Katrina vs. The Volcano

There are days when you think to yourself, I will remember this day forever.

As I was standing on top of The Mountain in 60 degree wind and rain, wearing only my REI light-weather shorts and a thin cotton T-shirt bought in a three-pack at K-Mart for $5.99, I repeated those words as a mantra over and over and over: this is worth the misery, because I will remember this day forever.

The Mountain is a something of a mysterious and mythic place to nearby residents, namely because its ruggedness and remoteness keeps all but the most adventuresome hikers (of which there are few) at a distance. It is unarguably beautiful and dramatic in appearance, though, and admired by many. About half the year it is covered by clouds, but on a clear day it stands alone against a backdrop of deep blue sky with the ocean at its base. The Mountain rises from the edge of the sea to over 6,000 feet within the span of just a few kilometers, and it ranks as the second-tallest mountain in the entire region in which I live.

Bordering it are rivers on both sides, with cascading waterfalls and swimming pools flowing between moss-covered trees and sleeping monkeys. When you see the terrain and the accompanying natural beauty, you feel that you are truly in one of the last untouched places on earth.

Dan, Kyla, Dave, and I had to climb it.

Joined by five Filipinos comprising the local climing club and five kilos of rice, the nine of us climbed The Mountain. The uphill trail nestled in and out of intact rainforest stands, with evidence of tropical climes all around: native tropical birds, flying lemurs, honey bees, bats, hanging vines, wild orchids, colorful insects, and not a coconut tree to be found (they aren't native here). We quickly learned the relative climate change at 6,000 feet and immediately regretted our decision to “minimalize” and “pack light.” I regretted my decision to forgo pants for light shorts, and I especially hate myself for bringing NO CHANGE OF CLOTHES. Life's lessons are never ending.

But in spite of the rain – which poured in pure tropical rainforest fashion – and in spite of the chill – which was chilly – we summited and celebrated with a big bowl of rice after. The night was spent with us curled up together sharing, among other things, the onset of hypothermia; after what seemed an insufferable amount of time freezing through the night, we froze yet again through the morning as the Filipinos cooked their rice for breakfast. Just repeat: “I will remember this for the rest of my life.”

Our downhill climb was swift and warming, mostly because of our constant stumbling and sliding on the slick trail. By the half-way point I had nearly forgotten the most intense cold I have experienced in the past two years. Nearly. We trekked the last half of our journey along a river that flows to the distant rice terraces in the town below, stopping at a waterfall to bathe and clean our mud-stained clothes.

Today it's back to reality, but if I ever feel discouraged at the astonishing human development and loss of natural beauty around me, I'll think of that Mountain and I'll remember that there are beautiful places left in the world. Either for their remoteness or for their sheer amazing beauty, they are left the way they were meant to be: as natural and as wild as the world comes.

More Thailand Pics

Pictures in the previous post include: Bells at Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai; Shadow of me, my elephant, and my Mahout, or elephant trainer.


Pictures in this post include: Guard statue at Wat Pra Kaew, Bangkok; flower offering and Buddha at temple; the Giant Buddha in Hong Kong; dragon mosaic at temple; and Thai driving, much like Filipino driving (i.e. anywhere the driver feels like it).

Thailand + Katrina + Dad = Super Vacation

I went on a trip to Thailand and Hong Kong with my dad. It will go down in history as The Best Vacation Ever because of two simple reasons: 1) Every activity centered around eating, and 2) he paid.

The experience of seeing history, culture, development, and astonishing natural and man-made beauty is only topped by seeing all of those things with someone you love. My expereince in the Philippines is one to remember, naturally, but I am sometimes sad that I am experiencing it alone, only sending the occasional letter and photo home. How lucky of me to have had such a great adventure with my dad, complete with us riding pachyderms, eating 8,000 calories daily, and searching for rubies at the Burmese border.

Considering that my skills in English have devolved over the past *gasp!* two years, I will instead relate The Best Vacation Ever in only a few pictures. Just note: the real thing was 8 million percent better, especially the part when I watched my dad fall off the elephant.

More Beautiful by the Day

Today I am hideous.

My exploits over the past 1.5 years have taken me through rivers and up mountains and on islands unscathed. Only last week in the kitchen of Papa Guille and Mama Nora do I stumble on no apparent obstacle whasoever, fall in slamming fashion into the refridgerator, and impossibly stub my toe on a nearby two-by-four, rendering me toenail-less.

Life sans one left toenail has, remarkably, helped me fit in with my many friends and confidants who were marked at birth with disfigurements and have been waiting for converts like me all their lives: Atoy the six fingered man (twelve, actually, when you count both hands), Oming with the impressive underbite, Jaybert with the ears that stick out, Apron White Hair, and of course Joe with the one big leg.

I was warned by The Organization that, try as I might, it would be impossible to truly become “one” of the people. Hah! Take a look at THIS, will you. Integration, I have come:



The picture doesn't do it justice.

