Return to Homonhon

3.20.11

[Coming ashore]

Last March we made the trip to Homonhon Island, the most remote part of our community, to celebrate Magellan’s landing. Last month, we journeyed there again with our five workmates in the municipal agriculture office for our “Homonhon Island Education Tour for Farmers and Fisherfolk.” It was a 9-day trip, where we, along with our Filipino counterparts, traveled to each of the eight villages on the island to provide agricultural and fisheries services to the communities there.

We started with the most inaccessible barangays (villages) – the ones only reachable by boat. After three days of nomadic living and sleeping in the homes of village captains, we moved on. We traveled by dump truck, a community service of the two mining companies currently “exploring” the island, to our home base – the house of one of our officemates, in the barangay where we stayed last year.

[Our sleeping quarters in one of the villages]

[Our memorable sleeping arrangement and bonding moment]

Every day followed a similar schedule. We’d wake up and travel to the designated village for the day’s activities. In the morning, two of our coworkers, the Livestock Technicians, would vaccinate dogs and cats against rabies, thanks to a 3-year grant from the Gates Foundation. The Fisheries Technicians would register fishermen with the Bureau of Fisheries and take their ID photos.

[How to vaccinate a very resistant dog: put him in a basket]

[One of my all-time favorite photos of the Philippines so far: my coworker Efren force feeding vitamins to a carabao (water buffalo).]

[My counterpart, Concesa, talks informally with kids about marine protection]

[Fisherfolk registration]

During this time, Brandon and I were mostly free to explore the beautiful, remote shorelines of the island. In one of the villages where there’s a fish sanctuary, Brandon did a quick snorkel survey and took underwater photos, while I conducted a perception survey with the residents.


[The gorgeous Homonhon scenery; probably the most beautiful spots in our area, but too inaccessible for tourists for now. This might be a good thing...]

[Coral reef in the the Inapulangan Fish Sanctuary, thanks to our new underwater camera case. We showed this and many other photos and videos to the community during the night's program so they could see the awesome stuff that's just below the surface of their waters.]

Our main contribution came in the evenings, when we’d host an educational program at the village plaza. As soon as it was dark the program would start with brief talks by our coworkers about the benefits of organic fertilizers and planting a variety of crops. Then Brandon and I would have the stage for about two hours, during which we’d show videos about climate change (in Tagalog) and coral reefs and talk about the dangers of fishing with dynamite and cyanide, which is common practice here.

[Setting up for the night's show]


[Brandon giving a talk on climate change. Although you can't tell, we agree this was THE hardest presentation of our lives. The generator-provided power turned off 20+ times and we were being SWARMED by these crazy little beetles. The man with the pink fan was furiously fanning them off of us as we spoke and tried to keep our composure...]

[Coral reef video and talk]

[Climate change video]

These videos captured the full attention of the town. It was routine for over 150 people to come out each night and stay glued to the screen. There is no electricity in these villages, only a generator which runs lights and maybe a few tvs for several hours a night. So having two hours of videos shown in the middle of town is a big event. At the end of the program we’d have a game show-style review for the kids. We’d ask basic questions like: Coral is: A) rock B) plant C) animal and cross our fingers that they answered correctly with letter C. Our counterparts got really involved in this portion of the program, the kids fought over who would get to answer the questions, and we were able to see if our message was clear.



[Quiz game snapshots]

After our portion, our coworkers would take the stage again and manage a vegetable seed giveaway. One of the political parties in Congress here that represent the Waray people provided funds to promote gardening on Homonhon Island by providing seeds and organic fertilizer for every household. This is in response to a crisis several years ago: Because this island is so far from the mainland and the sea becomes too rough during the rainy season, the people on Homonhon actually ran out of food completely, and they had to receive airlifted packages to sustain them. This is a shame, because although they have plenty of farmable land, they aren’t producing enough to feed the people. Hopefully this seed program will help change that.

After the evening’s program we had the challenge of getting back to our home base. There is literally no transportation on this island other than the mining company’s trucks. Hard packed dirt paths crisscross the island linking the operations for the mining company and narrow footpaths link the villages where possible. So for many of our programs, we’d have to hike in with our coworkers in the morning and hike out at night. This was particularly entertaining one night when we were trapped by a downpour and had to cross the mining area in the rain with just our cell phone lights to guide us!


[Hiking in]
[Night trek out]

In all, 1,128 community members attended the education events, 195 fisherfolk were registered, 483 animals were vaccinated, and all the households on the island received seed packets due to the efforts of our work team. It was an exhausting trip, but these accomplishments feel really great.

By far though, the best thing about this trip for us was the bonding we had with our work team. We spent 24 hours a day with our Filipino counterparts, for 9 days. We slept alongside each other, ate all our meals together, hiked all over that giant island together, braved the waves together, and shared a ton of laughs. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect cross cultural opportunity, and after all, two-thirds of our role here as PC volunteers is cross cultural. Our friendships with each of them are now much stronger and I think we’ve proved ourselves as real extension workers by coming on this adventure to the outer barangays with them. I continue to be impressed with how hard they work, with little recognition or compensation.

