The US Ambassador visits!

A few months ago, my regional manager contacted me and said that United States Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney was planning a visit to my site, as she enjoys meeting with Peace Corps Volunteers. There would be exactly half an hour for a visit, and then she would host other PCV's in the area for lunch. What would we do?

I was sort of in disbelief that the Ambassador would come to my site, but this was huge! The US Ambassador has an extremely big profile in the Philippines. Statements she makes and events she attends are sometimes front-page national news. There is a lot of history between our two nations, and because of (or in spite of, depending on your opinions) this history, the Philippines seems to be one of the few countries in the world with a generally positive view of the United States. Plus, Ambassador Kenney is extremely popular for her warm personality and willingness to indulge in stunts like this, dancing the Papaya on national television.

We began a detailed, intense planning process, coordinating between myself, the municipal government, the Peace Corps, the Embassy, and the various other places she would be visiting that day, which included our rural health unit - also a beneficiary of USAID funding. After weeks of nailing down every last detail (including what the Ambassador would have for lunch - a ham and cheese omelet and Coke Light, if you're keeping tabs), I returned from my vacation 2 days before she was due to arrive in town and reported to work the next morning to finalize plans. The mayor sadly informed me that she most likely wasn't coming, after all. This set off a crazy day of back-and-forth between me, the Peace Corps, and the Embassy, trying to figure out what on Earth was going on. The locals were sure she wasn't coming and had even canceled lunch. We were in a position of waiting for what we assumed was a final cancellation. Then, at 3:45, I received a call that the Ambassador was for sure coming, and all the original schedule would be kept. So we scrambled to put everything together again.

The rest of the story will be told through photo captions:

After making final preparations, the local officials and I anxiously awaited for Ambassador Kenney's arrival at the front of the Municipal Hall.

Although scheduled to go right up to the municipal hall in her van, the Ambassador disembarked early to shake the hands of the many schoolchildren who were lining the road, waving handmade Philippine and American flags, as drums played and a festive mood filled the air.

As Ambassador Kenney and her support staff from the State department approached, I provided the official welcome, and proceeded to introduce her to my co-workers and the local administration.

We went through a receiving line upstairs to the city council meeting chambers. I was quite worried about the schedule, since every event had been assigned a very specific time in minutes, but the Ambassador put me at ease, and was extremely friendly with everybody, taking time to shake lots of hands and take lots of photos.

The Mayor and I presented a brief overview of our CRM program, and a summary of the major initiatives that Peace Corps and the local government are working on here.

After some photos, we proceeded to our Tandayag Marine Sanctuary to show off one of the crown jewels of our town and meet with local fishermen. A TV had been hooked up to my laptop and was showing off some underwater footage, since we didn't have time to go snorkeling. We discussed the history of the sanctuary and our hopes for developing more eco-tourism here, as well as improving fish catch for the marginal fishermen.

Ambassador Kenney gave a brief message to those assembled - members of our Bantay Dagat, Municpal Fisheries and Aquatic Resource Management Council, and the Tandayag Marine Sanctuary Managment Association, and handed out some pins featuring the American and Philippine flags together, and we headed to lunch.

PCVs from Negros Oriental and Siquijor joined for a delicious lunch at a local resort that I could hardly eat because I was still so wound-up from the day's events, and hadn't really taken a breath for multiple hours.

One last picture, with the local PCVs, Ambassador Kenney, Mayor Bentham De La Cruz, one of our SB members, and my work counterpart and supervisor.

All in all, it was a pretty amazing day. The preparations went off pretty flawlessly, and my co-workers and the local government went above and beyond in preparations for the event. I was very proud to have a part in hosting the Ambassador, which is believed to be the first time that a US Ambassador has come to my town. I hope that having such a high-profile visitor to our project will help convince the locals of its importance, and enable us to continue improving our programs. And, above all, a goodwill, face-to-face visit such as this goes a long way toward preserving the main goal of my organization, stated in the very first word: peace.