Christmas 2006

Oh the holiday season in a developing Catholic nation! Bring on the whole roasted pig, the midnight mass, and the constant requests by my friends and neighbors for christmas presents! All eyes behold the palm trees strung with inexpensive lights, lights that were recalled from some US discount store chain five years ago due to fire hazard! Celebrate the old white men and their twelve-year old brides who return home for the holidays and parade their holy whiteness while wearing speedos on the beaches! Yes, yes, yes! And thanks be to the children for lighting my dog's tail on fire – a festive fireworks show indeed!

But above all, my favorite part of the holidays: caroling children – perhaps angels? – who unknowingly sing the wrong words to the famous song, “joy to the world, the lord is come, let earth receive her king, and every boy and every girl, we never want to sing, we never want to sing, we ne-he-e-e-ever want to sing.”

How I do love the holidays here. Food, family, friends, and fun abound (please admire the alliteration). The spirit of christmas is in its purest form, with dancing and games and general good cheer. And did I say no presents? No presents! No holiday shopping for gifts that no one needs anyway! Added to that are significant amounts of alcohol and strange food choices acquired for free or cheap. I share today an excerpt from my diary on December 21 of last year:

Eating sea anemone: a cross between squid and bubble gum in texture. More like pesto sauce than seafood. Salty, pleasant, kind of buttery. Nothing like pesto, actually, except for the fact that it's green. Satisfying. Definitely fatty. Hope I don't die. Next to try: dog, cat, and monkey. Ha ha ha.

We cooked up a species of sea anemone that is horridly poisonous when not cooked properly (hence the death comment), but my current blogging endeavor serves as proof positive that the chef knew what he was doing. As an afterward, at this point in my experience I have only monkey left to taste. I recommend dog and cat only to the desperate, those lacking tastebuds, those with no morals, or those with extreme allergies to all other forms of food. And with that for you all to stew over, Merry Christmas! My best wishes to everyone and their pets.

Globalization

The following is an e-mail I recently received from a longtime friend. As a holiday gift, he is trying to compile a music C.D. for a group of us who went to high school together, and we have all been commissioned to choose four songs for the C.D. that represent our current musical interests as well as our current place in the world. I found his message amusing.

"OK people:

So far, Adam, Katrina, Adam, Marisa and Cristina have turned in their song selections. Still missing songs from Chris, Kira, Joan and Alex. Out of all the people that haven't turned in their songs, I assumed since Katrina was living in a third-world country, living on an island with no power and having to travel to another island by boat to use a computer, that she would understandably be the last one to turn in her song selections. However, I was wrong. Feel ashamed that the girl with no electricty beat you to turning in your song selections.

Nate"

To add to this clear evidence of a world in the throws of globalization and ever-decreasing borders, I also want it known that my town - which has no phone lines, no municipal water line, no city-wide trash collection, and electricity in only 40% of homes - will be getting wireless internet access by month's end. Merry Christmas to me!

A Courting We Shall Go

To the query "You'll have to explain to me just what the process of 'courting' is like," the answer goes something like this:

1. Guy texts my phone saying "I love you always" in Tagalog.
2. Then Guy respectfully talks to my host father and asks, "Can I date her?"
3. Host father respectfully replies, "You'll have to ask her."
4. Guy takes that as a whopping "yes" and comes to my home, unannounced, with a bucket full of fried chicken and waits for me to consume it all.
5. Katrina says "I don't want to date you."
6. Guy thinks to himself, "Isn't she great?" and goes home a smitten kitten.

Never have I agreed to go on a date since coming to this country, but on occasion I have been duped into one. . .which is exactly what led to the Second Worst Date of My Life (the first being the other time I was duped, after which Beboy asked me if I would mate with him).

A local police officer who has a "thing" for me regularly texts my cell phone, often stops by the house, and searches for me in my local haunts (a.k.a. the post office and the municipality dump site), always pursuing the same interest: will I go out with him on a date? Just one date?

No. I will not.

But we know each other, and I know he has an English competency exam coming up. In a last-ditch effort to be in my breathing space and, therefore, close to me, he proposes that we have an English-speaking study session. Eager to make English speakers of them all, I agree under the strict terms that we are studying and we are pals only. A handshake, a spit in the dirt, and a pinky swear later, we are on for studying at the local market among pig carcasses and the recent squid catch.

First, let me say it before anyone else does: I'm an idiot.

I realize things are going south when the books close a mere five minutes after they are opened, and he says he must "quickly pick something up in the next town." Ever the faithful teacher, I go with him to......a local disco. He wants to dance. Can't fight the feeling.

Me, I refuse. There will be no dancing. Can we just sit somewhere and talk, he asks. I'm tired and want to go home, I say.

Well why don't we sleep right here, he asks with a wink.

And then I proceed to make him cry in shame and embarassment.

"You are very disrespectful. You are a liar and you are treating me like a prostitute. You are not respecting me or my family. God will judge you harshly for treating a foreign visitor this way. Shame on you. Your English is very good."

I add the English part because I read somewhere that you need to add something positive to every criticism.

He cried and cried and cried because I hurt him so. This was the second time in my life that I made a grown man cry, and it was no less satisfying than the first. Does it make me a bad person if I say that some people just deserve the humiliation? It was so awful in the greatest kind of way, the kind of way when crushing someone with the emotional calibur of a 14 year-old makes you so happy and proud of your cruel self.

