There is a big iron gate with a small door that I've bumped my head into to get out of. Our area behind the gate often houses 2 cars, but just as often does not. There are washing machines and stuff outside too, and other plants. The gate only opens for the cars, thus the iron doorway. The gate is about 9 feet high, and has spikes and barbed wire on the top, discouraging thieves.

The alley continues past the gate, with small shops at the end and 3-4, uh, dwellings? on either side, where there are always countless kids and adults in boxers doing laundry, playing, sitting and eating, cooking, or drinking. Everytime I leave, I pass these people, and I've been offered a large amount of food and/or alcohol for my friendly neighbors. The street itself, Maliksi, has residences on one side (my side), and a stone/cement wall on the other side, with barbed wire and jagged broken glass on the top to, again, discourage climbing (it's quite ordinary in Manila and in PH in general). On the other side of the wall is a hospital, the largest and most important one in our area of Quezon City (aka QC).

On either end of our street are much busier streets, and traffic is usually pretty fast and heavy at all times of day. For whatever reason, at any hour on any day, there are tons of people on the street, sitting, smoking, laundering, eating, drinking, singing karaoke, whatever, and countless countless countless kids with not very many clothes. They all say hi to me when I walk by, since I'm probably the only white guy in a square mile radius of my house. They have asked me my name, no joke, just about every day, and I tell them "I'm Frank" almost every single day. They've at least caught on and started saying "Hi Frank!" every once and awhile.

Why Frank? Well, it started at Starbucks, where Im sure other people are used to the people getting your name wrong, asking multiple times, misspelling, etc. With a name like Duncan that most people don't come in contact with often, new introductions are tough, unless I say "Dunkin Donuts", which always gets a good and embarrassing laugh. So, I started saying Frank, since everyone knows Frank, it's easy to spell and remember, etc.

This is even more important here, where I am constantly being introduced to people left, right, and center, and constantly having to give my name for things. If it's people I'm working with and will have extended contact with, I go through the "Duncan, like Dunkin Donuts. From the USA, from Kentucky, like KFC" routine (I have literally said this maybe 1000 times, no exaggeration). Because when I say "Duncan", there is always a head tilt, a confused look, a question on the face, especially since most Filipinos has Spanish names and Duncan is certainly not in that category. So, instead of going through the whole explanation with each and every child who asks on the street (which is almost all of them, seriously), I just say Frank. I've also said "Rick Ross, the Boss", "Lebron", and "Steve Nash", with some kids actually believing I am Steve Nash, since they are not used to seeing many Westerners and I don't look outrageously different from him.

Anyway, just about every day is something different, whether a challenge or an interesting new fact or what have you, but my home right now will be my home for awhile, and it's always the place I want to get back to when I'm here in the Philippines.

Travel in The Philippines: Pt 1-Walking

Hello blog-readers! I am back for the nonce in the blogosphere after a length of time without wifi, without a computer, and often without electricity. I have a lot of experiences to relate, and a lot of stories to tell, a lot of pictures to share, etc. but, all in good time.

This post's title is "Travel in the Philippines", a subject which, out of all of the many frustrations that have marked my time here, is perhaps the biggest pain in the-well, you know.

Travel, for most people, is great: few people are sad to go on vacation, business trips, etc. because the real offer of travel is a new experience, something different, places, people, and things you have never seen, a break from the ordinary.

Part of that break is the actual journey. Many say "The journey is half the adventure", or it's the whole adventure, etc., etc., perhaps imagining a Kerouacian series of events or a Chaucerian series of people with stories to keep you entertained. I myself am quite fond of the journey, to a point. As long as I have a good book, or some way to watch a good film or TV series, I am happy as a clam on the journey. Seldom in real life does one get the chance to sit down, stop worrying about time-wasting, and just enjoy relaxing free time with a good story youve been meaning to read.

There are copious others, of course, who hate the journey. And I mean hate. Airports, planes, long car rides, trains, boat trips-these are only so many boring wastes of time, or a stressful period when the plane may crash, the boat may sink, the car may break down. These periods cost lots of time and money, and if certain vehicles are late (such as our double delay in Chicago on our family's way to London this summer that almost cost us our cross-Atlantic flight), people get irritated, annoyed, yelling ensues, etc.