Ocho Cero Uno Sa Inyong Radyo...

Hola, amigos, I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya. A lot's been going on, from projects at site, to a vacation to Palawan, to a visit by the US Ambassador. I plan on making posts on all of these things soon enough. In summary though, I'm back at site and things are going well. I got some new soccer cleats, a ridiculous number of cats have been dying at my house, I finally got to read the 7th and final Harry Potter book, I'm chomping on a lot of sunflower seeds, and I just started the 5th and final season of The Wire.

In this post I mostly want to talk about a recent radio show appearance I made, because it was kind of cool. Our mayor purchased some airtime on a local station for us to talk about environmental issues, and the first week was for Coastal Resource Management. So, I went along with my co-workers to 801 Radyo Bandillo in Sibulan for the program. My assignment was to talk about marine sanctuaries. The station is popular among fisherfolk, so I decided to speak in Cebuano. I wasn't sure what I was going to say until a couple hours before we decided to leave and I lifted a few Cebuano phrases from a poster we have in the office, then madly practiced my pronunciation.

Listening to the Mayor introduce the CRM program while nervously awaiting my turn

I guess the host had been falsely buttered up as to my level of Cebuano skill, and my well-written (not by me) prepared remarks didn't help shatter any myths. So when I sat down and started getting asked all sorts of questions, I did my best to respond, but then let her know I'd really be more comfortable reading my prepared text. Later, after I was done and Job had been speaking about fishery laws, the host called me to the mic and asked me some rapid-fire question regarding mesh size for a certain kind of fish net. I ran away and made Job answer the question. Laughing about it after the show, the Mayor suggested that next time, I should say "that question is so easy that even Job can answer it, so I'll defer to him". Not a bad idea!

Here's a picture of me breaking it down on-air, and then a transcript of what I said (the English translation - I guess you can contact me if you'd like the Bisaya).

A well-managed marine protected area (MPA) promotes habitat recovery and restores fish productivity.

1. MPAs are designated areas where fishing or other forms of human access and activities are restricted to protect the area’s ecosystem. MPA is the general term for marine sanctuary, marine reserve, or marine park.

2. MPAs promote the recovery of degraded habitats critical to enhancing and sustaining our fishery resources.

3. MPAs have a no-take zone or “sanctuary” where the harvesting of fish or any marine life is not allowed. This enables fish stocks and all marine organisms to mature and thus reproduce at a higher rate. As fish and other marine life grow bigger, their ability to reproduce increases.

4. Bigger fish produce many more eggs than smaller ones. No-take sanctuaries have been proven to host more and bigger breeding individuals, increase the supply of young fish and lead to a build-up in fish populations.

5. Once fish populations inside the MPA increase, some fish will spill out of the MPA and boost catches of fishers. Currents will also disperse eggs and larvae (newly hatched fish) to populate other habitats.

6. The enhancement of fisheries is only one of the many benefits of MPAs. MPAs also contribute to the stability of the marine ecosystem, biodiversity conservation, research, public education, tourism and recreation – benefits which often exceed the economic benefits derived from fisheries alone.

The Non-Electric Water Transportation Test

[Note: I just finished reading Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, so apologies if my writing is a little more free-form than usual. Just read it. READ IT!]

The other night, I returned to my island, after an eventful day that included:

A fastcraft ride with a lady clearly taking pictures of me with her cell phone;

Waiting for a bus on a pier so thoroughly inundated with the smell of urine that it made me seriously question my previously unwavering support for the Filipino male tendency to urinate in the great outdoors, then wandering over to take a picture of a decrepit and rusty version of the boat I just rode, wasting away on the beach, and noticing a kid just openly defecating on the beach – the first time I have seen that here;

Taking a bus ride that provided some thrilling views and awe/fear inspiring turns, a regular Disney ride (knowing in the back of your mind that sometimes they have serious injuries occur on Disney rides) with the unfortunate addition of a screeching horn that makes the bus sound like a diseased weasel hurtling through lesser, slower forms of life;

Losing my cell phone on a bumpy trike ride, ordering (and paying double my already-inflated fare) for a fruitless search of my phone;

Wandering up and down a somewhat grimy dive colony, looking for “4-American-Friends-3-White-and-1-Chinese” while realizing that this was probably what detectives had to do when they didn’t have the benefit of contacting their snoop subject via cell phone – I managed to be shown the rooms they had stayed in the previous night, was offered the room key to their place for this night, and found where they had gone diving before, but no THEM, until at last! There they were.