Shmy-phoons

Shortly after I first found out I was going to be assigned to the Philippines, I remember picking up a newspaper and reading "Bomb in crowded mall kills Christmas shoppers in Philippines." Not long after, some boat somewhere sank because of yet another bomb. In the month before I left there was news of both a landslide that killed hundreds, and pesticide poisoning that killed nearly 100 school children.

Imagine you are about to leave to a foreign country and you read these things: bombs; natural disasters; mass poisonings; unsafe transportation. How excited are you to jump on a plane to a tiny country where typhoid, dengue, and falariasis also abound? Falariasis, for those who aren't in the know, is the irreversible swelling of certain body parts to gargantuan size; my island is tested positive for the mosquito that carries it. If I wouldn't be killed, I would be deformed for life. Awesome.

Worried that I'd made a fatal choice by simply wanting to be good and volunteering in a foreign land, I decided to settle my fears. I decided to look at the causes of fatality of former volunteers to prove that they were completely implausible.

MISTAKE.

Acute pancreitis. Scorpion bite. Swimming in typhoon. Motorcycle crash. Bus robbing.

Having never left my own country with questionable security to live in a country with even greater questionable security, I was concerned. Not visibly, but emotionally very concerned. I was going to die. I'mgoingtodie I'mgoingtodie I'mgoingtodie I'mgoingtodie. This was my thought on the entire 18 hour flight.

Upon arrival, however, I found myself able to walk around without being jumped from behind by a masked assailant. Nothing fierce with teeth or claws mauled me - only mosquitoes bit. And water? Poisoning? We drank bottled!!

Did you know that people don't die in freak accidents all the time here? Because the way I figured it, they did. But no, they don't, and in fact most people live long enough for the high-fat diet and lack of exercise to kill them. It's amazing!

I consider myself a fairly bright kid. I know that the beautiful actors who die in medieval war movies aren't actually dead in real life and stuff like that. I know you can't believe everything you see, and I'm smart enough to know that sometimes you have to find truth instead of having it shown to you.

All of these things I understand, but when it comes to my health and safety I become a bit irrational. Anyone would, and many have. Blinded by my own concerns and fears for my health, I lost my "filter" button and didn't put what I was reading into context. My concern with the many ways I was going to die became an irrational fear. Don't you laugh, because I have had more than one e-mail from home that mirrored my past sentiments: Katrina, a landslide hit somewhere. Are you okay? Katrina, a boat sank, were you on it? Etc. and so forth.

I'm not writing this to mock anyone who cares about me. I write this now because a typhoon is coming, the 21st of the year, and I just want to make sure that everyone knows that this is one of those times when they should check the functionality of their "pointless worrying" filters. The warning I got went something like this: To hit land today. Distance 185 kilometers. Winds 240 kph. Waves 41 feet. Signal 4 Camarin Del Sur, Catanduanes, Albay, Sorsogon....

Forty-one foot waves?!?

The typhoon will be hitting today, apparently. Last night, they called it a SUPER TYPHOON on the news, although today the status is downgraded to just the really strong variety. Signal 4 it is, which is one signal away from signal five, which is super. But not good super. Bad super.

I've never been in a typhoon, probably never will be. I'm not even concerned by the warnings much anymore, because so rarely do they come this far south. Whenever there is a warning, I try my best to be on the mainland and use the opportunity to mag-internet all day.

Someone somewhere just sent me a concerned e-mail about how long I could hold onto a palm tree in the impending storm before blowing away to my horrid and tragic death. I call that excessive. Remember always that the news tends to get people excited and fearful by reporting everything with EXCLAMATION MARKS AND CAPITOL LETTERS!!!! The truth remains that even small countries are big, and also that I'm better prepared than one might think. We have warning systems and emergency action plans, and when all else fails we can use the tin can-phone system that I ingeniously devised.

It's probably a better idea to channel the energy that it takes to worry into the energy it takes to send me a bar of chocolate. I'm fine, and as much as I appreciate the concern, I much prefer chocolate.

So don't worry, if that's what you were doing. I got two years of worrying done with way back when I was researching the many ways in which I can die here. Like I said, the high fat diet is far more dangerous. Perhaps you shouldn't send the chocolate.

Job Description

I thought the readership of this blog was a solid four – including my parents, my brother, and about six other people who so seldom look at it that they all count as one.

Recent e-mails and letters have indicated, though, that maybe I underestimated the number of people who are actually kind of interested in my life. And when I say “interested”, I don't mean to sound arrogant. I know that most of you are just checking to make sure I'm still alive, and also to make sure that I'm not writing about that time where you did that thing and the cops came. Don't worry, I won't ever write about that.

Considering that the number of people who read my blog is actually “four plus”, I now feel that perhaps I haven't been fair in the telling of just what I do here. Perhaps some of you want to know more than the current state of my bowel movements and other bodily functions. So here it goes, but just the once.