As I said above, Im usually the guy that finds a quiet corner, grabs a good book or my laptop, and sits back and relaxes, hopefully getting a chance to see the scenery going by. However, travel in the Philippines is far from a no-worry time, and, from walking to driving to boating to flying, delays, headaches, and discomfort are bound to hound the unsuspecting and usually the suspecting traveler.

Walking/Hiking/Treking

This has, unsurprisingly, been by far the most used way of getting around for me. Whether Im on the busy streets of Manila, the oceanic hills of Bohol, or the green ways of Southern Leyte, more often than not, I am exploring my surroundings on foot. Often, I am accompanied by music, or by the many audiobooks I have downloaded, giving my brain something to focus on as I take in the scenery. Walking has been probably my favorite and most fruitful form of travel here so far. I can take in whatever scenes i like without them whizzing by, interact with people (most of whom say "hey joe!", "hey, what's up dogg", or "what's your name?" in halting and accented English), get some exercise, work on my on-again off-again tan, stop and get snacks and drinks, listen to a new book which keeps me preoccupied, take pictures, and basically mentally record places I enjoy and would like to go back to. As an aesthetic whose Manila apartment is in a fairly boring and unattractive area, looking for cool, green, and beautiful vistas is important to me, and I log them as places to return to when the smog and the grimy streets around me are becoming stifling. In the countryside of Tagbilaran in Bohol and Maasin in Southern Leyte, I would see beautiful mountains, the shimmering ocean, lush forests and rice paddies, nice old Spanish architecture, and again log them as beautiful places I have visited and wish to see again.

But walking may be the largest headache of all the forms of transportation. First of all, it's slow. Sometimes, that's my fault: I elect to walk somewhere because I don't really know where Im going. I stick to my map, sometimes make a few wrong turns, but I get there. I can't tell a taxi driver exactly where Im going or how to get there, and Im never sure where the more public transportation will take me, and mistakes usually end up costing me, money-wise and time-wise. Since everything, especially in Manila, is far away, SO far away, and it takes a while to get there in vehicles, walking to certain places usually takes a lot of my daylight time, which is already scarce because it gets dark between 5:30 and 6 in PH year round.

Part of it is not my fault, however, and I would say the lion's share of fault for my slowness belongs to me surroundings. Much of Manila is not really what I  would call "pedestrian friendly". I mean, Louisville's not really pedestrian friendly either, in a lot of places, but this is different. Louisville has a lot of sidewalks, but very few people use them, and some roads dont have sidewalks. Manila has plenty of sidewalks, but they are only wide enough for one or two people. If it's wide enough for one, count on an incredibly slow person shuffling by, on his phone or eating something; also count on him/her stopping at exactly the wrong place, where no one can get past, and then looking at you like youre crazy as you attempt to go around this person without shoving them into the street. If it's two people wide, count on a loiterer about every 5 feet, smoking a cigarette or standing there yelling across the street in his boxers with no shirt on (clothes are far from a necessity in PH, just ask the countless guys I see at 2 PM walking to the store with just boxers and slippers on like it's a walk to the fridge). If you're lucky, there's only one group of people who have decided to stroll four or five abreast, some in the street, to talk to each other. You have to inevitably squeeze through the line Red Rover style just to get past to the next group.
 

In short, walking in the city is a nightmare. If there's no people, then it's garbage, or occasionally puddles of grime, or someone's just relieved themselves (which often explains why there are no people). Manila and really most cities are so crowded that walking quickly becomes a chore. Often there are motorbikes, regular bikes, rickshaws, or even taxis who just decide to drive on the sidewalk. Cars are constantly honking at you to get out of the way, even if you arent in their way, almost as if to say "hey, im right here, just fyi, honk honk honk honk honk". People I don't know are always staring at me as the one American on the street, yelling "what's your name?" at me, looking at me askance as they walk through their own molasses and I try to scurry around them, wanting to get home or get to the gym or get to the grocery or whatever, sticking hands out and following me to ask for money, anything, please, sir, sir, please, followed by grumbling in Tagalog or Cebuano about how they hate you.

