In Motion

2.2.09

As anticipated, the new year has brought new projects and work is finally moving. Our first major project is to help our community create Coastal Environmental Profiles – reports that outline the socioeconomic and habitat condition in coastal villages. To do this, we are training community leaders in how to hold community meetings that include resource mapping, community walks, and other tools. We’re also training fisherfolk and our work counterparts in how to conduct participatory habitat assessments for mangrove forests, sea grass beds, coral reefs, and fish surveys.

[our work team at our first education event]

We gave our first presentation on climate change here (the basics of what it is and what we can do) to over 120 village council members. Although the Philippines is one of the countries most acutely affected by climate change impacts, people here, even those well-educated, know very little about the causes. For many nations, climate change can perhaps be ignored because the threats don’t seem so immediate. But here in the Philippines, more devastating typhoons and rising sea level are daily realities.

It has been difficult for us to develop education strategies, particularly about behavior shifts, because much of the burden of climate change has originated in more developed nations – how do you explain to a family whose house has one light bulb and who ride pedicabs everywhere that too much fossil fuel use is threatening their livelihood as fisherfolk? Is it fair to ask these people to cut back on using the little resources they have access to when people elsewhere show no restraint? And so, how do we empower people to be part of a solution?

We have found some answers and are exploring others, but for now we’re focusing on preventing logging, supporting reforestation, and proper waste management as ways locals can be involved in their daily lives. We are emphasizing proactive coastal resource management strategies as well (like healthy mangroves) to defend against climate change impacts. After all, many impacts are already in motion, and people living in coastal communities should be educated and prepared.

[we had 120 attendees for our first 'Orientation on Coastal Resource Management for Barangay Leaders']

On the work front, our next few months will consist of conducting these community trainings, hopefully visiting the islands in our municipality because rainy season is coming to an end, and attending the last of our major Peace Corps trainings in Manila.

We had our first visitors at site last month - our nearest volunteer neighbors, a couple who live an hour and a half away. We explored Calicoan Island, the big potential tourist area in our community, with our workmates as tour guides. We had a great day exploring the Pacific side of the peninsula and hiked up to a ‘yoga camp’ on the ridge overlooking the island.

[on the Pacific at 'Officer's Country' - the site of a US naval base during WWII; now a mostly pristine stretch of coast]

[at the yoga camp with Eric, our sitemate]

[view of Calicoan from the top of the yoga camp]

[our coworkers during the picnic; this tricycle held 7 people + the driver and also served as our table]

[on the way to the yoga camp; the climb took us through the 'jungles of the visayas' and up some treacherous stairs along cave formations]


On the cultural side of things, we’ve done some new things like:
- Eating ice cream on white bread – when there’s no spoon, this Filipino method can be effective

[flavors include: cheese, peanut, and cookies and cream ice cream + sweet white bread]

- Attended some major “circle of life” events, including a wedding, a first birthday party, and several funerals. Wedding receptions are very similar to the US, including the awkward garter/bouquet throwing (although those who catch these then have to pretend to get married, stuff each other’s faces with cake, and kiss). Family and friends mourn the loss of a loved one with a nine-day wake, with the body in the home. After the funeral mass, attendees walk behind the hearse to the cemetery in a solemn procession.

[attending a first birthday party at the home of our original host family in Tanauan, Leyte - our first trip back and they welcomed us like members of the family]

- Started to love babies! We are godparents (ninang/ninong) to a wonderful little lady named Dana, who’s about 4 months old now and lives in our home. We’re looking forward to her baptism in April.

What Comes to Mind

Our dear old friend Lisa asked me in a facebook chat the other day, "So what's so nice about being there?" which got me thinking... here are a few of the things that came to mind right away:

+ it's beautiful, that's for sure
+ the pace is super slow
+ people don't stress over stupid things
+ family (and people in general) is really important - folks seem to have their priorities in check
+ we ride bicycle taxis everywhere, so we're feeling somewhat smug about carbon emissions:)

I like this activity in appreciation. So what are the best things about where you are right now?

