Four Days in Eastern Samar (Part 2)

Tour day 2. One of my projects will be working with a newly formed entrepreneurs association, and one of the major players in the association right now is a fisherfolk’s organization.

Their primary project is mudcrab farming, but a secondary earned income projects is a coconut wine (“tuba”) brewery! They’ve built quite an operation and have won the title of best tuba in the Visayan region – due, they say, to their marketing and branding strategy (professional labels and tamper proof seals).

Our coworkers took us to the tuba brewing site, which is also being developed as a tourism spot – the fisherfolk’s organization hopes to create a platform overlooking the ocean, where folks can sip their tuba and watch the surf.


Setting up for some tuba tasting.


Prize winning wine at the on-site retail shop.


The brewery operation. Each blue barrel contains tuba at different stages of maturity.


Trying some fresh buko juice.


We think this tuba/eco-resort idea could succeed. We’d hang here.

We were scheduled to head back to training the next morning, but were convinced to stick around for the fiesta parade. It would be a great way to get our faces out there in the community, right?


Street dancers from the local university.


Parading through the streets.


My coworkers keep the sun away. I think this was right before the crowd started chanting “Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt” at Brandon…


Post-parade we went to the mayor’s house for a fiesta feast. Roasted pig (known as ‘lechon’) is a regional specialty throughout Leyte-Samar.


View from the mayor’s house.


With our sitemate, Eric, and our new host family, Nanay Dayot and Carol.

Our site is beautiful, but there is still much work to be done. We have some great natural resources and economic opportunities to work with, and there are tons of potential projects waiting for us. We’re very excited to return here in just a few weeks and get to work.

Four Days in Eastern Samar (Part 1)

10.10.2009

Our visit to our permanent site was packed full of activities and tours – we couldn’t have hoped for a better introduction to our new community. When we arrived, the town was gearing up for its fiesta, known as “patron,” so there were cultural shows each evening and lots of visitors in from out of town.

Our community has a population of just over 40,000. It’s located on a peninsula, bordered on one side by the Leyte Gulf and on the other by the Pacific Ocean. The community contains 60 barangays (neighborhoods/ villages), 44 of which are coastal. The town has both a newly renovated central plaza and a church built in the 16th century. We can get most things we’ll need right in town, with a bank, shipping center, plenty of stores, and internet cafes, so we won’t need to leave our site too often.

At the same time, Samar is one of the least developed areas of the Philippines, with some of the highest poverty indicators. Our community hopes to capitalize on its natural assets, ecotourism potential, and recent infrastructure developments to accelerate economic development and job creation.

Here are some highlights from the trip:


Our coworkers at the local government unit (LGU) planned tours and activities for much of our stay, including this welcome dinner at a local restaurant.


We visited the local Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) office. The BFAR in our community has a well-developed hatchery for bangus (milkfish), abalone, giant clams, snapper, and more. Cultures grown here are used to populate fish sanctuaries throughout the Philippines and as starts for aquaculture entrepreneurs. This is a great resource to have right in our community.


Brandon checking out the mature fish pens at BFAR.


16th century church (and pilgrimage destination) in our town plaza.


Brandon’s office – Municipal Planning and Development.


After checking out the sites in the town center, our guides took us out to the very tip of the peninsula to Calicoan Island, which is known for its beaches and surfing. Here’s the view from one of the small resorts (perhaps one I’ll be working with on tourism development), facing the Pacific.


That evening, we went to the town plaza for the nightly cultural show, leading up to fiesta. That night featured a famous Filipino ballet dancer and his young protégés. After this awkward warm up routine, they performed excerpts from Swan Lake. So random, but great.


Food vendors line the plaza, selling fresh roasted peanuts and barbeque pork on sticks.


Plaza at night.

Headed East

[City street at our permanent site]

10.4.2009

One of the biggest moments in the life of a Peace Corps Trainee is Site Announcement – when you find out where you’ll be living and working for the two years of service. We gave our preferences for site early on, but ultimately the decision is made by PC staff and is pretty much luck of the draw.