And more happenings, like calling my phone to find that it had already been found, stolen, and de-SIM-carded, meaning I had no viable way of tracking down an honest person who found it, because an honest person didn’t find it;

Grabbing a sandwich to go and going on the fastest boat period that I’ve been on in this
country;

Snorkeling a little bit because I’m still afraid my throat will seize up if I cough too hard while I’m diving;

Having some dinner while playing Settlers of Catan and watching a beautiful sunset; catching a ride with locals back to the highway and getting to pay the true fare (5 times cheaper than the tourist fare!);

Waiting for an hour for a bus to come while impressing some locals with my language skills/going through the motions of the same inane conversation about “chicks” that we’ve all had a million times, finally catching the bus, the last boat, and arriving back on my island.

While I was on the bus, I thought about how dependent we are on cell phones for meeting people. Back in the day, you would name a time and a place, and that was that. [Or you wouldn’t even do that. I once read about a study where New Yorkers were asked to name where they would meet somebody in the city, if they had no agreed time or place, they just had to meet. An overwhelming amount independently chose the clock at Grand Central Station, 12:00 noon. I wonder where it would be for Seattle – I’d probably choose the middle of Westlake Plaza. UW, HUB front stairs. But where do you choose for a dive colony in the Philippines you’ve never been to before, and the time is now?] Cell phones make it more complicated and easier at the same time. But what happens when the paradigm shifts mid-plan? You lose your phone before setting an on-the-go time and place, and you end up wandering around up and down a hideously developed dive colony, telling the sunglasses/rolex/Viagra man three times that you don’t want any of his products, while thinking about what could have been in this day, in this place. You could have put the bloody phone in the pocket with the zipper, or your bag, or any number of other rough-road-immune places, there’s so many ways I could have not lost my phone. They could have kept the shoreline free and open, put the resorts off the beach, never made any seawalls, and created/preserved a place 30 times more beautiful, there’s so many people who could have not screwed this up. Sayang.

Like I said, I returned to my island, getting off the slow boat at the southernmost end of my town, which is about an hour’s walk from where I live, as I now know. It was late, beyond typical public-transport time, but there was one tricycle driver waiting at the dock. I told him I wanted to go to Poblacion. He appeared to ingest this information, but it had no effect, and he wandered off. I waited a few minutes, and then I asked him if he wasn’t leaving, after all. He mumbled some stuff and then asked how much I was going to pay. I said, well, the regular fare is 6 pesos, so what do you want? He sort of said nothing, just smiled weirdly. I asked him a couple more times, and he said nothing. I told him he needed to talk, or I was just going to walk home. It was strange, the way he refused to begin a negotiation. Then he finally says 60 pesos. 60! Sometimes I give in a little bit to the inevitable rip-offs that follow my white skin because I just don’t care enough to haggle on everything. But no way is this happening in my own town. He wants more because he might not pick up a passenger on the way back – totally reasonable, so I offer him 12. No. “Gasolina is expensive.” … Yes, it is, but it’s no more expensive at night than during the day time, when you drive up and down giving rides all day for 6 pesos. I offer 15. 20. 20 each, me and the kid by me who wants to go the exact same way as me, but even further! He’s already offered 20. That’s 40 out of his ludicrous negotiation-starting high point of 60. He’s nonplussed. I’m frustrated. The driver points out what appears to be an easy-ride going by, and the kid and I run for it, but it’s not-for-hire, plus it’s stopping where we’re standing and staying there for the night. Tired and perplexed, I don’t even go back to the trike and begin to walk home instead. It occurs to me that he just really didn’t want to drive us, even at a premium price. He decided that he would only take us if he really got away with murder. He certainly doesn’t lose money during the day - otherwise there would be no trikes on the road – and he stood to make even more here. I walked home sort of to spite him – if you’re going to hold out for everything, you’re going to get nothing, my thinking often goes – yet it seems that this is basically what he wanted. On I walked, thinking about this driver #118 and wondering if I should have negotiated differently, or longer, while counting the vehicles that passed. Not a single public utility vehicle, so I don’t know if the kid I was waiting with ever passed me or not. And then, at the EXACT moment that I reached my house, Trike #117 goes by, fully loaded with people! Now I’m unsure if it was 118 or 117 that I was originally talking to, as the paint jobs appeared similar. Either way, he got his money, or he got his secret wish to stay, and I arrived home at my apparently pre-destined arrival time.

