Happy New Year everyone! We hope you all had a great holiday season full of family, food, and snow. We spent Christmas with our host family, doing our three most frequent activities: eating, singing videoke, and dancing cha cha. We then took some leave time and went to a very touristy resort island with fellow volunteers. It was a relaxing break - we marveled at the efficiency of transportation and the abundance of delicious Western foods in a place that caters primarily to foreigners. We were even able to go dancing several nights in a row, which you know was the highlight of the trip for Brandon, and we rang in the new year with beach fireworks. It was great for a few days, but we are more than happy to be back in our adopted home in Samar.
[a relaxing holiday: worlds away from our everyday PC life] We are always reminded of just how wide the divide is between us and our community here when we go on trips like these, no matter how much we'd like to imagine otherwise. We know that we are choosing our lifestyle here of relative poverty, while our friends, neighbors, and adopted family will never see many of the places in their own country. We feel a strange mix of gratitude for the numerous opportunities we've been given and guilt.
For this post, we thought we'd do an overview of how we get around here - transportation is always an adventure, yet many of the crazy ways we get around have now become commonplace, so much so that I've forgotten to write them down until now. When I try to conjure up the four-lane highways, private cars, and bicycle paths of home though, it puts the 'strangeness' of all this back into focus...
The Put Put, aka Pedikab
The put put, a bicycle taxi so named for the funny little squawk its horn makes (long live onomatopoeia!), is our primary mode of transportation day to day, especially for going short distances. We ride them when going from our house to the office if it' s raining or we're feeling lazy, going to the market, and taking other short trips in the center of town. The fare is 5 pesos, about 11 cents in US money. The drivers are organized into a pedicab union and they wait in an orderly fashion outside our office for passengers heading home. The drivers range from the very young (those who should probably be in school...) to the elderly (those who should probably be resting in a hammock somewhere enjoying old age but can't afford to...) - we try to find drivers somewhere in the middle range though who can support our relatively massive American poundage.
We try to be polite and split up, riding separately, one per cab, but the drivers often insist, saying they want the double fare. And so we often cram ourselves into one of these together and enjoy the awkward stares as passersby gawk at the two Amerikanos spilling out of the put put. Sure, we had the initial guilt of having another human pedal us around, but it really is THE major mode of transport in our area. Plus, we're traveling emissions-free.Many of the fisherfolk we work with organize pedicab cooperatives as an added income for when fish catch is low - and as fish stocks continue to decline, secondary income sources like this are becoming more necessary. These drivers are inspiring - they put put around all day long, rain or shine, and they are often some of our best conversations we have throughout the day. Many of them now know our house without us having to point them in the right direction, so we just chit chat about any number of things as we ride along.
Our Own Pedal Power
These are our wonderful mountain bikes, which take us everywhere in town when the weather is okay and we aren't feeling too lazy from the heat. In the not-as-hot (but still hot) season we're in now, we are really racking up the kilometers while the thermometer is down. PC gives us a pretty hefty allowance for purchasing bicycles at the beginning of service, so we spent it all and splurged for the best bikes we could find in the nearest city. Well worth it.
The Tricycle
Tricycles ("trikes") are everywhere throughout the Philippines, and in most places they have entirely replaced the pedicabs described earlier (although not on the islands of Leyte and Samar where we live). They consist of a large motorcycle with a sidecar welded on. The design of these sidecars varies widely from island to island we've found, and it's always amusing to compare them when we're on trips.
Luckily for us, the ones in Samar are relatively roomy. There's a bench in the front that usually holds two people and an awkward little stool-looking contraption that is actually a seat as well. I find myself squished onto that too often. Then there are two small benches in the back that can each hold two people, and two people can ride behind the driver on the motorcycle. Oh, and there's a teeny little metal rack on the outside that boys sometimes cling to if the rest is full. An average trike then can hold about 9 passengers max, but they frequently hold more, especially if it's full of schoolchildren OR if you're in an outer village doing a training and everyone decides to go to a party during lunchtime. THEN you might fit all these people in a tricycle together for a 30 minute trip (plus Brandon, who is taking the picture!)
When riding a tricycle you have to throw all conventional facts about physics and safety out the proverbial window. And amazingly, despite what seems like a dangerous transportation method, there are few to NO accidents on these things and we are probably much safer in them than in riding in a car in America. Drivers are cautious and normally quite kind. We just stand on the side of the road anywhere in town and flag one down that has empty seats/stools/metal racks. The fare is 7 pesos (about 16 cents). Brandon usually rides on the back behind the driver and I squeeze in elsewhere. Often though, existing passengers will vacate their seats in the front to give them to the Americans. We try to argue but know it's no use.
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