As 1975 began, I moved to my new home town, Bugasong, Antique. The real work and the real joy– of being a Peace Corps Volunteer was beginning. During training we were told that our job would be three-fold, in equal parts, of equal weight:

• our technical job (mine was rural public heath),
• our cultural exchange – what we could show the Philippine people of an American to balance the images they had from the military or the movies, and
• our cultural exchange – what we could learn about the Philippine people to share when we returned to the states.

Forty years later, I am grateful for the focus of my pen and my younger self, though editing down to a reasonable blog became an task of its own. Below are words from my letters and journals from the first week.

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1/6/75 – Monday

I left barrio Pakna-an and the training site early in the day—the trek begins, with a delayed plane…and so it goes.

I already have twice as much stuff as I left Seattle with. Don’t know how it happened, but at this rate I’ll never be able to go home again. Peace Corps gave us a couple of books, a bathroom scale (for work with malnourished kids), a huge first aid kit, seeds, a flashlight, poster board, construction paper, and felt pens (for visual aids in health education). Then they expect us to carry it all, with our peace corps T-shirts, blankets, towels, sheets, mosquito nets, sandals, snorkel equipment, musical instruments, books—and the stuff we brought to begin with. (Oh I left out the 400 reams of handouts.) At least Peace Corps paid for our overweight baggage (including the cement toilet mold and the rabbits). I wasn’t too sure the plane would take off. In fact, none of us were too sure we wanted the plane to take off—splitting up was like the last day of Junior High of High school or summer camp, only like we’d been at camp for 2 months and when we went home our parents and friends had moved away.

The River Queen Hotel and overnight in Iloilo are fine—but I suddenly feel anxious to get off by myself and end these goodbyes and the artificiality of a “training period”.

1/7/75 – Tuesday

Trucked around Iloilo with Crain, James, & Neil. The people here are incredibly hospitable.  I boarded the 96 Express to Bugasong at 11:30 a.m.—alone. It’s weird being out here all alone. I wish I felt just a little more up to par, but I haven’t completely gotten healthy yet. After 3 flat tires I arrived at home (in Bugasong) at dark—6:30 P.M. I feel vaguely awkward, and as I unpack into my room, I find it difficult to imagine 2 years of this.

1/8/75 – Wednesday

Today I finish unpacking and settling into my room. It’s the first more or less permanent existence since I graduated ten months ago. I’ve got a room to myself. It’s pretty small, but there’s a cot and a tiny table (really a night stand), a stool and a wire to hang my clothes. And it’s private—Great! (The room was about 6 feet wide and 8 feet long, with nipa walls about 7 feet high and open above. A cloth hung down for a door. It was just off the main living room, and there was a bamboo window that slid open to the air during the day. My suitcases slid under the cot as dressers.)

I don’t know how to make my mind settle down. I’m still tired from the tonsillectomy, so I stayed in all day and wrote a lot of letters.

Starting tomorrow I’ll probably be working in the barrios. They say no one ever really accomplishes anyting for about 6 months, but I think the town people expect me to work miracles by then. They thought I would be able to speak their language fluently after 4 weeks of language training. It’s easy to feel inadequate. It’s hard to be ambitious when the job is so nebulous. The focus of my work will be entirely up to me. I don’t have any set job like teaching. I’m charged with determining community needs and picking a starting point. Unfortunately, the community needs just about everything, so the point of beginning is not obvious.

1/9/75 – Thursday

It feels chaotic because everything is unpredictable. I have no routine for my day. Today I did laundry, ate too much, bought much needed toilet paper (they use scraps of old newspaper) and visited Sister Ruth at St. Joseph Academy. She’s neat. We’re going swimming Saturday. Played a lot of scrabble and talked too much with Inday—no time to work, write, read. Now it’s late. But I did begin to formulate ideas for my community health work.

1/10/75 – Friday

Doctora Rivero expected me to come with her to the barrio and give my proposal to the Barrio Captain in Kinaray-a. (She is not from here and doesn’t speak Kinaray’a.) I am so unprepared to do that. Oh well, Began language (training) with Inday (my host sister)—talk about awkward and dumb (me). They have grammatical constructs which I haven’t learned from English, French or Spanish.

Went to “horse jumping” (carnival booths in town). Kind of fun.

I like Marivik (younger host sister) a lot—She still laughs like a little girl.

