Day One

I work for the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO). The CSWDO is a part of City Hall and is situated therein. My Counter-Part is Vanessa, she's a giddy woman with two kids and a great attitude for our work. I didn't know what to expect from my first day at work but I knew I had to show up for a flag ceremony at 7:30am on Monday. No rest for a volunteer.

After a light breakfast of eggs and luncheon meat (spam) I tossed on my Monday uniform, white polo, and walked off to work. Flag ceremony is a big deal most everywhere and Cabanatuan certainly is no exception, all the city offices and public services were in attendance. I walked in past the local police force, fifty or so officers all at attention, and began searching for either my counter-part or my supervisor.

Congregated around the statue of Rizal were a hundred or so white-shirt wearing city workers. After a minute I asked a friendly looking face where the CSWDO people were, she told me she was one of the aforementioned. I can't remember all the faces and names of people I met today, it was a long series of light handshakes and “good mornings.” Eventually the flag ceremony happened, I met the mayor briefly to no fanfare, and we all filed into City Hall to start the work day. I finally had a chance to see my department and settle into my desk. I wasn't given much time though, the next thing I knew I was headed for the mayors office for a conference.

I just wanted to deliver a letter that essentially said “Austin is here” (the misspelled my last name though, Kinkaid, oh well). I also had an official paper that needed a signature from the mayor, I had my eye on the practical. I hadn't anticipated being present for a five hour meeting or making an impromptu speech about the Peace Corps and myself. Sure enough I had my council with the mayor and impressed a few higher ups in the room with my basic Tagalog and gave a quick rundown of Peace Corps as it currently is in the Philippines. I didn't ramble very long and when I was done my supervisor translated a majority of what I had said and added some strange extra information like how I can't ride motorcycles. I thought she was just making sure the wealthy attendees in attendance didn't get the wrong idea that I was being disrespectful when turning down future offers of rides on motorcycles. I didn't know that the whole of the conference was being broadcast live over radio and TV, internet too I think. Imagine my face when I got back to the office and people who hadn't been in the room began complimenting me on my speech. Thanks, let me know ahead of time next time.

The rest of my day was spent touring a couple satellite buildings holding a medical center and the C4 program that I'll be working with before long. I kept working on Peace Corps paperwork through the day as they loaded me up with a few homework projects regarding contact information and signatures.

I finished my shift with wedging myself into my counter-part's supplemental feeding program she's on the verge of implementing. It's a six month program where parents are taught how to cook one meal a day for their children. The kids eat one guaranteed meal a day and at the end of the program the parents receive a set of cookware. I caught my counter-part trying to figure out how to dole out ingredients for each day-care, and it looks complex.

I'll take another gander at that problem tomorrow, here it is the end of day one and I feel good.

From Trainee to Volunteer

A little later today I'll become a full fledged volunteer. The ceremony kicks of at 2pm and is actually very short. I'm even part of my training group's dance number. Hopefully both the ceremony and the dance goes well.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17301326

There's a video for those who weren't there.

Counter-Parts Conference

I'm the sideways one.

It's the last week of training and all the trainees have reassembled at Island Cove. It's the last training before swearing-in and being set loose on our respective sites. This is a tough time as there are so many conflicting feelings over the end of training, let's list some.

Positive: Meeting my new host family, beginning work, meeting other PCVs in the area, seeing a new place, settling down, the chance to find a gym, and getting away from select personalities.

Negative: Saying goodbye to my new friends, loosing the safety net of our LCFs and TCFs, finally being alone.

I'm not concerned though. I assume these feelings are mutual within each PCT to varying degrees.

Tonight I finally get to meet my Counter-Part, this is my go to person at site, the person I'll be working a majority of the time with. We meet at dinner this evening.

Oh yeah, more Power-Point presentations too.

V2: A Way to Double You

Our last week of Technical Training wasn't all about propping up a community project, it was also our week to learn about V2. This is a program that encourages youth to become volunteers themselves and from there improve their community on their own. The idea is to organize and aide their agreed on mission. It's a great program and if I have the opportunity I'd love to utilize it. We as a cluster got to use it in a limited form and our plan was to train youth volunteers to run a short Padayon.

Padayon is a Visayan term for continuation and as a camp it is where youth volunteers learn how to run a camp, at a camp, then turn around and immediately plan and run their own camp. The actual thing lasts about eight days and looks like a blast. What we did for our V2 practicum was make a mini-padayon.

We gathered a dozen or so local youths from an alternative school as our volunteers. We had them participate in several games/activities we liked and figured might work for younger kids who they'd eventually be running them with themselves. Kaiti and I were lucky enough to facilitate the spider-web low ropes course, it's one of my favorites.

We strung up elastic sting all over the gazebo at the New Cabalan Barangay, to make a three dimensional spidery looking web of string. The idea of the spider-web is to get from one end to the other of the web without touching a single string. If you do hit a web you have to start the course over.

SIDENOTE: When I did this at our youth camp I had the hardest time making it through and I was annoyed that I couldn't make it through. I tried over twenty times before I made it through. Although, no one saw me do it, so you have to take my word.

Anyway, it can be a really tough activity if you're not creative or aware of your body. The youth volunteers loved it. There was one who was having a tough go of it and kept having to restart after getting so close to the end. Over and over she hit a line and was obviously not happy that either she couldn't do it or that we were so strict on the rules. Finally she made it and everyone was shouting and clapping. She looked very pleased with her hard work.

This training was done on Thursday, on Saturday we got to see if they could handle a massive number of kids on their own. Saturday was where they had full control and we just hung around and observed, snapping photos and the such. Kaiti and I strung up one spider-web, we gave them another set of string to do their own.

What happened thereafter was all their doing and they did great. These youths ran the show like pros and everyone had a blast. Us PCTs were exposed to a few local games that were unique. One had you hit a matchbox across the floor with a eggplant tied to a string between your legs, ridiculous.

This was a great success.

Community Project

Our first community project failed. It happened late in the schedule for getting the project completed. Our plan was to help the community build a few signs for a particularly deadly corner in New Cabalan. There had been numerous deaths on this corner and signage was just not there. We had completed a study through PACA on what the community wanted us to help them with and it was this pressing issue. Nick stepped up right away and took the lead on this project and was our man in charge. I was proactive in telling Nick that I was available to help him with anything, he gave Kaiti and I the responsibility of getting the proposal written up. Kaiti did the write up and I just kept reminding Nick I could help if he needed me, I wasn't needed as it turned out.

Fast-forward a couple weeks and most everyone in our cluster are in the new Barangay hall in New Cabalan, talking with the Kaptain about our project. At this point we just wanted to make sure the supplies were going to make it and we could still count on him to help us. After fifteen minutes of actual business being discussed, we heard about how greatly the Kaptain wanted us all to stay in his Barangay. This was a long and awkward conversation, less so for me as he couldn't remember my name and I don't actually live in New Cabalan like most of the others in my cluster. Anyway, things sounded like they might work out.

Two days later my Technical Trainer informed everyone that the Kaptain had made some calls and everything wouldn't happen. Bad times. We weren't looking for failure but considering we had done our part and the actual inability had come from our partner in this venture, I thought (still do) we had done our best. Failure is always an option, it doesn't have to be the death kneel of our training, it's just a realistic outcome from our efforts. Too bad some others didn't see it this way, we were instructed to make a new Community Project and have it done by September 1^st. Less than a week to make something come to fruition.

Our second project worked out but it wasn't a great success. We fed some kids some bananas and called it a “feeding”, an elaborate dance to go through the motions. I'm not a fan of forcing a success, I thought the first failure was lesson enough, concocting a wildly uninspiring community service successfully made me feel we were making a bad joke.

Here's the point: Failure is alright if you own it.

One more week of training in Olongapo to go before we ship off to Cavite for Swearing in. This week we're ramping up our studying and training for language, we have testing come Thurday and Friday. Friday is my B-day, can't wait.

Day Camp

This last weekend I had the pleasure of being part of a quickly planned day camp. After coming back from Manila, all of the trainees got together in Olongapo to begin planning one day camp. Instead of being given a full week for planning, we had about three, but even that didn't last. Let me explain.

I have two “classes” a day. Language and Technical. Us trainees have to have about 50-50 of both each day but sometimes we spend a week in Manila, away from Language. The week we had to plan a camp was the same week we had to “make-up” Language time. That's fine had we spoke briefly about a camp in the weeks preceding but alas we hadn't. We had to attend split classes of 30-70, Language getting the lion's share.

That all aside, we still got together to plan what we could. Thankfully we have a seasoned pro in our group concerning all things camp, and she cobbled together a basic schedule and presented it to the big group. We spent a goodly amount of time arguing over this and that, feelings were hurt, voices ignored, snide remarks whispered, and so on. Whatever the cost, we made it through and had a basic schedule to work with. This was Tuesday.

Come Friday I was paired with Kaiti sitting on a small list of games to facilitate to our youngsters, expecting to be paired with 17 nine and ten year-olds the next day. We were ready, packed, and only slightly concerned.

SATURDAY: We were dropped off with our day bags at the end of a paved road, one the unpaved portion. After a 15 minute walk up one side of a hill and down the other, we had arrived. We had figured we would be there early enough to prepare for the kids arrival. They were already there.

Fizzle, it was a slow burn to get our bearings and get moving. A few commandeered the check-in process and after a few bungles, Kaiti and I found we had a new group of twelve and thirteen year-olds. Alright, let's do this.

I opened the event, it wasn't spectacular by any means. I started with a little song each trainee from our batch learned in IO (Initial Orientation), Baby Shark. Afterward we split into our groups and did our respective thing.

Here's what Kaiti and I tried:

Communicate (not a game, actually communicate)

Make a group rallying call/cheer

Color a team flag

Facilitate ten or so games

Only moderate success was achieved.

After a full day of chasing kids here and there, we had wrapped it up. The kids scampered here and there before heading to their large dorm rooms. The ladies retired to a small dorm in the nearby church, it didn't have enough beds to go around even for them. The gents had to hack it outside, sans beds. Munya and I set up camp in the church, on the stone floor, the other guys from our group slept under the stars.

I woke up and realized I've slept better. After breakfast, our group of trainees came together for some processing. Here's what we learned.

-Language is pretty important

The kids were great. They seemed to have a good time and really, that's what we wanted.

Street Immersion Notes

I climbed a thirty year dormant trash mountain in Manila. I passed several houses on the mountain, trekked through fields of camote and saw corn stalks speckled about. The ground looked almost normal, the road was muddy (but not mud at all), the crops looked fine, the landscape was rolling and looked serene. It's what's just under the surface, and even still sticking out, that makes this mountain different, it's just trash. Trash that's older than I am. It hadn't been added to in a long time so the mountain just decomposed as best it could and began to look like a shaggy hill. The farming done on the mountain certainly adds to the lushness of the mountain, there are tight rows of camote that look just fine to eat (I'm not so sure though). It's pretty and it's impressive, the most beautiful trash mountain I've ever seen. After climbing down from the summit, my group of trainees went down the street to the new budding mountain.

This is a much different mountain. It's low lying in comparison and has nothing growing from it's surface. One side of the mountain butts against Manila Bay, the other side is against a Barangay full of people who live right there. The road into the small town is muddy and it's the blackest mud you've ever seen, slimy and thick. Children run along the roadside in different states of play, some have boots, sandals, or are barefoot (a majority I'd say) and quite a few children were stark naked, staring at the Americans piling out of a caravan of vans. We walked to the edge of another section of the Barangay where charcoal is made. The smoke was very thick and billowed out of so many buildings. We didn't get any closer. This was a fully functional town, it had a Barangay hall, basketball court, sari-sari stores, and places to have your hair cut. Just had a landfill right next to and spilling into it.

On the way home a friend of mine was transferred to the van I was in and we rushed to the hospital. My friend was having trouble breathing and was complaining of losing feeling in the arms. We made it to the hospital in about 25 minutes, which was pretty fast considering how much time we spent passing on the left, in the left lane, of huge strings of traffic backed up at traffic lights. My friend is fine.

At night we left the hostel we were staying at and went to see what prostitution looks like. My idea of what it would be was pretty spot on, it's still hard to see. I'll paint you a word picture of my first stop. It's dark out. Imagine a square open park, without grass and with brick, that has a water fountain in the center. Well lit by flood lights, dark outside the park. Each corner of the park has raised benches that are part of the park, the benches are sides of plant filled concrete boxes. The plant-benches part for openings into the park at the center of each side of the square. Seat yourself on a corner, and put about seven girls in another corner. You can see them and they can see you. Now put in twelve men here and there, not far off but not next to the girls. Put a couple guys really close to the girls, you can't tell if they're customers or pimps. Finally have four families spread across the rest of the park, the parents seated, the children running around. This is what I sat in and watched prostitutes from.

I think it's a pretty tall order to ask anyone who really doesn't want to, to proposition a prostitute. That's what I was asked to do, although I could just say no and walk off. I didn't actually get to to talk specifics with the prostitutes I did encounter, I couldn't think of what to say to them. I did tell Sugar that “that's not your real name, is it?”

The next day I watched a man of about sixty (I'm guessing here) haggle with three prostitutes of young age, about 16-18 years old. I saw the pimp too, he didn't look stereotypical at all, could have been any guy off the street. This time the location was directly beside a carousel.

The street kids were fun to work with. We watched an educational session occur and returned the next day to run some games. We did one where you race the clock to make a hula-hoop travel all the way around a group of participants holding hands. First time we did pretty bad, second we did it three seconds faster, third time we knocked ten seconds off the tree prior. The second game is a favorite of mine but is also hard to get off without a hitch, action relay. It's like telephone, you have to relay a word or series of words through actions, without talking. We did alright and I think the kids had a good time.

That's what I did for twelve hours a day for two days in Manila.