This country has tremendous aquatic resources and, in fact, more shoreline than the entire United States, even though it is only the area of Arizona (36,000 km of shoreline as opposed to 19,000 in the U.S.). There are about 1,000 populated islands of 7,000 total, and sixty percent of the population resides in the coastal zone. A majority of the population is dependent on coastal resources in some way shape or form, especially as a direct food supply.

Small islands are especially succeptible to environmental degradation because their ecosystems are smaller and more likely to crash when overexploited. Moreover, these smaller systems are indicators for larger and longer-lasting problems that are happening in the greater oceans. Enter Katrina. Essentially, my charge was to teach islanders of a small island group, the Cuatro Islas, why the marine resources they have been thriving on and exploiting for years need to be protected, in the Cebuano language no less.

For nearly a solid year, I lived on one of the islands, Himokilan, full time and tried to develop programs that could be replicated on the other islands. Living there was important to both me and the islanders, because it helped me fully integrate into a foreign place and learn the language, while simultaneously building their trust in me. I beg you to imagine being the only English speaker on an island with 600 people, no water for four months of the year, and nighttime electricity only. This was a big change for me. It took me nearly a year to deal with the many rashes and lack of electric fan, let alone figure out my assignment and how to do it best.

During that first year, I taught all grades of the elementary school weekly about the marine environment. I used to work on gardening projects, composting projects, solid waste management projects, and adult environmental education. I started one environmental group comprised of out-of-school youth called the Green Team, and I also tried to re-organize the island matweavers into an active people's organization. I used to and still do get asked daily about when I am going to marry a Filipino.

Today, all that exists of my early attempts is one adult education program that, as it turns out, is the right formula for success. After five months of the program, a lot of my targets have been met, like recycling and composting in 50% of homes, and it has been rewarding to see some very positive changes.

Many of the other projects I originally pursued turned out to be the wrong formula, and I stopped them. I refocused my attention in other areas, namely solid waste management in high schools and ecotourism development, although I do have side projects that I attend to about once a month like art clubs and the like. The other stuff failed for a reason, which I now see with clarity, but am not disappointed because I had to try things that didn't work in order to find the better formula.

In essence, failure has been a very big part of my experience here. I have failed a lot, and have also had a lot of successes, though nothing compared to the failure. I won't remind myself of the Great Duck Experiment of 2006. Why the failures have been so valuable to me is because I learned this very important concept: the way they teach you to save the environment in college doesn't work.

“Saving” the environment is not about picking up trash; it is not about replanting trees; it is not about land-use-planning and point source pollution and habitat restoration. In a developing country, is about addressing fundamental education, health, political, social, and livelihood problems. It is very complex, and many people who I work with don't see the need to target these problems in the context of the environment. That makes my job very difficult and very exhausting, not to mention one I am wholly unqualified for (though the internet has taught me a lot...).

The time I spend actually doing community trainings is a small percentage of the total. The amount of time I spend preparing for presentations, writing documents, and creating educational aids takes most of my time, and it is always hot which makes the work that much harder. So it's not like I don't do work ever. I do. Lots.

The reason I don't write about it is because that stuff isn't interesting at all. And, furthermore, since I don't get paid for it, I do a lot of it during evenings or early in the morning, which leaves the majority of daylight hours open for great adventures like caving and napping. Be thankful I don't write about work more, because something like Building a Solid Waste Management Framework for the Integrated Protected Area of the Cuatro Islas really is as boring as it sounds.

They Don't Give Us Guns

Has anyone noticed that my full name is never written on this site, aside from the web address? That was a stupid mistake that I can't seem to undo, but if I could go back in time I would change it to something far more clever and original. Has anyone also noticed that I always say "volunteer" and never name my organization? Rarely do I use last names, and I avoid naming any of my companions here in country.

The reason for the secrecy is that we're not actually supposed to reveal any of that stuff. Kind of like CIA but totally different, it can be dangerous for me to give too much information. The higher ups say it's because we know where a lot of other volunteers are located, and furthermore, we are privy to information that crazies might find valuable. All that considered, the real reason I am discreet is becasue I really don't want any of my ex-classmates on MySpace to find this site and mock me for it.

But regardless of all the web secrecy, I am not a spy. This is to the dismay of Reno at the Municipal Hall, who is convinced that I am prospecting for the U.S. government on the island I live on.

Were I a spy and writing a report to the motherland, I might present my findings as such:

• 50 hectares of rock
  
• Rich in trash production
• Above-average albedo from the white sands
• Soil apt for producing weeds and burying trash
• Lots of kids
  

Reno keeps tabs on me just the same. Apparently I am not the only one obsessed with the new James Bond.

Sharing Too Much

Things that I consider strictly off-limits for use by others in a communal household include: toothbrushes, expensive hygiene products (like facial cleansers and hair product), my underwear, shoes, and razors.

All of the aforementioned are user-specific goods that should never, ever be shared without express permission from the owner because such actions fall into the categories of “gross,” “weird,” and “expensive to replace.”

I've learned, however, that rules of common courtesy seem to have no weight in a land where men can piss anywhere, chickens and goats roam free to graze and bellow at unspeakable hours of the morning, and travelers can walk up to a stranger's front yard and pitch a tent for the week. Likewise, enter any home and all that you possess will become at once a new curiosity or tool for another, free to use and destroy at will.

Now, my host family is incredible and very respectful toward me – they don't make me eat if I don't want to, they leave me to myself when I am in my room, and they took down all of the spy cameras before I moved in. They don't even have the habit of going through my garbage like the host families of my many counterparts do (with often embarrassing results, I might add).

Considering their wonderful success in “getting me” as an American, I suppose I should forgive them for their single lacking: they use things that I deem “for private use” and, possibly, have my bodily fluids on them. But perhaps I shouldn't forgive them. You decide.

Some examples:

I developed the habit of counting my underpants that I hang to dry after I learned about the panty thief on my island site. The thief, named Tibo, is one of a family of thieves, a band if you will. His brother likes to steal my jewelry and wear it obviously in front of me, pretending all the while that it was his to begin with; his sister is fond of my flip-flops and other people's money; and his dad probably would like my pots and pans, but I can't know for sure because years ago he was put in prison for stealing and subsequently murdered in a fight. So this Tibo is a legacy, really, and I was told to guard my panties as one does Spanish Gold so long as he was around, because stealing panties is his “thing.”

On the mainland one day, I stepped outside to check on the state of my drying laundry, and lo! I was two pair short. Did Tibo swim across from the island and take my panties? I spent a week eyeing his underwear lines suspiciously, looking for the tell-tale signs of my underpants: frayed with holes and reading “Wictoria's Secret” along the top (a Filipino Original Brand). As it turns out, my host mother mistook the tattered underpants for hers, and I only learned of their whereabouts upon seeing them hanging during her next laundry day. Ew.

In another incident, I came home to find my running shoes missing. Thinking they ran off, you can imagine my surprise when my host brother returned from an afternoon playing tennis wearing a brand-new-used pair of trainers: mine. Though flattered I was that he thought my shoes worthy to wear, I could only wonder what mathematical calculation could predict the stink that would come from those things after our combined athletic pursuits.

The day my toothbrush was in the mouth of Papa was just as surprising. I guess I didn't know people here actually brushed their teeth all that much. And do toothpaste/toothbrushes work like antibacterial soap? As in, even if you are using them to clean something, are the instruments, in effect, self-cleaning at the same time....?

Probably my least favorite of all, though, is the repeated use of my razor by the men in the house. Yes, I shave my armpits, and no, I can't tell you why it's gross to share razors. It just is. Especially when you pick yours up, and you find all eight of your host brother's beard hairs embedded in the blades, having been removed just earlier that day.

It's weird and I don't like it, and maybe you're wondering why I just don't tell them that all of this borrowing makes me uncomfortable. The reason is because I already have told them, at various times, and they just don't get it because this is how things are. They share. Everything. And if that sharing results in me getting a new fungus, or me having to replace my things constantly, or new embarrassing material for my blog, then so be it. Existentialists beware: this is how things are, and apparently it is true that some things never change.

My Plan to Revolutionize T.V.

A list of stunt ideas for Filipino Fear Factor:

1. Put six people on a 3-man motorcycle, with contestant sidesaddle on the handlebars, and ride to upper barangay X, distance 9 miles through mountains.
2. Eat a plate of kinilaw (raw fish) with only the hands while sharing with eight street children from Manila.
3. Don't wash with antibacterial soap for three days.
4. Bathe in a pool of stagnant street water in Tacloban
5. Swim laps in the canals of Baybay during the dry season when the fresh water has nearly all evaporated and the color and consistency of what remains is a thick, black tar.
6. Go on a date with a shirtless man who constantly rubs his overwieght belly and strokes his cock fighting rooster
7. Kiss a man for 20 seconds who has only two teeth and no toothbrushing implements
8. Give birth with no doctor or meds readily available
9. Sit in a dengue-infested shanty town and write a letter to a friend you haven't caught up with in a really long time.

Given the immense amount of time I have, I also wanted to try my hand at writing a screenplay, and I gave it a fair shot when I scripted my own episode of The Filipino Office. It went something like this:

Bong Bong: Dong, wa koy gusto magtrabaho kay nasakit ang akong lubot. (nag-papershred siya sa lamesa)
Dodong: Bong, ayaw ka reklamo. Dapat unta magandam ang imong report para sa karon buwan. Di ka mogamit imong lubot pagsuwat, di ba? (nagkatawa siya sa iyahang yaga-yaga)

Hahahahahaaaaaa!

The plot summary would go something like this: Boss doesn't show up to work. Again. Coworkers take naps on the tables and do Tai Bo in the office because they have no work. Again. Lots and lots of illegal logging cases go unfiled and thus remain unresolved for years at a time. Again. Katrina comes into the office and paints her nails with her coworker. Again. And two people lose their jobs because they got pregnant and cannot work to their full ability because their jobs are so demanding.

Things That Make Me Smile, Part 3

On my biking route....

Apparently I'm stressed out and that explains why I've gotten 16 collective hours of sleep since last September. Stress....I don't get it. You mean the constant wailing of neighborhood chickens and pigs, the trucks downshifting on the highway outside my house, the neighbor's obsessive watching of “Deal or No Deal”, and the general angst of being a foreigner in a foreign land is stressing me out? Is that what my doctor is saying?

She suggested I go to a counselor, to which I responded by asking if it was more cost effective to send me to Manila for a five-day trip where the counselor would tell me I'm stressed, surprise, or if it was better for her to just send me some sleeping pills so I could give them a shot. I really, really want to sleep, not talk about why I'm not sleeping. So tomorrow in the mail I'll be getting two, just to try them out. Yaaaaaaay. Hello, sleep. My name is Katrina and I LOVE YOU.

Strange that I'm not sleeping, really, because the amount of physical exercise I do these days astounds even me. I do nothing all day but bike and run and drink orange juice (the orange juice, incidentally, was gifted by God last month to the local Mercury Drug Store and now I drink real orange juice as opposed to sugar with orange flavoring). I owe thanks for this new and demanding schedule to the fact that local politics have taken a turn for the worse and I, consequently, have no work, ever (as previously communicated to loved ones back home in letters, phone calls, faxes, smoke signals, and falling leaf patterns). Being able to exercise not only kills hours and hours of my day, but it also has the added bonus of making me feel more like a single 24 year old instead of a lumpy toad girl.

Oh, my day isn't without challenges. Trust me, I'm challenged. The most challenging aspect in my day-to-day is finding a new and clever way to lie to my host family about why biking is work. “I'm just stopping by my office!” means that I'm going to the bakeshop across the street from my office for a snack. The same thing, no? “Oh, I'm visiting another volunteer to discuss work,” means that we sit in aircon in Jolly Bee and discus the lack of the aforementioned.

Another challenge has proven to be waiting an entire, excruciating week before I can read the episode recap for "The Office" on Saturdays at the Internet Cafe. I don't laugh as hard as I would were I watching the show, but I laugh pretty hard making up the episode in my head based on the recap.

I don't mean to imply that I do absolutely nothing. Fortunately, the inventions of both electricity and computers allow me to create brochures for ecotourism, proposals for said ecotourism, proposals for solid waste management, environmental education lesson plans, and lots and lots of photo journals. I have plenty to do and plenty to keep me productive during the times when I can rely on no one but myself. The problem, as it turns out, is that I find other people increasingly unreliable. Lack of funding and political barriers prevent a lot of plans from being implemented, and keeps a lot of people uninterested in aiding little development workers like myself. In consequence, a lot of communities like my own appear to stagnate, and my own work appears non-existant.

In truth, progress happens every day, if only in the sense that people keep tyring to devise new ways to implement change. After 20 months, that becomes hard to see; instead, it's easy to see failure and disappointment, and those thoughts tend to keep a person awake at night.

Embarrassing Things You Should Know About Me

There are a couple of things that happen from time to time, very specific to this country and my life in it, that cause me an unspeakable amount of embarrassment.

1. Butt Sweat [buht swet] n. The extreme sweat generated in the gluteus maximus region, which seeps through ones pants when sitting in raging heat
2. Wrong Word Choice [rawng wurd chois] v. The act of unknowingly using the wrong word instead of the right one, often with unintentionally rude implications. Example, mistaking the local word for chile with the local word for the male genetalia; mistaking vinegar (suka) with vomit (suka).
3. Diarrhea [dahy-uh-ree-uh] n. The thing that happens to anyone living near a questionable water source and consuming a deep-fried-food-rich diet.

The last of these happens to us all, and I want it known that WE SHOULD NEVER BE ASHAMED OF SUCH THINGS. Really, Embarrassing Thing Number Three only proves to be a cause of embarrassment when bathrooms are inacessible (which, I've found, they usually are), or your entire municipality shuts off the water when you really have to go.

I have a terrible, horrible story to about Embarrassing Thing Number Three, but because no one will ever want to hear it, just assume that it's terrible and horrible. There are some things about living in this country I would just assume forget, except that I've kept a very detailed journal to remind myself that, when I'm having a bad day, things really could be much worse.

The View

This is the beach in front of my house. The sand bar shifts depending on the time of the year, and now the entire area you can see is filled with sand 3 meters high. That boat really is called Mr. Suave.

Why I Might Become an Ex-Pat

From my house I'm listening in on a local prayer meeting at the neighboring chapel, although a casual passerby might mistakingly assume the attendees are filming “Star Wars: Episode 17”. The church microphone is on echo and colorful lights are emanating from the building. I think I just heard someone is either screaming or else cackling, but I'm not quite yet certain. The speaker keeps repeating the Cebuano words for “sinners” and “fire”. They must be planning the bake sale.

Sadly, this odd display of Catholicism will end precisely at 8:00 p.m. and all nannies in their whitest of white clothes will hurry home; no more children will be heard playing in the streets; dogs will stop barking; and no one will be taking any more calls for the next half hour. Life, it may seem, will have stopped in order to observe a new sort of holy hour for Filipinos the country throughout. Make way for what I consider to be the single greatest evil to come from America: Deal or No Deal.

Ridiculous game shows have never been my fancy since The Weakest Link invaded perfectly good prime time television way back in the year of our lord 2001. (Pause briefly while I explain the joke: Filipino English is a bit unusual to the American ear, and often you can read newspaper articles or hear interviews where people say, “way back in the year....” regardless of whether or not it was way back or just a year ago. So there you have it.) In fact, I consider my disinterest in television over the past five years to be directly linked to the Stupid Game Show/Stupid and Mean Reality Show plague as of late. Foolishly, I thought that I could escape such things by running off to an impoverished and developing country, but I underestimated the 10 million Filipinos overseas who send money back home so that even the poorest of the poor can buy a television. This is development.

While I haven't borne witness to the American or British versions of Deal or No Deal, I am assuming they are just as stupid as the local one. A hostess in a fancy dress calls out the sexy dancer girls who, as it turns out, are neither that sexy nor can dance well, and they hold briefcases for the next half hour while contestants try to win 2 million pesos by hearty guessing. I repeat, guessing. Is winning money in a guessing game the only hope 80 million people in this country have of every overcoming poverty? I suppose so, judging by the extreme and disgusting popularity of this show. I pray nightly that sensible Americans hate it and the show will be forced off the air before my swift return so that I never have to suffer from it again.

When the number in the briefcase is high, the music annoyingly goes DUN DUN DUNNNN and when the number is low, the music annoyingly goes WOO LOO LOO LOO LOOOOOOO, and the audience gasps accordingly. The most irritating of all, though, is how the hostess – the very famous and beloved daughter of a former president – tries to make a show interesting that, let's face it, is exactly the same every night. She always berates a contestant for “choosing high” and insists he should pick “lower numbers”. The contestant's facial expressions seem to agree, and I can just imagine him thinking, “why didn't I think of that?? Lower numbers!”

While the hostess is waiting for the banker's offer, she asks invasive personal questions similar to those I have heard every day since coming here – How old are you? Why aren't you married? Have you ever had a boy/girlfriend? Oh, that's too bad.... Just when I think it can get no worse, she makes a horrid hand gesture when she asks “Deal, or No Deal?” and the audience, now completely reeled in, screams NO DEAL! NO DEAL!, even though the odds are one million billion trillion to one against the contestant and he should just take the 80,000 pesos. Adding to my extreme displeasure is the fact that my host family watches it religiously. What the hell was Edison thinking, inventing electricity?

Common Sense

Untold joy abounds when one witnesses a baby taking its very fist drink of tuba and its first puff of a cigarette. Like the first few steps, the first indulgence in a vice is a symbol of the youth that will one day grow to maturity and individuality.

Little Jerome had his first puff yesterday when his grandma Rita stumbled drunk and smoking into my house, where Jerome and his mommy were visiting. In accordance with good and proper judgment, Rita put the cigarette in Baby Jerome's mouth and had a good laugh in the process. Later, as she was finishing her bottle of Black Wings – a vile alcohol that reeks of licorice and ethanol – she had the courtesy of leaving the last shot for Baby Jerome. Watching a child wince in disgust really is quite sweet. Surely his early exposure to alcohol is merely preparing him for four years of high school football games and four subsequent years of frat parties and initiation ceremonies...such a lucky child.

The first time I saw a baby drink was on my birthday, and since then, much like eating dog, the activity is commonplace. The educated American in me knows that alcohol and fags might not be entirely healthy for a young baby, but the burgeoning Filipina in me wonders what the real hurt is, if limited in quantity and frequency? No, no, I'm being serious now.

Americans have a, sometimes, too-great sense of danger and litigation. I have had a lot of time to reflect on the American's concern with child endangerment, among other things, and I am truly convinced that such a concern stems from bad parenting. Bad bad bad. We Americans are content to put our children under someone else's watch or in a crib or in the company of distracting toys and films. In essence, “distraction” is the key word – we do things to distract our kids from having family far away. Then, if something goes wrong, we can always blame the thing that went wrong, but not the ultimate caregiver – the parent.

I see kids here climbing trees and playing with knives and swimming unattended, and surprisingly accidents are less common here than at home. It seems that kids and parents of the Philippines know the consequences, but have no one to blame except themselves. Perhaps parents here wouldn't let their kids participate in certain activities if they didn't have faith in their child's own sense of judgment; furthermore, by allowing their children to have exposure to mild risks and dangers, kids are more apt to make good judgments and understand the risks. Ultimately, kids are trained to blame no one but themselves and have good judgment; likewise, the parents are too. It's okay to make a mistake, as long as you learn from it and fault no one but the one to blame, likely yourself. Difference between Americans and Filipinos: Americans can buy someone else's common sense (aka the Warning Label on the toy). Filipinos can't afford anyone's common sense but their own.

I'm not advocating children start practicing juggling chainsaws and eating dirty food from the garbage to toughen them up. I'm merely suggesting that paying attention and relaxing a bit might not be so bad. So baby Jerome smoked a cigarette and it was weird and shocking but strangely not disturbing. I laughed, albeit the kind of laugh that comes out when the dude walking in front of you makes a face plant on the curb. Mother, does this provide further evidence that I shouldn't have children?

Material Girl

Category A: Joys in life derived from interpersonal relationships. Example: Children and parents reading stories together at nighttime before bed.

Category B: Joys in life derived from experiences. Example: Peace Corps, surely, in many cases.

Category C: Joys in life derived from material posessions. Examples: Laptops; bicycles; Jif Peanut Butter; Eva Cassidy CDs; books and magazines; the mat that my neighbor gave me; electric fans; my huge wok; back scratchers; digital cameras; etc. and so forth.

I only packed 40 pounds of goodies to begin my life here, and six of those pounds were my shoes that I needed to last for two years because nothing fits my gigantic body in this place. I wanted to be a good Peace Corps volunteer, and so I left the camping gear and the telescopes and the grappling hooks at home; instead, in pure Princess Vespa fashion, I brought only what I needed to survive: clothes.

Slowly I have accumulated posessions here, and because of the frequency of typhoons, thefts, freak accidents, and the sheer clumsiness of one Katrina, I made a pact with myself that anything here is fair game for destruction. Anything that I own I should be prepared to lose. I have held strongly to that philosophy, and since my Possessions Pact of 2005, several mechanical and technological things have been stolen or ruined. No big deal. Those things can be fixed, those things can be bought again. There is no heart in them.

But I have found that there is value in other things, things that are not so easily replaced. I don't need things a whole lot, I truly don't, but some of the things that I have or, moreover, I've chosen to have here, have begun to take on importance in my life. For example, letters from my friends and family, drawings from little Pinoy children, and jeans in size 6 long are simply irreplacable. I have grown attached to these things, because they are truly all that I have to remind me of people I love and experiences I've had.

I have never before spoken about the day that a rat ate a native necklace that was given to me for my birthday in 2005. I cried. I cried like a child who was just stung by 8,000 bees. To have a beast of nature come in and take one of 100 articles and items that I possessed at the time in the Philippines was tantamount to losing a limb, or a finger, at least. The necklace was just a thing, but it represented a very special birthday with very special people, and by losing it I felt that I had lost a memory, and lost a piece of the person who gave it to me.

Every now and then the deepest parts of me battle with each other. On my left side in the back near my kidney, there is Kat who believes that things are only things; your attachment to them holds no value in life because they have no bearing on the things that really matter, like personal relationships or bettering mankind and the like. Then, waaaay up high near my collar bone and close to my esophogus, there is Rina. She thinks that it's okay to have things and to need them at times, because if none of us needed anything then we would live outside and get bitten by insects a lot and obviously we would never kayak, ever.

There is an interesting essay that is given to Peace Corps Volunteers to help us gain perspective on cultural differences between Americans and the rest of the world. Entitled “The Values Americans Live By,” it is just that: a discussion of 13 values we not only collectively share, but also that differentiate us from much of the rest of the world. In his discussion, the author notes that we would consider ourselves a lot less materialistic than we actually are. It's a fair point. We Americans often claim that we don't need things, and yet we don't necessarily live by the words we speak. We own televisions, carpet in the home, cars, computers, toys...dare I go on? But we allow ourselves to have these things because, one, they are the rewards of hard work and success, which all Americans, theoretically, can achieve (another of the values detailed); and, two, material posessions really can serve as a solid, physical representation of memories and people.

I guess in the end, I listen to the part of my brain that is inherently American, the part that knows that it's okay to have things as long as we don't need them too much. It's that part of me that is aware of the fact that I needlessly have more here than all of my neighbors here combined, and yet I can forgive myself for growing up in a different place with entirely different circumstances. And anyway, didn't I sign up for this life in the first place in order to see what other people possess and grow up with in the very country I was packing for? Yep.

Dramatics

You know how in overly-dramatic movies with court scenes in them, there is always a guy who makes overly-dramatic speeches in the manner of an overly-dramatic actor who clearly did no prep work at all to represent reality?

You know what I'm talking about. And you know that nobody really talks like that, because when people actually speak like bad dramatic actors, listeners tend to laugh, saying “wow, is he imitating Jack Nicholson in that movie where he says that line that comes off as really cheesy?”

My point: we watch actors make dramatic speeches because we can suspend reality just long enough to be entertained; we don't watch speakers make dramatic speeches, because it just sounds dumb.

But wait! Enter my general region of the world. I am convinced that here, any and all debate technique was garnered from movies. Bad ones. If I turn on the evening news, there is bound to be an arrogant-sounding man who watched one too many B movies, speaking in a crescendoing voice and shaking his fist in action.

Furthermore, the words used are of pure literary variety. English is a studied language here, but taught only in school and rarely perfected from practice in the home. Go into an office, even in the smallest of small towns, and you will hear someone speaking as if he's trying out for Broadway. An excerpt from my solid waste management workshop the other day (note, all capitalized words should be read with EMPHASIS, VOLUME, AND POWER!):

“WE must unite and BEHOLD the power of many persons STANDING as one! We SHALL NOT let die our RIGHT as citizens to ORGANIZE ourselves and FIGHT for what we believe!”

After all of that, the crux of his speech was that we need signs on our garbage cans so people know where to throw biodegradable and nonbiodegradable trash.