1/11/75 – Saturday

Went swimming with Vik, Day, and Sister Ruth. Sister Ruth runs the Saturday evening Jazz Mass here in the middle of nowhere. She swam in shorts and a sweatshirt. She ran and jumped a lot and was delightfully enthusiastic. She has long hair and is really pretty without her habit. When we tried to take one of the native boats into the water, the waves were too big and the boat overturned and tossed us both onto shore, hit me in the forehead and the boat broke. The wave was pretty big. I’ve got a bruise on the forehead but the whole thing was really pretty exciting—All the things going through your head as you see the wave coming, go under, worry about the boat hitting, get hit, do somersaults and come up standing, wondering which direction is shore, and who is hurt—all in about 3 seconds.—Sort of the same feeling as falling in mountain climbing and feeling the rope go tight and catch. It’s great to realize such a thing did happen but is over with. I don’t suppose everyone could understand that. Oh well, I suppose there’s a lot of things people wouldn’t understand about me. They have this feeling here that all Americans don’t care much about their families one way or another and they aren’t romantic or idealistic—merely realistic & practical. The Peace Corps would not even exist if there not idealism somewhere in America.

After the boat incident, I ended with a fever and a quiet mood; perhaps it was too much so soon after the tonsillectomy.

January 12, 1975 – Sunday

My first Bugasong market day. It’s like something out of Dante’s inferno–loud, crowded, raw fish and meat hanging or being sliced with bolos, wet noodles in the open air, fruit and veggies on mats on the dirt. Perhaps market sanitation is a project to eventually work on—it’s good to see some tangible challenges.

The adjustment is not easy however. The urge to recluse is growing. I’ve never lived with so many people—on their schedule. Try to imagine living in a house with a million people of every age—with activity going on constantly and everybody watching everything you do. I know it bothers the family when I spend time alone in my room. Yesterday I spent time in my room after going to the beach—I stayed ‘til dinner. I was really quiet. I told them I had a fever (which I did) and that satisfied them. My quiet, private moods could prove problematic here.

I’ve been restraining my irritability about little things, for example, they didn’t give me a bed like theirs, but a mock American bed (metal cot?) with a sagging mattress. So I don’t sleep well and wake up with a back ache. I’d prefer the natural bed, but don’t want to hurt feelings. Then there’s the language difficulty. The dialect differs from town to town and is therefore somewhat different here than I learned in training. Also they don’t write or read the language they speak and cannot speak the language they read and write. So I never get to see the language I’ve learned to speak in writing; and there are no language or grammar books in existence (not even a dictionary). When I go to make visual aids I cannot write the language they write because I don’t know it—so frustrating!

On the brighter side, the sun is now setting and all the palm trees and huts across the street are silhouetted in pink and blue. This place can be very peaceful when I’ve adapted. Going swimming yesterday was great. Then today I walked to the beach alone and waded way down the shore. I even found some places with a lot of rice paddies or coconut groves—and no people. Children usually follow me though. But little kids don’t bother me, they keep a distance. It was a good 2 hour walk, I think I’ll do that or swim as often as possible. And I’ll do a lot of reading and writing. It’s really good to have such a slow pace ahead and to be able to spend time doing the things I never had time for before. Caught myself picturing staying two years. It begins.

1/13/75 – Monday

This morning Dr. Rivero more or less said that I would be working on town beautification and she would go ahead to the clinic. It’s not exactly “rural public health”, but I thought I would anyway, so I said O.K. Then she said to finish by Friday (fiesta). So I got approval from the mayor and the 3 schools for painting and planting tomorrow. Did a lot of traipsing around and persuading. Began to see how the system will work. A good place to begin. Got my first letter.

1/14/75 – Tuesday

The action I started yesterday followed through today. It was good to see all the students working. Spent all day again walking around in the hot sun and being a little diplomat. I got tired and I don’t feel well. I don’t see how Inday does it; she always comes with me. But it was good to see results, and I like the visits at St. Joseph’s with Mother S and Sister R. Afternoon beach walk and went to the modista for a blouse. Scrabble of course in the evening at home.

1/15/75 – Wednesday

I went in to San Jose to open a savings account. It isn’t a pleasant trip—very dusty. Inday came, then we split. I found my way alone. A bank man gave me a calendar as a birthday present. I did some shopping and walked around the market—a chance to speak a little language. I stopped to see Bob—he seemed pleased. We both are having the same language difficulty and trouble mellowing out because of job frustration, etc. But we feel the relief of the beach and peace here.