Bohol: My Work: Part 1

I got one night back in Manila from Cebu to pack up my stuff, and flew into Tagbilaran’s airport almost 12 hours after I touched down.

Background on Tagbilaran, my new home:

Tagbilaran is in the South of Bohol, right across this little straight between it and the large island of Panglao right off Bohol. It is the provincial capital of Bohol, and by far the largest city on the island; in fact, it’s the only city. It has the airport, and the biggest boat terminal; it had the only malls and cinemas; it had the bus and jeepney stations to everywhere else on the island; heck, there was even wifi here.

It’s basically the one place on Bohol that is continually connected to life off of the island-most of the rest of the island is sleepy small towns, beautiful beaches, a few resorts, the attractions I talked about before, and lots and lots and lots of isolated, tiny villages and towns that speak little English, where everyone else knew each other, and everyone farmed. It was country; it was a bit like being back in the American south, to tell you the truth.

But, just because Tagbilaran had a museum, a few malls, a movie theater, and (this is the real sign of a city in the Philippines) a MCDONALDS did not mean I was in Vegas. A few blocks away from the two main town squares in every direction was rice fields. Right across the bridges on Panglao was sleepy countryside, with a few resorts sitting on top of the hills, gleaming down on the bright blue waters of the strait.

The UCCP church, at whose offices I was sleeping, was on a hill overlooking the strait as well. There were perhaps 75 people at the services I went to (though, of course, more people went to the Boholano service than the English one). They showed two movies in the cinemas, and after I saw Thor 2 and Captain Phillips twice each, I really didn’t want to see them again. This was a city of 90,000, but it was really just a large town-everyone pretty much knew each other, the streets were quiet all hours of the day, and as soon as the sun was down, all the businesses were closed and most of the people were at home.

I arrived with almost no information from Cobbie. I had a woman’s first name, and was told this “Juvy” would recognize me at the airport and have a sign with my name on it (snazzy!). But, of course, I had to wonder what would happen if we missed each other, as when I stepped out of the airport, I was mobbed by 20 or so middle-aged Filipino guys wanting to know if I needed a ride.

As pretty much the only American on the flight, I was a target, and the pedicab drivers always think that the American guy wearing a t-shirt, flip-flops, and a week of disheveled facial hair has lots of money to spend and are easily taken advantage of. I am routinely charged triple what native Filipinos are charged in transportation where there is no fixed price, and its almost comical when I start bargaining and the drivers realize that Im not some American high roller but am making 40 bucks a week or so and im not spending it all on a pedicab ride, thank you very much.

Luckily, since I was about a head taller than the guys surrounding me, Juvy was able to recognize me, beat the guys back, and introduce herself to me, as well as to the girl with her. She picked one of the guys out of the crowd, and after a quick conversation in Boholano (which by the way is a subdialect of Bisaya aka Cebuano), we got in the back of the guy’s car and were off to my new home.

My living arrangements:

I stayed at what I think was the headquarters of the conference (aka presbytery) of Bohol? Im still not sure, since I never really got a full explanation of what the building was, but it’s rear overlooked the strait and Panglao island really close to the UCCP church. There was an office with AC and wifi and plugs, and then a sort of living room/dining area, a voluminous kitchen that looked more like a small auditorium or play practice area, and a water pump out back with a couple of CRs (bathrooms) which had a few glorified squattie potties and which were basically outside.

There also were a couple of rooms full of bunk beds on the ground floor (and apparently one upstairs for the women?), and I was told to pick a bed and set up shop. There was no AC, a weak rotating fan, and two windows, both opaque and curtained, one open to the street noises right outside and one open to the kitchen area.

My first night, I slept with these older men from Silliman University in Dumaguete, I think from the Medical Center. They occupied the rest of the beds in my room, and were all very nice-I asked if they knew Cobbie, and, typically, they did. I also was given zero information about what I was doing, when we started, or any schedule of any sort. The guys told me that I could join them tomorrow, that they were going to this town and I could come with them at 6:30 am.

That sounded a little early to me, but I had no control or anything, and was eager to get out there and help whenever, so I said sure, and set my alarm for (sigh) 5 AM. Meanwhile, it was 10, and I was tired after doing some relief: I had helped to pack these relief bags for the next day that night, but in doing so, one of the girls who was helping gave up her seat and her job and just sat in the corner…so I felt kind of awkward. The relief packages were just orange juice and chocolate crackers-it seemed like it was just junk food snacks, not really help for hungry families or anything, but whatever, I didn’t control what food was available.

Anyway, I sat in bed reading, while the guys kept the light blaring and kept talking and laughing long into the night. I figured that since we were leaving so early, they would go to bed early like I was trying to do, but I have since learned that Filipinos simply do not need as much sleep as I do. At least, its FAR less than 8 hours a night. From my roommates in Manila, to the Tac-ans in Mindanao, to the group I stayed with in Leyte, to even Cobbie and Dessa, going to bed late and waking up super early is just a thing that everyone does in the Philippines.

My theory lies in the enormous consumption of coffee here: seriously, most Filipinos have 5-6 cups a day, and almost everyone has it even at 10 and 11 at night. One guy told me it helped him sleep better. If I had coffee at 11 PM, I would be awake until lunch the next day, and would then crash for the rest of the afternoon. Coffee and I just are not great friends, digestively, energywise, and dependencewise, so maybe that’s why I always feel like the most tired guy in the room and the one who’s sleeping most, but I just can’t do coffee.

Anyway, I was trying to go to sleep with these noises all around me and this light literally directly in my eyes while I was reading. Eventually I gave up and rolled over, but I can distinctly remember saying “finally!” to myself when the lights were turned off around 1:30. I remember too waking up at 5, then 5:10, and then at 5:20, and then at 5:30, and gradually convincing myself that I didn’t need a shower after a short sweaty night’s sleep. I finally climbed out of bed when one of the guys from my room, who had already been awake and showered (and must have fallen asleep after 1:30 because I heard his voice as I drifted off to sleep talking to his friends), poked his head in to wake up everyone else and tell them breakfast was ready.

There were about 6 or so guys that lived at this house, cooked meals, and washed everything, from clothes to the dirty dishes. They lived in the other bunk bed room, a fact I learned both from observing them retreating back to their living quarters late at night and from the bumps and loud talking and laughing from the other side of an apparently VERY thin wall. At the beginning of my stay, I thought that they were fellow relief workers, but I learned as my stay lengthened that they were just a bunch of nice guys that made food for everyone and would be my largely non-English-speaking housemates for my two week stay.

Because of these guys, though, every meal was a Thanksgiving style feast, usually with 20 or so people spread across the two long benches. As is customary in the Philippines, rice, fried fish, soups, and an assortment of vegetables were served in great quantities for every meal of every day. From breakfast at 6:30 AM to dinner just after sunset, I could expect a plentiful, healthy, FREE, and delicious meal from these guys; the only problem was, each meal was identical, and even the nicest meal can get old after having it 10 times in a row.

All the same, during our delicious, frantic, and bustling meal, with Bisayan being spoken rapidly and lots of laughing, I went and grabbed my stuff and we all met outside at a small collection of vehicles on the busy main road of Tagbilaran. I didn’t know what to bring, so I did the boy scout thing and brought my backpack and anything I thought I might possibly need for a day out doing relief work.

The guys from Silliman beckoned to me and told me to squeeze into their already overfull truck, which was started and was almost pulling away; like the last chopper out of Saigon, I rushed over and crammed myself in next to these guys I met only last night, and our (thankfully) airconditioned pickup zoomed away.

I was ready for us to head into some kind of refugee camp, but after about 2 turns and maybe 3 minutes, our truck came to a stop outside of a collection of buildings and a sign that said “Bohol University”.