But, even though I would not be surprised to see a level of hell dedicated to fast-walking people who are completely encircled by slower, more oblivious people, the sights I've seen, people I've met, things I've heard have all made up for any problems. Ive seen the sun go down and reflect off the ocean, the rays touching the town of Maasin as I look down from a mountain to see the roofs of the building glinting in the sunlight and the Mother Mary statue beside me throwing shadows to people praying and kissing the statue. I've seen a church, 500 years old, in Bohol, with colors from the stained glass windows swirling around in the half of the sanctuary that was left after the earthquake destroyed the ancient stones and belltower the Spanish built. I've seen an old park where PH hero Jose Rizal (seriously, there are streets, barangays, cities, buildings, and countless, countless, countless statues of him, even in the smallest town) was buried that could have been pulled out of Rome and put in the heart of Manila, where the sounds of traffic and crowds are eliminated and you can lay in the grass under the acacia trees next to the group that's taking wedding pictures and read as the sunlight dies and love music plays over the speaker system.

And my biggest regret from being in Mindanao, during a magical Christmas in which I have no other regrets, is not being able to walk around and discover the heart and soul of that island. Walking in the Philippines means a lot to me, and though nothing is perfect, but it's perfect for me.

RLS-Christmas

I know in the US, the holiday preparations for each holiday begin RIDICULOUSLY early. There are Halloween decorations sold next to back-to-school deals, and Valentine's Day preparations begin once that ball finishes dropping on New Year's Day. However, the Philippines, for me, has taken this to a new level. Perhaps because the country is 90% or so Christian, and the separation of church and state is a somewhat blurred line, Christmas is a big deal here. I mean, it's a big deal in most of the Western world, but this is absurd. Around the second or third week we had been here, in SEPTEMBER, Cobbie and Dessa said "this is around when Christmas season starts". It's not something I'm not too unaccustomed to because of the early beginnings in the USA, like I said, but it is disconcerting to be walking through the supermarket in Manila on Oct 5 and hear a slow, crooning "Silent Night" over the loudspeakers. In every market, Christmas lights and decorations are being sold, and there are random gift-wrapping stations popping up downtown. As I sit in my kitchen writing this, I can hear some slow Christmas tunes wafting through the open screen door (which may or may not be what reminded me to write this post).

The early thing is shocking enough for me, but since Halloween and Thanksgiving are not nearly as big a celebration here, if at all, I guess there are less holiday speed bumps on the road to the big Winter holidays. But most disconcerting thing is the weather. I've always equated Christmas with roaring fires, candles in the window, bare trees, snow, winter coats and sweaters, seeing your breath outside. Yesterday, I sat in a park, in the 90 degree heat, next to a few palm trees, near some very naked children playing in a water fountain (child nudity here is about as common as palm trees, actually, which is to say very. I almost had a naked child pee on my foot earlier this week 3 doors down form my apartment). The combination of the time of year and the weather just has me shocked that I can keep it together whenever I walk in a mall and here Elvis's "Blue Christmas" or see someone dressed as Santa in a market (what was he thinking? he must have been sweating bullets!). But I'm getting over it...slowly.

RLS

There are security guards everywhere in Manila and in most stores in the Philippines in general. I mean everywhere. Every mall entrance, every store and fast food restaurant, at every light-rail entrance, there is a security guard in a white uniform, often with a metal detector or a little wooden wand. Their job is to search your bag and "feel up on you", which is when they feel you waist area for a gun. They are looking for guns and knives, because apparently, theres kind of a big problem of people bringing these in the light-rail or into a mall. However, the searches are often half-hearted at best, and usually they don't expect the white kid to be bringing in dangerous contraband to hurt people in the mall.

The strangest experience so far was when I was walking out of this giant department store, Landmark, into a giant mall. Before I had stepped into line or made eye contact with a guard, I hear "Hey, dude, what's up?", and see the security guard beckon me over. I say a typically suspicious "hello", and he says "Dude, you wanna know why you are so lucky? Because youre so handsome!" And as I try to open my bag for examination, he jovially slaps me on the back out the door, and says "Have a good day, handsome!" Very professional for a middle-aged security guard who is supposed to be making sure I don't have dangerous weapons.