[The team, with village leaders]

[Buddy shot - Brandon and his counterpart, Cres]

[During our downtime, we introduced UNO to our coworkers - it's now their favorite group activity and the games can get pretty feisty.]

[Our last night on the island was actually Valentine’s Day, and so to celebrate that and to celebrate our hard work together, we of course went to sing videoke].

Getting off of Homonhon Island always proves to be tricky. After our videoke night we all eagerly woke up and hiked across the island to meet our getaway boat, or so we thought. Evidently that boat was not leaving that day after all. But we had just hiked with all our gear and no one wanted to head back. So my wonderful counterpart put in a plea to the municipal hall and begged for a special boat. Six hours later, our rescue boat arrived! (We’ve developed all sorts of ways to pass long stretches of time like this. For instance, you can wander around and take pictures of the village wildlife, giggle with the schoolchildren, play more Uno, or just stare longingly out at the waves and pray for a boat!) It was a wild, wavy ride back to the mainland, but we made it eventually. We’d never been so happy to see our adopted home come into focus on the horizon, but we also came ashore feeling really satisfied.

[Headed out]

[Happy to be on our way home; not happy to face the waves]

Year 2

3.16.11

Happy 2011 everyone! (It seems like the year just started but somehow it’s March already…) As we knew it would, the pace of our second year of service has really increased and we find ourselves constantly busy with work. Our projects right now are helping to strengthen the management of a village fish sanctuary and creating a Coastal Resource Management Plan for our town.

A fish sanctuary is an area of the sea designated as a no-fishing/no-take zone, which allows coral and fish to grow undisturbed. The long-term goal, then, is increasing fish stock and protecting coral habitats for food security, but for our limited two years here, we see these sanctuaries as a tool for mobilizing the community around their resources.

Coral reef protection might not seem like the most pressing need in a country facing poverty, disease, and overpopulation, but without the reefs, there are few fish. And without the fish, this country is facing a serious food security crisis. Some projections are showing that most of the reefs will be gone by 2050 and fish catch is already in rapid decline, so action is needed now if the next generation is going to have enough food.

[Manapag Reef Fish Sanctuary boundary markers]

In our town there’s an island village that has been managing a fish sanctuary for four years now. The community managers of the sanctuary are very active, enforcing the no-take area by apprehending fishermen who try to fish inside the sanctuary illegally. They do this on a completely voluntary basis. Because they have few resources at hand, they’ve asked us for training and assistance to improve their sanctuary and make it fully operational.

[village education event - community members watching videos about healthy coral reefs]

[5 fishermen attended a coral reef monitoring training that Brandon put together. After a day of lecture indoors, the team went out to the reef and surveyed the coral, fish, and seagrass]

The project started in November and will continue through August, at least. Our main activities are helping the community write a management plan for the sanctuary, train community members in coral reef, fish census, and sea grass monitoring, rating the sanctuary’s current management level, enhancing the physical infrastructure (guardhouse, buoys, signs, etc) and doing environmental education events. We’ve just submitted a grant for funding through PC. If approved, this will fund construction of a guardhouse for the sanctuary as well as law enforcement equipment. It will also help fund a community celebration we’re planning in the village called “Reef Day,” which will be held together with the village’s annual fiesta in May.

[Tori works with the Management Council to review the current status of the sanctuary]

[Brandon works with the Monitoring Team to make a "transect grid" - a rope grid laid on the reef to help determine the amount of coral that is alive. Fishermen are masters at knot tying, obviously, and made a 300 sq. meter grid in under a half hour!]

It’s a cool project for us to work on together, because we can each use our unique strengths – Brandon is focusing on the snorkel trainings for fishermen and construction projects. I’m working on the grant proposal and management planning with the community, and we work on education events together.

[After the survey, the trainees tabulated their observations and came up with these results. This info will be used by the community to design new management strategies for the reef. Until now, the group has had no information to guide their decision making. Now they know where they are and where they need to go. They will use this info as the baseline to track and evaluate the progress of their resources in the future.]

We’re in the first phase of the CRM Plan project, which is compiling info on the current status of resources and community opinions. So for the next three months Brandon will be doing habitat surveys of mangrove forests, coral reefs, and sea grass beds alongside community trainees. I’ll be holding a series of 10 community meetings with my coworkers in the agriculture office to gather socioeconomic info and comments and ideas from community members. We’ll compile all of this and use it to write Coastal Environmental Profiles of 10 villages. From that, we’ll work with our counterparts in the local government to write a 5-year coastal resource management plan. Our goal is to have a draft submitted to the mayor by October. Until then it will be a very busy few months!

[the very active Manapag Reef Fish Sanctuary Management Council!]