Puzzled, I got out with the very unpuzzled Silliman guys, who chatted with the security guard at the mostly empty university (I think it was Saturday) and walked in, again beckoning me to follow them. Still confused, I grabbed an iced green tea at the cantina area while we waited inside the school grounds on some benches. What we waited for, I’m still not sure, but I talked with one of the guys, and he just said we were waiting for some people.

Cobbie and Dessa had told us that one of the things we should be ready for in the Philippines was to “hurry up and wait”. This was a perfect example of that. I had been roused from a terrible night’s sleep at 5:40 or so, with it still dark outside, and with food on the table. I had been rushed outside and barely made it into the overfull truck, thinking that I almost was left behind for the day.

Then, for about an hour (luckily I remembered my book), the guys from Silliman and a few other helpers from another car sat and stood in this University, which seemed to be a meeting place for our relief caravan. I wondered again why we had to wake up so early and rush through all of this only to wait for an hour for the other people to arrive, but, as I still wasn’t sure what was going on, I just leaned into it, found some shade, and read my book while I had some tea.

After that hour or so, Juvy, who I had not know was there, waived her hands at me to come over to her, and told me (again, as if the shuttle was leaving earth during the apocalypse) to climb into another truck, quickly. Again, I rushed over and got into a nice AC’d pickup with a roomy back seat, said hi to the guy driving and the lady I was sitting next to…and then waited for half an hour again, for what I assumed was more people. Hurry up and wait.

Eventually, with the back of the pickup crammed full of four people, the AC on full blast, and Duncan still confused about what we were doing, where we were going, etc., we pulled away from the University. There were two giggly college-age girls from Mindanao there, who told me I should visit their hometown of Cagayan De Oro, and one older lady, who spoke little English, but, all in all, it was a car full of laughter and excitement for a day of relief work.

Juvy was in the front, and now that she was in a car with me, I was able to ask the salient questions of what we were doing, where we were going, and details about the earthquake. She said that she was afraid I was lost, or was picked up by strangers and taken somewhere earlier when I rode with the Silliman guys.

There has been a lot of worry from my local friends of abduction on different islands, but, after the worst thing that happened to me in 6 months was my wallet was stolen on a bus, my anxiety about such things has faded away.

After a couple of hours stuffed in the truck, with various parts of my body falling asleep, we turn off the main road (there are no highways in Bohol, only unmarked two lane roads) and go down this fairly unfinished gravel road. It is one lane, and up and down some pretty steep hills, and every few hundred feet we can see giant rocks that were displaced from hills during the quake. I am glad we are in a pickup.

We finally reach a small hillside village. I marvel at the local church that passes us on the right. It looks like those pictures of buildings that were bombed in wars. It’s a skeleton of steel, with a roof still standing, but there are holes in the roof, and there is only one wall left supporting the structure, the rest being reduced to the large blocks of rubble that surround the now open air church.

After meeting some people in the barangay hall and parking in the village square/basketball court, we drive back up the hill to the church, local villagers waving all the while. As we get out, and I volunteer to carry the relief goods, there is a lot of gawking directly at me from the locals. This is always awkward for me, but apparently never for them-I am probably the only white or American person they have ever seen.

The inside of the church has all the pews lined up and filled with kids of all ages. Most of the kids are staring at me, but, being less shy than their older counterparts, they ask for hi-fives and the girls ask what my name is while they giggle. Because most people can’t pronounce “Duncan” very easily, I usually go with Frank, but this time I say Dirk Nowitski, Power Forward for the Dallas Mavericks.

Seeing their eyes go big, I say

“Just kidding, just kidding, no, no, I am not actually Dirk Nowitski. I’m Lebron James, of course.”

I continue to get giggles and stares from the kids (who finally were convinced I was Tony Parker) and adults alike as we unpack the goods and start sorting them. Some of the people in the other car, who apparently all know each other and came together from Mindanao, are chatting the whole time, and some chat with me, ask me questions, and kind of jokingly make fun of me for the attention the locals are giving me.