We were really happy with the announcement of our permanent site though – we’ll be going to the southern tip of Eastern Samar, a largely undeveloped area noted for its pristine coast and potential ecotourism spots. We’ve heard that aside from Mindanao, Samar is the poorest region of the Philippines, and Peace Corps volunteers haven’t been on the island for some time.

We will be the first group of Coastal Resource Management volunteers in Samar and Brandon and I (along with our sitemate, Eric) will be the first ever PC volunteers in our community. For a program that’s had 268 batches of volunteers, getting a site that’s never hosted Peace Corps before is a big deal.

[View of Leyte Gulf, from our new home]

We spent three days at a conference on Leyte, meeting our new supervisor and learning about our site workplans. I will be working at the Municipal Investment, Environment, and Tourism Office and Brandon is assigned to the Municipal Planning and Development Office. Both are housed in the municipal building, but we’ll have separate offices, just across the hall from each other.

The bulk of my work will be in ecotourism development and working with micro-entrepreneurs on livelihood projects. Brandon will be concentrating on solid waste management, marine biophysical assessments, and marine protected areas (MPAs). This seems to be a good match for both our skills and interests.

After the conference we traveled to our site. The trip only takes three hours from the nearest large city, Tacloban, and most of the drive is along the Samar coast. People from Leyte have been warning us that Samar is a mystical place, full of witches and poison – but people are always afraid of the unknown and we didn’t find any of those there. Our current host sister actually told us that she only eats Ramen noodles and other packed food when traveling in Samar, (because of the witches with poison), but we ate the food and have survived so far!

[Outside our new home]

At our new site we will live with another host family for at least three months. On this trip we stayed with our future family, which again consists of one little old lady, who again, was incredibly kind to us. Nanay #2 runs a boarding house for street vendors, which is located directly behind her main house. We will live upstairs in the main house, in a spacious bedroom overlooking the Leyte Gulf.

There’s so much to tell about our wonderful visit to Eastern Samar. We’ll post another entry soon with more details and pictures from the trip.

[This is where we will LIVE]

On the Shore

9.25.09

The weather has finally cooled off a little here – enough that our shirts aren’t soaked with sweat by 10am, we aren’t planted in front of a fan every second of the day, and we’ve even slept with a sheet the past couple of nights! Most members of our host family, including us, have come down with colds in the past week though, which our host mom attributes to the “cold environment.”

This week we did our first hands-on work with fisherfolk, doing socio-economic assessments. We conducted household interviews, completely in Waray-Waray, making it through with our broken language skills and lots of gesturing! For the assessment, we went into people’s homes (which is normal here – you can just walk in) and asked basic questions about household demographics, utilities and possessions in their homes, and fishing as a livelihood.

When asked how they envision their community and coast five years from now, most fishermen said they didn’t see any future for their community, because by that time their homes will be gone. This is a reality for them, because most fishermen in our village are squatters who’ve built permanent homes (nipa huts and plywood) on the shore. Because of sedimentation, coastal erosion, and climate change, the waves are coming closer each year and washing away homes in the process.

We hope to work on these issues over the next two years, but it seems the only immediate solution for these families is to relocate further inland when absolutely necessary.

The following day we held a focus group session with fishermen and their families. I conducted a community mapping activity and Brandon led the group in creating a seasonal calendar for fishing activities and household expenses. We also made a 24-hour calendar with the group, comparing the daily routines of men and women.

The highlight of this activity was when the women noted that they slept from 9-11pm, then woke up for an hour for ‘making babies’ before going back to sleep! Our last activity was a needs assessment for the community, where they identified public bathrooms, a fish sanctuary, small business support, and a watchtower as community priorities.

It was great to finally interact with community members and do work that feels more comfortable for us. Although it felt like familiar work on the surface, facilitating community processes in a foreign language was a whole new experience – if we hadn’t had our language instructor with us to help translate, it would’ve been completely overwhelming. We’re now more motivated than ever to learn the local dialect.

Under the Sea

[outrigger on our bangka - in the Leyte Gulf]

9.22.09

Week four of training has been our busiest week so far. We conducted our first coral reef assessment, which included being dragged behind a boat while snorkeling and observing coral cover, and a reef fish census. We took a pumpboat an hour out into the Leyte Gulf to reach the small reef and successfully avoided the many sea urchins to get our snorkel on.

After a few hours of snorkeling the choppy waters, we counted and ID’d different fish and coral species – well, kind of. Since we’ve never seen coral before, it all pretty much looks the same right now, and we won’t even go into the fish ID … but we have another snorkel trip in a few weeks and should hopefully get the hang of telling all this stuff apart by the end of training. (We're working on getting better photos, but taking them from the boat is always tricky).

[on the boat]

We left the reef mid-day, just in time to get some wicked sunburns. The sun is so much more intense here – Brandon is always impressed at the high angle of the sun = perfect for panels!

In language class we’ve been learning food and cooking terms, so we had a group cookout on the beach on Friday to practice. Not a bad way to spend a class day. We cooked both Filipino and American dishes, played some word games, and got to relax with everyone under the nipa.

[view from the balcony at our host family home]

On Saturday we had our first medical session on common parasites in the Philippines. Let’s hope we never have to use that info. To uplift our spirits after the parasite lecture, we went to an excellent beach party with most of the other Leyte PC trainees. The party was held at a local village captain’s home, right on the water.



Filipino hospitality really is amazing – the family provided plenty of food for us and even constructed a special party area just for the day. Afterward, the Kapitan led us in videoke, the Filipino party staple, with classics like “She Bangs.” I try to image US government officials getting up and gyrating to “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls and suffering no shame, but it just doesn’t translate.


[Leyte trainees]

CRM Field Work Begins

Last week we had our first practicum for Coastal Resource Management – mangrove assessment. Our training group traveled to a mangrove site by boat (about a 45 minute trip). The boats here can seat 8-10 people sitting on the sides of the boat with a small motor inside. We rode along the coast and then up a river to the mangrove site.

Working in groups of four, we studied 100 sq. meter plots in mid-calf-deep, super slippery mud. The trees were very thick (think of a swamp and briar patch combined). We identified several species, took measurements and samples, and made observations about the health of the area. We emerged from the mangrove stand with lots of scratches and eagerly climbed back into the boats, covered in muck, vowing never to do a mangrove assessment again, if we can help it!

[Boat trip to mangrove site]

The technical side of CRM (studying mangroves, seagrass, corals, etc) is very foreign to us both but we’re glad to be learning all sorts of new things. The community side of things (asset mapping, resource planning, environmental education, and organizing) is much more familiar terrain!

[Fishing village in our barangay]

This weekend we took our first trip to the nearest city, Tacloban. Whether our permanent site is on Leyte or Samar, it is likely that Tacloban will be our hub for purchasing items we can’t find in rural areas, the occasional American meal, and meeting up with other volunteers. The small city boasts a large seaside market, many thrift stores (known as ukay-ukay) containing American cast-off treasures, and the beloved Filipino shopping mall, “Robinson’s.”

We’ve made some good progress with the Waray-Waray language – we can now put together simple sentences, ask questions, and generally survive at the market with basic haggling skills. Our favorite Waray word of the week: kikilat (lightening).

[Language class]

One last quick story about cross-cultural miscommunication: We were eating breakfast the other day when a family member turns the TV to the show “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.” (The one where the bald guy travels the world eating the nastiest stuff he can find). The family is very excited because, look, it’s American TV!

They’ve been wondering what to cook for the Americans, so our Nanay calls her helpers into the living room to watch and learn what to make. We try to explain that Andrew is in Russia, not America, and that bear burgers, borscht, and boiled lamprey are NOT typical American dishes in broken English/Waray. The one time the Travel Channel has failed us!

From Leyte Province

Written 9.4.09

All is well one week into training. Last Friday we boarded a plane for Leyte province (Eastern Visayas region), and it started to hit us that we were really in the Peace Corps. The plane taxied to a tiny, rural airport and we exited via stair truck (a la Arrested Development!) Standing on the tarmac, all we could see was lush, green hills and bright blue sea. It was a surreal moment and one we think we’ll always remember.

We took our first jeepney ride to our training site, a municipality on the coast, to meet our host family at the municipal building. Fellow trainees were met by several talkative family members, but we were met by one small, quiet woman dressed in sequins, who we now know as Nanay (mother).

Nanay is seventy years old (and she reminds us of this daily). Her favorite response to any question is “I do not do that. I am old. I am scared.” Nanay has welcomed us into the home she shares with her granddaughter’s family and her house helper, Biya. She shows great concern for us and enjoys introducing us to her many children and grandchildren (31 in all), most of whom live in the same barangay (village/neighborhood).




The municipality we’re living in has about 50,000 residents, although we rarely leave our compact neighborhood, making it feel smaller. Our house is a 10-minute walk from the beach and we’ve spent several afternoons there with our fellow Peace Corps trainees.

Other highlights from our first week include: attending a Catholic mass, held entirely in Waray-Waray; sampling lechon (roasted pig) – the local specialty; struggling through Waray-Waray class every day for four hours; eating both water buffalo and eel; scratching lots of mosquito and cockroach bites; and signing videoke at a 21st birthday party.

Training Outside Manila

Originally written 8/27/09:

We’ve now finished our first week of training, known as initial orientation, at a resort outside metro Manila. It’s been a great week – we’ve met lots of cool people (there are 69 in our training batch, including 6 couples!) and learned a bit about Peace Corps Philippines in general and Coastal Resource Management (CRM) work in particular.


We spent the first few days adjusting to the jet lag with day-long sessions at the resort. Then we had two days off-site, with a trip to the PC office in Manila and a day of water safety training in Cavite. Not much to say about Manila – there was a stop at the Mall of Asia to buy cell phones and the worst traffic on earth.


They’ve been spoiling us here at the hotel – our room has airconditioning, a shower, and toilet with paper – luxury! The PC Philippines staff is great, and we are very impressed with the orientation program. It’s clear they’ve done this many times before and know exactly how much information and activity we can process at one time.


Today we finally learned our training site location: we’ll be living and training in Leyte for the next three months! The language we’ll be learning is Waray-Waray, translated in English as “nothing-nothing.” The jokes about this are endless.


Tomorrow we fly out for Leyte with 10 other CRM workers and a group of education volunteers. This time tomorrow, we’ll be staying with our host family and preparing for our first night in the mosquito net without toilet paper. We’re looking forward to it all and just feel so lucky to be here.

Our First Host Family

We've been living in Pataskala with my parents for over two weeks now:


Time has moved so quickly, like we're living in fast forward. We wake up early and fall into bed late, but all those hours in between seem to just disappear. Most of our time, sadly, has been spent shopping. Living in Athens (where our only major retailer is Walmart) is great and appreciated when you're trying to live simply; we never shopped because there were very few things to entice us (and we are natural non-shoppers). But when you require something very specific that needs to last for two years, the lack of retail put us at a disadvantage, I suppose.

*Despite the consumer frenzy, we've had so many amazing times with friends and family: wonderful dinners with the Podases, Whiteheads and co., and Pattersons; many lunches out with Columbus friends; a visit from the Davises; a trip to the Hartford Fair; and a farewell cookout and bonfire with some of our dearest and longest friends. It really warmed our hearts that everyone came out to the land of soy and corn to spend an evening with us. I know these memories will make us smile on the other side of the world.

[Smoke Rd farewell. Lesson learned: deck parties never change, in a good way.]

Three days from now we'll be in San Francisco. Between now and then we'll pack our bags, stop by the Pataskala Street Fair, and say some bittersweet final goodbyes.