Maupay Nga Pasko

1.6.10

We’ve just spent our first holiday season here in the Philippines and it was packed with events, new traditions, and our first mini-vacation. The Christmas season (known as Pasko) is filled with holiday parties. Our office party was supposed to have games and dancing, but turned into a campaign stop for politicians due to the upcoming elections in May. So, our coworkers, needing to celebrate in the traditional Filipino fashion, held several days of unofficial parties in the office afterwards! We ate, drank wine, danced the cha cha, and sang carols for many hours.


[yes, you can fit eight people in a broom closet office, even when four of them are doing the cha cha...]

[notice a theme? well this is how it feels. nonstop chacha-ing]


We spent Christmas with our host family and celebrated in the traditional Filipino way, with a large meal at midnight. All day on Christmas Eve we prepared foods like pansit (traditional noodle dish), gulaman (seaweed gelatin with fruit), and fruit salad (which here contains a Velveeta-like ‘cheese’). A brownout started around 5pm and went through mid-Christmas day, so we spent our second Christmas by candlelight (after the legendary Ohio ice storm).

[our first pansit - pretty successful]

['cheese' does not belong in fruit salad...]

After midnight we exchanged gifts with our small family and had a cha cha dance party. We tried to stay up until 4am, when we are told the baby Jesus was born, but only made it to about 2:30. Christmas Day was very relaxed – we opened our excellent package and felt the Christmas spirit from home and continued to eat the foods from our Christmas Eve buffet. In the end, we ate desserts for three days straight, without any other meals. We love this country.

[Christmas Eve (and three days beyond) table]

For New Year’s, we took our first trip to Northern Samar, where eight of our fellow volunteers are working. Ten of us stayed at a small beach resort to ring in the New Year. (The term ‘resort’ applies to any accommodations here – for this, think more like glorified camping on the beach in huts). We swam, snorkeled, and videoked a little, but mostly just relaxed and enjoyed the company of our friends.

[view of the resort. a cool, windy trip, but we wore pants!]

[ringing in the New Year, 13 hours ahead of you! don't worry, we celebrated US Eastern time as well:)]

[four super-comfortable treehouse-like nights]


Ten years ago, we were ringing in Y2K in a basement full of tin foil, canned food, and crazy teenagers. One year ago, we spent New Year’s Day exploring a Philippine reef exhibit in Chicago, hoping we’d have the chance to come here. And now, this is our reality and we feel so blessed to be here.

January is a big month back home – we have to give a shoutout to our parents, all of whom are having birthdays this month. And for one, it’s a very big 50th bday. We wish we could be there to celebrate these and all the other milestones you all are having. We can’t wait to hear about all the things 2010 will hold for all of you – keep in touch and if anyone is making vacation plans, try to come our way!

[Welcome 2010!]

Month 1

12.17.09

The first month at site has found us very busy and not busy at all. We haven’t done much “real work,” other than a report on a Coastal Resource Management plan. But we HAVE judged two beauty pageants and learned to dance the cha-cha and local traditional dance, the “amenudo.”

Thankfully, Brandon’s counterparts have community organizing backgrounds, and they’ve emphasized that our first month and a half should be spent integrating into the community. Indeed, if community members don’t know and trust us, we won’t get anything done anyway. So we’ve spent our first weeks meeting public officials and leaders of people’s organizations and attending social events. People are starting to recognize us, and we’re treated less and less as formal guests.