Our morning is spent pretty satisfactorily sorting out food. We give the kids their orange juice and chocolate (part of this balanced breakfast), and since they eat it with gusto, I assume they are probably not used to free food, especially not since the earthquake, or at least anything with sugar in it…and then I realize that they might just be kids, in which case they are just wolfing down the sugar because they like sugar.

As this is happening, the other half of the people are measuring out certain amounts of rice, toiletries, canned goods, fish, the whole nine. I start helping the group, and, as one, we move some of the pews around, and start stacking the bags and checking the contents.

This is the first time in a while that I have felt that I am helping out in a meaningful way. I am rushing around, packing goods, moving bags, counting, checking, and chatting with my fellow workers from Mindanao. After about a half hour, we had finished packing all the packages, and a fair-sized crowd had made their way up the little hill to the little church, bringing people of all ages. As we set up the packages for distribution, the people had filled the remaining pews, and it was almost like a packing play, as our stage was set and our audience seated.

Hot, sweaty, and with little bits of rice on my hands, I was told to grab a seat and rest since my work was done. Though it was only a half hour of moving stuff around, it was rewarding stuff, and I could see the hopeful, anxious, and (typically Filipino) friendly looks on the faces of the locals. I was offered the same snacks that they had given the kids. I refused a few times, then saw that they had a ton extra and that the rest of the workers were taking them, so I grabbed one myself and thankfully crammed the chocolate and orange juice into my mouth.

It was around then that Juvy came up, almost physically grabbing me and pulling me away, and said it was time to go. I looked at her bewilderedly, thinking that I was spending the day there distributing the goods. I at least had assumed that I would be with the same group of Mindanao-based workers, and was surprised when we hopped back into the black pickup truck (where the blessed A/C greeted my hot face with wondrous whimsy) and drove off without the other workers.

I asked Juvy where we were going, what we were doing, what was going on, etc., and she, as the organizer of the work, apparently had to go check on all the sites to make sure that they were doing alright and helping however she could. I, as her unofficial guest/worker, was to accompany her wherever and whenever she went anywhere. So, once again, we were off to what I hoped was another good site to help more people.

Bohol: The Buildup

Bohol is perhaps the most beautiful island that I’ve spent time on. A largely rural island, it is described as one of the Philippines “Rice Bowls” because of its large production of rice. For natural beauty, it really doesn’t get much better or diverse than Bohol. There are many resorts, and great diving, which is common on many islands, but there also fantastic beaches, scenic mountains, winding rivers, and rice terraces. The sites it is most famous for are the Chocolate Hills, which are coral formations from when Bohol was just a volcanic hunk of land. These hardened coral formations were gradually eroded until they turned into picturesque sloping hills, and, from both near and far, these steep hills covered with long grass look like little Hershey’s kisses. There are thousands of them in the interior of Bohol, and they are one of the biggest attractions in the Philippines. The other major draw is the sanctuary for the Tarsier,  a tiny animal somewhere between rodent and monkey that is nocturnal and has giant eyes and a miniscule body. They are “so cute”, and another popular attraction in the Philippines. Bohol is also one of the first places that the Spanish settled in the 16^th century, and one of the first agreements between the natives and the Spanish was signed in Bohol. Because of this, there are tons and tons of old Spanish cathedrals, even in the tiny little towns that dot the rural countryside.

In this rural and natural tropical paradise, the first of the two big autumn calamities occurred. In mid-October, I woke up early and got to work so I could ride with my co-workers to a town about an hour south of Manila for an event at a Catholic church which had some speeches from some Catholic big-wigs and a dramatic performance from my boss’s human rights theater group. On the way there, the radio in the van we were in was turned on, and turned really far up, and in between the Tagalog and typical radio special effects (“boyoyoyoyoing”, etc.), I heard the words “Bohol”, “earthquake”, and the number “7.2”. It was early in the morning, and my brain was moving pretty slowly, so I was trying to put it all together. I was also trying to think of what the Richter scale numbers were, as I gradually realized that an earthquake had hit the island that our group had visited just a month ago as we learned about the farming situation in the Philippines.