A project beginning

One of my new projects is to try and create a supplemental livelihood for fisherfolk families, the idea being to increase their income first, and to also try and reduce pressure on the fishery by having less people dependent on it as a livelihood (which can lead to overfishing - although, really, commercial fishers are the major problem in that regard). Having been inspired at a training I went to, my counterpart and I developed a plan to introduce this supplemental livelihood project based on creating goods out of recycled materials - out of used juice patches, for one, but also out of ironed plastic bags, a new idea which is starting to catch on, but hasn't really been done yet in my area. [Curious about ironing? Check out this website.] After a few introductory meetings with local officials to build support, I met with some fisherfolk one afternoon that had conveniently already been organized by a provincial employee, and showed them some sample products and a video on the technique. When I came back the next week to give more information and do an actual demonstration, I was floored to see that one of the girls had already taken the idea and ran with it, far surpassing anything I hoped to demonstrate, producing the most creative bags and prints I had ever seen with this technique. I borrowed them for a week to show off. These are all created from plastic bags ironed together:

Orcas frolicking under the sun

An orca in a colorful sea

A small handbag

An orca handbag

... A week went by and we returned for a third meeting, and I was again floored by what had been produced, this time in only 4 days:

These bags are basically market-ready, in my opinion, and the enthusiasm that's been shown so far makes me feel like even if a large amount of people don't take to the project, at least a small group of people can really make something of it. We're meeting on Friday to talk business plans and group names, and then the plan is to develop some more sample, initial products for sale. I'm going to help market the goods locally, regionally, and possibly even internationally, if some of my North American readers dig it. Bags will probably be the starting point, but I'm hoping that a wide range of things can be made - sails, kites, umbrellas, rain jackets, whatever would benefit from a free, durable Tyvex-like material.

Here's a picture of the community organizer, Daisy, on the left, who's my main counterpart for this project, and some of the most enthusiastic members so far. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

One Year in the Philippines!

Yes, It's official, I've now been in the Philippines for one year. And oh, what a difference one makes, if you will compare my just-arrived-after-a-long journey, freshly buzz cut, heaviest weight of my life ID photo with the one I took last night.

But sadly, I am apparently moving farther away from the culturally "proper" hairstyle.

And I've eschewed pants and shoes at the office for shorts and flip-flops every day. At least my hair's not blue, and I don't have a shifty look on my face, right?

I also just sent out a mass email, and posted it as a note on facebook. If you're not my facebook friend, or not on the list, and you want to read this year update, give me your email address.

Baba sa Suba – Part 2

It’s cool to see how sometimes an outsider (me) can just bring up an idea and see results without having to do much, showing the latent demand for doing projects here. In this case, the idea for planting mangroves was still popular, even though the original plan didn’t work. (It should be noted that many ideas aren’t received this well, and are often quickly met with a reason that something can’t be done.) And while I was gone in Manila for a training, the Sangguniang Kabataan (every barangay has like a neighborhood council for youths, the SK) and a couple other community groups conducted a small mangrove planting at the mouth of the river. When I returned to check it out, I could see only a few propagules still surviving – an unexpected typhoon rolled through the Visayas, and the planters didn’t have the proper tools to plant them deep enough in the first place. But it was a start.