[take 1: a rare clear day, view from our room at low tide]

[take 2 (this isn't a black and white photo): what it looks like most of the time right now. december-january is rainy season in our province. the dreariness actually reminds us of home! and has really cooled things off]

On the work front, we’ve had the opportunity to meet several fisherfolk organizations – groups of fishermen and their wives (who often sell or process the fish) who are organizing to access capital and funds for projects and equipment and help stabilize prices. One group lives right on the Pacific and is starting a pedicab (bicycle taxi) business as an alternative livelihood, while the women make and sell beautiful shell craft necklaces. After our meeting, they took us for a walk along the beach and showed us a former sand quarrying site. As an organization, they were able to put pressure on law enforcement to stop the quarrying (by local construction companies) that was destroying their shoreline.

We also attended the induction ceremony of a second fisherfolk organization. Before the ceremony, the members attended a three-hour environmental education session about marine ecology and the dangers of fishing with dynamite. We were highly impressed with their attentiveness – I can’t imagine a group sitting through a three-hour lecture and showing such interest after working all day back in the US! The officers of the group were sworn in by the mayor, the president looking very proud, and we all ate a wonderful dinner and danced for several hours.

When we asked our counterpart if she was tired after such a long day (it was 10pm and her day started at 6am), she remarked that she felt energized by working with communities who were so committed and enthusiastic. Before the ceremony and lesson, the group had held a thanksgiving mass, thanking God for their new organization and its promise. “This group really gets it. They see the big picture. They’re doing this holistically and they have their priorities in order. I really like working with them,” she said. We felt the same way.

[one of my favorite things, colors on the line]

We don’t have many photos to help tell our tales, but we’ve had some great cultural moments. Our town’s fiesta was this month, with nine nights of cultural shows, concluding with the much-anticipated “Miss Tourism 2009” pageant. We were asked to be judges months ago, so we’ve had time to mentally prepare. There were five contestants competing in five rounds. The scariest moment came during the sportswear competition, when one contestant, dressed as an archer, continually pointed a sharp, metal-tipped arrow right at the crowd with a trembling arm. One girl twirled fire and another did an interpretive dance that concluded with releasing a dove into the audience. It all finally wrapped up at 1:30am – they take pageants very seriously here.


We were also invited to take part in a great tradition called the “mananita,” where a group serenades a friend in the early hours of her birthday. A flat-bed truck full of our coworkers dressed in their pajamas picked us up at 3:30am. We drove to the birthday gal’s home with guitars and tambourines and proceeded to sing our way into her house. After a half hour of cheery songs – all with the basic theme of “you’re a wonderful person and we love you because you’re you” (how great this made everyone feel – smiles all around!) – the celebrant fed all of us! We had a filling but quick meal (by Filipino standards), then loaded back into the truck. Most folks went on with their morning routines, but we went back to bed. Look out friends and family – we’re bringing this tradition back with us!

The Hardest Part About Being Away

12.10.09

We haven’t had to endure many hardships during our time here in the Philippines. Most of the Peace Corps stories about going without haven’t really applied to us. But the hardest part about being away has been the time spent apart from family and friends. This became most apparent recently with the loss of my grandmother, Annabelle. My family said goodbye to her the day after Thanksgiving. It was expected, as she has struggled against cancer for many years and has recently been in the care of hospice. Nonetheless, the pull to be home with our loved ones has been particularly strong, and it was difficult to not be there to grieve with my family. We are thankful for the support of PC staff and friends here, but it is not the same as being with all of you. My grandmother was committed to serving her community and helping others, and we hope that our service will honor her memory.

[dancing at wedding, 2006]

Since Then...

[our training group and technical trainer]

11.25.09

After completing our community project, we took our Language Proficiency Interview and both passed – we are officially “intermediate” speakers of the Waray-Waray language after three months! We then packed up our things, said farewell to our first host family with a goodbye party, and headed to Manila for a conference and our swearing-in ceremony.

[Arki, the comical baby who shared our home. We're looking forward to returning to Leyte in January to attend his first birthday party]


[saying goodbye to our neighborhood gang - these kids followed us to and from class each day and loved getting rides from Brandon. hanging out with them was a highlight of our training]

[at our host family thank you party with Nanay - we already miss her a lot!]

Each volunteer has a Filipino counterpart who will work alongside us for the next two years, so they attended the conference to do some basic planning and “getting to know you” activities with us. We were scheduled to have our swearing-in ceremony on Friday afternoon at a Manila hotel, but on Thursday evening, PC staff announced that we would be having a special morning ceremony at the US Embassy, and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be the one addressing us and giving the oath!

We boarded a bus early Friday morning for an embassy security check point and then proceeded to the embassy to rehearse the ceremony. We practiced for maybe three hours for what was only a 15 minute ceremony with Secretary Clinton, but it was well worth it! She gave a brief speech about Peace Corps’s role in frontline diplomacy and the Obama Administration’s commitment to expanding the Peace Corps worldwide. We then raised our right hands and took the patriotic oath of service. It was an honor to be sworn in at the embassy by Secretary Clinton, who has been someone we’ve admired. This was a really unique opportunity for Peace Corps volunteers and will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of our time here.

[Cameras were not allowed in the embassy, but Peace Corps will be sending professional photos and video along soon; we will post when available.]

[the 20 Leyte trainees, our trainers, and PC staff]

Later that afternoon we had our originally scheduled ceremony and reception. The mayor of our site came all the way to Manila to attend this, which was very kind and demonstrates our community’s commitment to the Peace Corps partnership. (Only a handful out of 60+ mayors made the trip). In the end, 63 trainees swore in as volunteers (69 began the journey in San Francisco in August).




Swearing in was the exciting beginning of our service, but it also marked the end of our time spent with our fellow trainees. We spent a brief weekend in Manila together, stocking up on dive equipment, eating LOTS of good/unhealthy food, and saying our temporary goodbyes. We have become close with the 18 volunteers assigned in our region, and it was bittersweet to head off on our own.


We boarded the plane for Eastern Samar on November 16th and have been settling in nicely ever since with the help of our work counterparts and new host family.

What to Do with All the Stuff...

[finished community project]

11.6.09

All PC trainees complete a community project before beginning service. Because we saw firsthand the waste problem in our community during training, our training group decided to focus on waste management education for both our community project and our practicum in a local elementary school.

In week 7 or 8 (they’re all blurring together) our training group planned and taught waste management lessons with children in grades 5 and 6. We led an activity about decomposition and how long it takes for different materials to break down. We then taught a short lesson on recycling and held a litter relay race, where the kids sorted waste items into different categories (reuseable, recyclable, or residual).

[after the elementary lesson]

I think we were both surprised by how much we enjoyed these activities, since neither of us has much experience working with youth education. The kids were enthusiastic, and their energy was a good boost for us at the end of training. Because we’ve been working in the same village for over two months, we’ve also enjoyed seeing some of the kids who come to our events regularly and have become our fan club.

During our early focus group discussions in the village, the adults said they’d like to have waste bins on the beach, so for our community project, we decided to hold a workshop for building waste bins in the village. Brandon took the lead on design and construction, and I worked on the planning/reporting and education activities.

[waste education on the beach]

[community build]

A highlight of the project was strengthening a partnership between the village council and a local manufacturing plant, which agreed to donate waste bags for the bins on an ongoing basis. After construction, the fan club painted the bins a bright green, and the council made plans to place 7 more in the village.

[the painting crew]

The project output wasn’t particularly grand (the community constructed 3 simple, bamboo bins), but community members worked together to address one of the needs they’d identified and it served its training purpose – we learned a lot about working with barangay councils and community members AND doing construction without power tools! (Our egos were bruised, when our instructors had to lend a hand with the very basic construction – oh, how we take drills for granted in the US…)

[training group and trainers, building the prototype]

All the STUFF

10.30.09

Solid waste is a problem everywhere. We all know there’s no ‘away’ place to throw our trash – it’s all sitting somewhere, outlasting us all. But several factors are converging here in the Philippines to push the problem to a crisis point.

In the US, everything is jumbo-sized; here, almost all products are sold in single serving bags or packets. Shampoo and laundry detergent in one-use metal sachets, just enough bagged soy sauce and vinegar for one meal, peanuts and chips in snack-size bags only. So tiny plastic pouches proliferate.

At the same time, population continues to rise (the World Bank projects the Philippines could soon have the highest growth rate in southeast Asia; currently around 2%) and municipal governments are unable to afford the expensive sanitary landfills we take for granted in the US. Instead, waste is normally dumped in open sites, with little on-site management and no barrier to prevent contamination into groundwater or nearby streams and neighborhoods.

With these constraints and without organized recycling programs in the provinces, communities have developed other systems for managing reuseables. Waste isn’t segregated before going to the dump site, so scavengers (often children) will comb through the waste at the site to pull out recyclables and sell them at local “junk shops.” These junk shops collect the reuseables/recyclables and sell them in bulk to factories in large cities or to companies abroad (mostly China, we’ve heard).

[touring the local dump site with municipal officials]

There is weekly, municipal garbage collection in our community, curbside on major roads, but often on a common neighborhood corner. An obstacle, though, for municipal waste management, is the mixing in of human waste with regular household waste for collection. Many homes here, particularly those in the fishing village where we’ve been doing our practicum, lack indoor plumbing, so the alternatives are to use the sea/seashore or the garbage truck.

Communities here are way ahead of us, though, in the realm of food waste. All food scraps are either fed to animals or buried for composting.

These are just our impressions at the 3 month point, so take them as somewhat uninformed observations –we have much to learn about waste management here, and it’ll be a big part of our work, particularly for Brandon. Our permanent site is fortunate to have a full-time waste management consultant on staff, who seems to really know her stuff and has many creative plans for engaging the community through waste education. We’re looking forward to gaining more experience in this area and hopefully making a small dent in this very large problem.

MPA Visit

[mangrove area]

10.24.09

Last weekend, we (CRM trainees and our instructors) traveled to Samar for our Marine Protected Area field trip. The trip was two days and one night of snorkeling, identifying fish and corals, conducting sea grass assessments, touring mangrove areas, and enjoying the many reefs.

There were several MPAs in the coastal community of Lawaan. The Local Government Unit (LGU) gave us a quick intro to MPA establishment in their waters and then took us out to see them firsthand.

Marine Protected Areas here are set aside to allow for conservation and repopulation of fish, coral, sea grass, and mangrove species. The areas are sometimes managed by the community or through people’s organizations, although the local government provides assistance with funding as needed.

[guard tower at the MPA site - volunteers will take 3-day shifts staying here, watching over the area and reporting any illegal fishing]

A big part of my work here will be monitoring and evaluating existing MPAs and establishing new ones, together with my many counterparts. Ideally, when managed well, these areas can boost fish populations, create spillover into nearby waters, and raise catch levels for local fisherman – which results in more income for the community, which is what it’s all about!

We knew going into the trip that we’d have many opportunities to practice our fish and coral ID, but the experience was better than I’d expected; on the reef, I found myself surrounded by numerous, colorful species of fish - it was an exhilarating experience.



Tori, on the other hand has vowed to never reenter the reef, because she probably did more harm than help, stepping/falling on the live coral and scraping up her legs pretty well in the process. We wouldn’t be surprised if they’re hanging this picture of her at the MPA right now – “keep this woman out.”


The next day we conducted sea grass assessments in another MPA. Healthy sea grass beds are essential for marine ecosystems, because, among other things, they anchor sediment and provide habitat. We learned several species and measured percent cover along a 50m transect. We all caught on to the methods quickly, so it didn’t take long. After the assessments, we checked out the neighboring reef for awhile before getting picked up and taken ashore.

Overall the trip was fun and it was nice to get away from our classroom training for a few days. We’re now looking forward to our swearing-in as official volunteers as the next big event.