Random Little Stories (RLS)

Ok, some of these blog posts have been monstrously long, and I wanted to add in a little variety, so Im going to start telling these random little stories from each day (which I will call RLS) so they won't get stale in my mind as they wait for a longer post.

First RLS:

I went to church yesterday with one of my roommates, who sings in the choir there. Everyone shook my hand and they made me stand up and accept applause and such, the usual awkward and embarrassing stuff that happens. The service, however, had three events in the bulletin dedicated to an Air Conditioner (they call it AirCon in the Philippines). I thought it was a metaphor or something, but no: we dedicated it, prayed over it, sung a song about it, and counted down as it was turned on for the first time. Definitely not a metaphor.

The pastor also came up to me and said, and I quote: "Hello, you are from America? Which state? Oh, Kentucky. Well, if you ever want to come over and talk or play basketball-wait, you do play basketball? Yes? Great.- well, feel free to come over and talk and play basketball with me."

So if there is bball with the minister, I will be sure to post some pics.

Everywhere is Outdoors

I think it's interesting that humanity can discern "nature" as a specific place or topic. People can say they are "outdoorsy" or "not outdoorsy", mostly because, for most people (especially in America), there is that option.

We were surprised how "hot" the Philippines were when we first came here. No matter where we have gone, the sweat has followed us, as has the sun, and even without physical activity we have founds ourselves feeling sticky and nasty. We are unaccustomed to these feelings not because it is not hot in America; indeed, during one day at the Center for the Courageous Kids (where I worked last summer, in Scottsville, KY), the temperature hit 130 degrees, and Scottsville could certainly be described as humid. But why are we Americans, some of us from the hot South, so unused to the abusive heat?

The answer lies in the indoors. It has been pointed out that to go to work or school in the states, you can easily go from your air-conditioned house right to your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned job, spending a whole hot summer's day in 60 degree coolness if you so desire. Air conditioning in the Philippines, I assure you, is such a rare commodity that most people don't even notice it isn't there.

How did American humanity come to determine such a stark difference between outdoors and indoors?  For the whole history of time, there was no such thing as "nature", just the earth all the animals lived on together. Shelter is certainly common with animals and humans alike, but in the past few weeks spent often with the only shelter being a roof over my head, the appreciation of the amount of time I have spent "indoors" in my life has crept slowly over me.

The time I found this affecting me the most profoundly is the few days we spent on the island of Bohol. Bohol is a largely rural island, with much of its land devoted to farms. There is also a large part given to the Chocolate Hills, and a Tarsier aka Bush-baby preserve, not to mention a man-made forrest. After an extended amount of time in our site-coordinators good-sized hometown, Dumaguete, which is the capital of the state of Negros Oriental, and a 5 day stint in Cebu City, the second largest city in the Philippines, Bohol was splash of cold water in the face (something that incidentally happened to me a lot during this trip).

We stayed in the VERY spread out municipality of Trinidad in a "town" called San Vicente, which was mostly a rice mill, an elementary school, and a tiny convenience store in the middle of many families' farmland. Each night was spent in a different family's house, and our beds were rolls of bamboo tied together, often on a floor, table, or other hardwood flat surface (luckily, I got to spend one night in a hammock as well). For the four of us, each night was spent in fitful, pitch-black slumber as we tossed and turned on our hard beds. It was not strange to ask in the morning and have at least one person say they had not slept at all.

The food was excellent, plentiful, and repetitive. Fish, rice, soup, and sweet potatoes greeted us from every table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 5 straight days, a diet which we had already been introduced to but which became overwhelming for EVERY meal EVERY day. There were a few houses where we asked about the CR (bathroom), and were told that it was all around us (in other words, go outside and find a private place). One night, after a 2 hour walk in the country left me smelling somewhat worse than the squealing pig chained up in the backyard, I took a moonlit bath with no flashlight on the edge of the rice paddies, using water drawn from the family's well as sparingly as I could. We also were able to wash our hideously filthy clothes using, you guessed it, the well in the backyard, drying them in the sun on clotheslines when we had finished. The soapy water in my tub was almost black when I emptied it out. Yummy.

Then there was the digestive issues. Apparently, eating dry fish, rice, soup, and vegetables for every meal does not altogether agree with me. After leaving our hostel in Cebu City, there was a good 6 day period where my stomach got fuller and fuller without, uh, depositing any soil in the fields. The streak was finally broken in the now aptly named Chocolate Hills, but the memories of my discomfort are...haunting.

All in all, this experience was one of our favorites of the trip so far. We spent days and days without electricity, running water, or people who even spoke English. We ate food from the land and the sea, often picked right off the vine and handed to us. We saw all sorts of animals and plants, things we had seen in the city but actually saw used in front of us.

One night, one of the men we were staying with brought in a chicken while we were playing the western card game "BS" by candlelight in the main room of this dirt floor hut. With two cats rubbing against my leg, a giant spider on the wall, and three dogs constantly running in the house to see what was going on, the man showed us the chicken, and, grinning, asked what we thought about it in the local language. I thought there must have been something lost in translation, because I just thought it looked like a chicken, but as soon as the man entered the kitchen, our translator said "He will kill it, and we will eat it for dinner tonight". We saw the man cut the head off, drain the blood in a bowl, and pluck it out back, while we sat and waited in the candlelight for our fresh chicken meal.

All in all, our trip was our first real foray into typical Filipino life. Farmers are by far the majority of professions, yet the farms are, as they described, "backward". They still use cows, plows, wells, and wooden farming implements. The tracts of land are not the gargantuan corn fields of the big farming companies of the US, but usually are handfuls of acres of rice, squash, sweet potato, a vegetable called "merenga", and palm oil. They do not own the land, and do not make very much money, most of it going to the wealthy land-owners. But they are a people connected to nature.

Nature is just natural in the Philippines. It is not uncommon to walk through a town like Dumaguete and see goats, cows, and chickens. Palm trees are everywhere, as are the bugs that have eaten all four of us as if we are the most delicious meal of fish and rice of all time. In the small church in the small town of Mabinay in the mountains, where Abby is living and working, the 5 AM service began with birds flying around the main light in the sanctuary. The doors and windows are thrown open everywhere to coax in a breeze, and that church had random dogs and cats strolling in during the sermon, one even stopping to relieve himself right next to the pulpit. The presence of the outdoors is felt everywhere in the Philippines, and so there almost is no such thing as the indoors, so separation between the earth and the people who have thrived off of it.

One of the most symbolic examples of this came out of our adventure up the mountains outside of Dumaguete to see a waterfall. After a lot of winding roads, our van reached a pretty substantial hill, with a drastic incline, and our poor vehicle decided she wasn't gonna mess with that, and gave out almost as soon as we breached the slope. With a sigh and smile, Cobbie, Shelby, and I looked at each other and realized that we would have to hike further than we thought, and up such a crazily steep incline. We parked and walked up the rest of the mountain. As we walked, we saw many examples of human and nature working together, or even seemed to be humans accepting nature as it was and working with it. There was a basketball court cut into a flat area of mountain, with the floor made of dirt and grass. There were beautiful plant stores along the way, and it was increasingly difficult to spot where the rainforest flowers stopped and where the flowers for sale began. There was a family who had built bikes to race down the steep mountain hills entirely out of wood, including the wheels, pedals, and brakes. The thing that brought me closest to nature was the actual walk down to the waterfall. Someone had built a huge flight of stairs down into this river valley, with encroaching rainforest on either side, and had also built a walkway to the falls. The walkway had been washed away years ago in a flood, however, so the hike to the waterfall was an hour or so of us navigating the treacherous and slippery rocks and river in our chinless (flip-flops). The end result was a towering waterfall, crashing down to the rive with terrible force, into a pool encircled on every side by mossy rock walls and rainforest. The journey felt so "outdoorsy", so much like humans accepting nature's challenges and adapting to explore the world, that I felt it necessary to let out a little yell at the waterfall. The past few weeks, I feel like our experiences have not only brought us closer to Filipino people and Filipino culture, but to the very land itself, and so much that the nature of these islands has to offer, and for that, I am immensely thankful.

Do not think that the irony is lost on me that I am typing this in an air-conditioned hotel using wifi. I very much get the irony.

That Stank

I don't think this smell will ever wash off.

I just took a shower, in preparation of a dinner at a mall in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental, the Philippines. The mall is just like any mall in America, with a food court, bookstores, huge department stores, a movie theater, an apple store, etc. Most things cost exactly the same there as they would in America, and many of the products are things I could find in America as well, such as the Ray Ban knockoffs I bought or the Champions League soccer ball, each costing about as much as they would in the states.

Even so, the smell will not leave my nostrils. 

It is said that smell is the sense strongest linked to memory. Like if I smelled fish frying, I might remember my time spent on beautiful Apo Island a few days ago. We took a little boat out to the remote spit of rock, covered in white sand and palm trees. An island with no running water or electricity, Apo Island boasts some of the best scuba sights in the area. We snorkeled with sea turtles, schools of colorful fish, and different urchins and sea plants, all in water a deep, unforgettable turquoise blue. We ate freshly caught fish prepared by a lady who sold t-shirts to tourists like us, explaining that on a good day she made 300 picos, the equivalent of 7 US dollars, to support her 6 children. 

But the smell of today lingers in my memory more than the smell of Apo Island.

Not the smell we encountered earlier today, as our language teacher led us to the public market to test our skills at the local dialect, Bisaya. Armed with a series of tasks and a puny amount of words we had just learned to say, we ventured into the tightly packed stalls full of food, flip flops, and flat-bill hats. We went to the fruit market, which was a jumble of citrusy smells, not altogether unpleasant though very confused and cacophonous, like the tuning of an orchestra before a show. Next we were off to the hot food area, where the aromas of sticky rice and warm chocolate (a tasty, popular, and very local combination) elbowed the other strong scents out of the way. The meat and fish markets were...interesting, filled with fresh raw protein, some of which was being cut from the animal before our very eyes. The intense smell of the ocean mixed with the heavy fishy smell and full meaty smell assaulted our nostrils as we asked what the local names for pig snouts were. 

And yet, even with these smelling experiences, some stronger than others, the memorable smell of the giant trash dump on the edge of town continues to not only linger, but swim to the surface. Our site coordinator drove us over there around 3 in the afternoon, and with the hot Filipino sun beating down, I smelled the stench of trash all of a sudden. With trees screening the dump, I waited for the trash smell to evaporate as we kept driving, as so often happens in Dumaguete as we speed past a myriad of different stores, each with different scents. However, when we pulled over to the side of the road and saw the dump, I realized that the smell would not go away, and in fact would get more pungent.

One of my immediate reactions was how to capture this. Pictures and videos can convey so much of what an experience is like, and are vital (and useful) to sharing an overseas adventure with others. I pulled out my camera, only to realize that what I wanted to share most of all was the stench, constantly there, slapping you in the face, bad enough to make you want to turn your head away at all times. And this was from across the street in the parking lot. I realized that there is no way to capture this, to plug my camera in and put this smell into this blog. 

The only way I can find to describe it is "the stench of poverty". It sounds kind of corny, like a Michael Moore documentary or a sensationalizing book. But no one would, could, should have to ever be driven to walk purposefully closer to this stench every day, pick up as much trash as possible, and sort it, barehanded, wearing only flip-flops, for 60 hours a week. One woman we met was in her 20s and had a 5 year-old child with her, the child's face stuck shyly in a big-eyed stare. The usual workers made upwards of 100 pisos a day (about $2.25), and they were described as "members"; this lady missed the member list, and was forced to sort through the members' leftover trash in case they missed anything. In order to feed her and her child, she came every single day just to look through this already sorted trash to try to make any money, and you can bet it was less than $2.25 a day.

There were countless hovels there, full of people who not only worked there everyday, but lived on top of a trash dump in order to be competitive in their work. My first question was "How?" and then "Why?". I went past sad and angry to inspired. This is a reality, sad and true, but feeling bad for these people, these real-life survivors, would not accomplish anything. Today, my heart hardened, but I feel truly that my work here, our work here, whatever it may be, is about making this country and this world better to live in. I wanted to put a smile on that girl's face.

And so, the stench of poverty lingers on on me, and I'm not sure if it will ever wash off.