On Earth Day, another coastal cleanup was conducted. It was incredible and disheartening to see how much garbage had accumulated in the area since the cleanup about a month prior by the high school students. Some of it came from the ocean or river during high tide, and some of it was obvious dumping activity. Coastal cleanups often feel like a ridiculous Sisyphean task to me, without anything else to go along with it that will actually change the behavior that leads to so much litter. Anyway, the beach was left somewhat clean (at least below the high tide line) and ready for the next round of planting.

As an Earth Day activity, but occurring on April 26, our local Petron company had a CSR-type event working with my office and the Bantay Dagat to plant mangroves at the river. This time, the seedlings were bigger, the tools were better, and the people were out in full force. We even had a banner and t-shirts! I was amazed at the efficiency of the planting. About 200 propagules and seedlings were probably planted in an hour. I returned to the site a couple days later and found about 75% still alive. Some had broken off directly at the sand line. I suspected wave action, by my co-workers were more worried about naughty children. I guess we’ll see how it goes – mangroves are up against enough without having to deal with little miscreants. Regardless, the area will require a lot of care, replanting, and observation until it becomes more established.

Enjoy some pictures from the event:

The mangroves arrive via Bantay Dagat patrol boat


Mangrove propagules ready for planting

No event is complete without a hand-painted banner..


The planting begins:






FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MANGROVES:
An excellent primer by the Shedd Aquarium
The Mangrove Action Project
Wikipedia Article

Baba sa Suba (Mouth of the River) – Part 1

This is the first of two posts that will take you through a project I had that turned into two. It started when I heard about a program that takes place on neighboring Siquijor, where a few years ago a PCV initiated a program called “Plant to Graduate” where graduating elementary and high school students are required to plant a couple mangrove seedlings as part of their graduation activities. We have an area near the mouth of a river, also nearby the local high school, that I was eyeing as a mangrove rehabilitation zone.

I worked with a teacher at the HS to flesh out the idea for the plan. Not only were we going to plant mangroves, we were also going to plant in two different areas upstream for upland reforestation. Then the transportation to upland areas became a problem. Instead, we decided to involve other upland high schools – but never heard any response from them. Maybe next time. We got approval from the Mayor, and from the Principal, and set our date. Then changed it a couple times because Amihan (the southeast monsoon, which creates high winds and large waves damaging to young seedlings or propagules) kept going later and later. I remained optimistic as people around me expressed doubt about the planting. We set the date and began the planning. Finally, one day while measuring the planting area, my counterparts told me we couldn’t go forward with it due to the Amihan. I felt very defeated and kicked a coconut in anger, breaking my flip-flop in the process. I sat down for a while to think and then eventually just walked home like an idiot with my broken sandal, not even wanting to return to the office. Eventually I decided we’d just have to do an event timed with the beginning of the school year in June.

My teacher counterpart was more positive and suggested doing a coastal cleanup instead as a graduation requirement. So on the appointed day, I went in and gave a (hopefully) inspiring presentation to the graduating students on the problem with waste and its effects on the environment. But I made sure to emphasize that coastal cleanups are not a final solution. In fact, I have pretty mixed feelings about coastal cleanups, which I can get into at some other time. After my talk, all the students lined up into their ROTC brigades and marched on to their designated areas.

The cleanup went alright. It’s rare to see an area completely cleaned during a cleanup. Possible reasons: a lack of motivation, getting tired, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of trash, a misunderstanding of what is actually trash, and a sad complacency with garbage piled everywhere. It can be disheartening to be the last person in a long line of participants in a cleanup and realize you’re picking up more trash than anybody ahead of you.

Here’s some pictures from the event: