Back from the dead

Pens are the great mediators of the world. Bringing peace between the heart and mind. I often forget this truth. I forget to sit and reflect and let the ink spill out all the inner dialogue that needs to see some fresh air. To honor the New Year, and what a great year it’s going to be, I’ve decided to do a highlight of 2011 blog entry. For all my family and friends who thought I may have dropped of the blogosphere… I’m back!

Sidenote: I dedicate the blog to my wonderful Dad whose persistence and encouragement has reminded me of my own joy for writing. Thanks Dad! This one’s for you…

Work related: To catch most of you up…due to one long story and many other small stories back in May I had a site transfer. For all non Peace Corps Volunteers this is when your original host organization doesn’t work out for whatever reasons and you get a new job assignment.  What seemed to be a less than desirable situation turned out to be a huge life lesson and a blessing in disguise. I’ve been with my new organization for about 9 months now and I’m finally getting to the point where I understand mostly all that’s going on and have an understanding of my role and responsibilities. The new NGO is community based. Which I LOVE. I’m working with children, youth, and parents of 6 different brgys (neighborhoods) here in Baguio and I also get to travel to our neighboring provinces Mt. Province and Ifugao to do different training’s. Mostly I’m a community mobilizer. Meaning I organize and help plan with children, youth, and community leaders to implement activities for development in the community. I’ve been working mostly with my host organizations youth leaders conducting reproductive health seminars in the local schools and also currently getting together a comprehensive literacy module to start after school tutorials in the local primary schools.

One project I’m really excited about is a livelihood I began with some of the out of school youth and mothers of our federation. If you remember my last blog I wrote about an indigenous paper making seminar one of my artist friends here in Baguio helped me with at my first site. Well, it turns out a friend of a friend who attended that training is my new counterpart and the social worker at my new job! Small world! Meant to be? I think so. We’ve been working for a few months now trying to turn this craft into a small-scale business for the women in our community who are out of work and looking for extra income. We had our first training at the end of October and it went great! We used the fibers from Banana trunks this time and created some pretty beautiful paper.

The week after the training was the Peace Corps 50^th anniversary celebration at the Mall of Asia where our group was invited to come display our product and network for the business. It was wonderful and I was definitely on a high for a long time after but right now things are slow with the project. One thing I’ve learned about development work is you can’t force your ideas onto anyone. No matter how great or wonderful I think the benefit of the project will be. It’s about getting the individuals involved to take ownership and be the ones to take initiative on making progress. Although I have to fight the urge I can’t be the one to do all the work and force things to happen. It wouldn’t be the million-dollar word… sustainable. I said it! Sustainability! For now I wait and research the craft market here in Northern Luzon until the time is right to pick it up again. Timing is everything.

 

The first picture is of my life skills class I teach once a week at one of the local primary schools. Learning is hard work. 

 

 

 

 

 

The second picture is of me and the wonderful peer educators I’m so lucky to work with.

 

 

 

 

 

The last picture was taken at our paper making training in November. It’s me pounding banana trunk fibers that will be used to make the paper.

 

 

L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N

                Next week will be 18 months I’ve been living in the Philippines. That’s 547 days. I’m still in awe to be able to say “I’ll be coming home this year”. I’ll be home in 10 months exactly. There’s been a lot of life lived in my first year in the Philippines. There has been a lot of lessons learned and wisdom to take into my last year. I think the theme of my last year is acceptance. Accepting the Philippines for what it is. Accepting failure. Accepting success. Accepting opportunities. Accepting change.

I spent my New Years in San Juan, a small surfing village about 2 hours from where I live. I love living in the mountains but I’m sure anyone whose grown up near a body of water knows no amount of beauty can replace the peace the ocean brings you. It was a beautiful weekend. I went with two good volunteer friends of mine and we stayed in a bamboo hut right on the water. We met some wonderful locals. You could tell they learned a lot of their English from American surfing movies. We heard a lot of “Dudes, Bro, and Gnarly”. The Philippines always has a good laugh waiting for me. The Filipinos I met were some of the kindest locals I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. I spent the turn of the clock in a friend’s family’s living room eating spaghetti and dancing to Teach Me How to Dougie with a crowd of children. It was pretty wonderful and a very Filipino way of bringing in the New Year. I loved every moment of it. I even returned this past weekend for an international surfing competition and to spend time with some good friends. It’s becoming my home away from home.

Photo taken by my friend Deborah. Surfers in San Juan getting their last waves in as the sun sets over the South China Sea.

 

 

 

Huh?

Sometimes weird things happen. I had been out of town back in December for a work training and when I returned home I noticed my c.r (restroom) wasn’t the way I had left it. In my apartment I don’t have running water during the day. Before I left town for my work training I had showered and therefore used all the water in my buckets. It was day time so of course I couldn’t refill the water buckets. When I returned from my trip my buckets where full of water, my tabos (a smaller bowl with a handle used to dump the water on you while bathing) were moved and each had a different amount of water left in them. The best part was there was also a surprise floating in my toilet. That I know was not mine. I repeat… not mine. This would lead me to one conclusion… Someone had used my bathroom while I was gone! Nothing else in the house was missing or out of place. Just my bath. Gross! A friend told me that sometimes in the Philippines someone who does not have any running water will help themselves to their neighbors c.r who does have running water. I guess the American’s bathroom is more enticing than the other neighbors.  Moral of the story … I got bars put on my windows.

I’m leaving you all with a slideshow of pictures that have captured my year. There are some from my trip to South Korea, a village in the Visayas, the island of Boracay, home for my brothers wedding, and day to day work stuff. Enjoy!

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I plan on getting more organized and creative with my blogs after this one. My New Years Resolution is to blog at least once a month. Here’s to goals!

Xox,

Chels