How bad was 7.2? What were the tsunami Richter scale numbers? What about the ones in California, like with the famous San Francisco earthquake in the early 1900s? How were our friends in Trinidad, San Vicente, the small group of farms in the north of the island? Did they feel it in Cebu, the second-largest city in the Philippines and cosmopolitan capital of the Visayas? Did my fellow YAVers in Duamguete feel it? My thoughts kept running through everything I knew about earthquakes, and the ones that had happened in western China and Turkey and places like that in the past decades.

I also wondered how frequent things like this were. The Philippines really is kind of located in a perfect storm area of the world. It’s super hot here all the time, but it also rains ferociously, which means floods are common, as are the typhoons which we now know can be particularly deadly. It’s the easternmost country in this area of the world, which means storms from the Pacific hit all over the eastern part of the islands. It is also right on the fault line of the Pacific tectonic plate, and is part of the Ring of Fire. Seismic activity is pretty common, as is volcanic. Many of the islands were formed by volcanic blasts, like in Hawaii, and there was a recent blast in the early 90s from Mount Pinatubo on Luzon which was not unlike the Mount St. Helens blast that ruined the Pacific Northwest in the US. There was also an earthquake of a similar Richter level in the early 90s, also near Bohol. Shoot, when I look at it like that, it seems that the Philippines really drew the short straw on things that weather and the earth can do to it.

Anyway, with this in the back of my mind, I took a trip from Manila back to Dumaguete the next week to celebrate my birthday with the YAV program. I of course asked them about whether they felt anything, and there were individual stories of their experience with it, which was apparently early in the morning. Some people were sleeping and were awakened by it, some were eating breakfast, some were out walking, but it was like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination in that everyone can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they felt it. Of course, Dumaguete and Negros Oriental was not affected badly, mostly just some tremblings, but it still freaked people out, and there were still surprising aftershocks.

I largely sat in silence and listened-I’ve never had to deal directly with anything like this, as Kentucky usually gets pretty “normal” weather. It’s never really too hot, or too cold, or too snowy or rainy or anything. I mean we have storms and things, but it seldom is anything that I can point to and say “Kentucky is really suffering”, because usually someplace else got whatever it is worse.

After my birthday, I went with Abby and Cobbie to a 100^th anniversary of the big UCCP (and originally Presbyterian) church in Cebu City, Bradford UCCP. We ate a huge barbecue meal; Cobbie and I ran a 5k at around 5 am the next morning (bad idea  after the barbeque) while Abby slept; we read the correspondence letter from 5^th Avenue Presbyterian in New York City, where the funding and the Bradfords had originally come from in the early 1900s; and we got to meet the mayor of Cebu and a senator, not to mention the honorary banquet with suckling pig. Cebu had been affected a little bit by the earthquake, as it is essentially right next to Bohol, separated by only a few miles of water. However, the damage was minimal, and had largely been fixed, whereas I learned that there were almost a hundred deaths in Bohol, and half the island had no houses left.

I also got a proposition that weekend by Cobbie and Dessa to do a Lebron and “take my talents to Tabilaran”. I thought that sounded great-I had had very little to do in Manila for the first month, and being in the big city alone was kind of bumming me out after spending the first month hopping around the Visayas, meeting new people, and hanging with my YAV girls, Cobbie, and Dessa. A chance to go to this rural and beautiful island, to get a chance to see a new place and meet new people, and to basically have a two-week personal mission trip sounded great to me. I had spent 3 weeks at a computer sending emails in an office-I wanted a chance to do some physical labor, get my hands dirty, and really feel like I was making a difference with every brick of rubble I cleared away and every new temporary structure I erected for the refugees. The reality was so different it would be an UNDERreaction to scoff and laugh at the naïve, ahead-of-himself YAV Duncan of late October.

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.