While cleaning my cubby-hole of a room, I discovered musings that I hardly remember writing, including poems and reflections on depression and elation alternately. Most likely these writings were late night inspirations, without a fragment left in the morning. But this month I’m feeling more comfortable, more relaxed, less dramatic. I’m satisfied spending the weekend in Bugasong talking with family, reading until the light of my tiny amber brown bottle with a cloth wick goes dim.  I no longer find myself distressed and counting symbols of passing time. I’m where I’ve been a thousand times—hours passing and days changing indistinguishably. I’m happy. Something has changed, though I can’t figure when it happened. I’m enjoying the sounds of rain spattering on our Nipa roof, like inside a tent, but much dryer. I love that sound. It puts me to sleep early. The emotional roller coaster has mellowed. I’ve adjusted to the pace, find less need to see other expats, write fewer letters home, enjoy receiving letters but don’t get depressed without mail, am happy to relax with local people. I’m letting rest the things I left behind, knowing it will all be different when I return.

       Transition
Soothing, satisfying sensations
comfortleness snuck in
sideways between the shadows
of frustrations felt forever
in the solitary, sleepless evenings
sandwiched between days
of new experiences
before patience was earned

Work Takes Center Stage

As April began, I felt unproductive at the RHU (rural health unit), except for finishing the wire toilet frame and wrapping up details of the upcoming Mother’s Class. The pace picked up as I focussed on the work I wanted to accomplish before rainy season, with its threat of floods and community immobility. I scheduled two weeks of afternoon classes on nutrition, sanitation, and child care for mothers of undernourished children, accompanied by mornings surveying and weighing children from a future barrio.

I spent the morning of April 7th in the barrio, making friends and reminding mothers to meet us for the first class, just after siesta. When 2 p.m. arrived, I was frustrated by low attendance, but was able to relax and tell myself, “there’s no rush”.  When things eventually started, we were stalled by questions from the mothers: “When will the test be?” “How will we elect class officers?” “Who is planning Commencement exercises?”  As I’d faced the many challenges and frustrations associated with beginning a barrio-based educational program while navigating an unfamiliar culture, I had not, in my wildest imaginings, anticipated these questions. But my fellow health unit colleagues took it in stride. For many of the participants, school was associated with all these things; things they’d missed in life. We also learned that others wanted to join the class, including grandparents, some fathers, teenage unwed girls. So we expanded the classes to be for “parents, grandparents, and out of school youth”. By mid-week things were running smoothly despite my worrying, and attendance was surprisingly high. I found myself relaxed, walking to the barrio, setting up the daily class, working with the mothers, and hanging out talking to colleagues. A friendly part of my personality was reemerging, the part that had been missing in Bugasong—the laughing.

At the end of the two week class, we held a celebratory graduation for our class. I spoke Kinaray-a to a large gathering. We awarded graduation certificates. I seem to be playing out the classic Peace Corps role, though the path did not feel classic. I feel as though something has finally been accomplished.

                   Laughter
like a crocus poking through frost covered ground
laughter breaking the contours of a lonely face
I too have periodic colorful springtimes
all that is cold melts and rushes naturally
wherever gravity claims it’s rights
and the seed of a satisfied life
sends out feelers toward the source

  Side Note about the Work: The Value of Being Under-Prepared and Humble:

Looking back on this early work with the perspective of 40 years experience, I see significance in the details, for example, going to the barrio in the morning to make friends and remind the mothers to come to class in the afternoon. Community work often flounders because the team fails to make personal contact. I remember veteran peace corps volunteers and other local health workers forewarning me that Mother’s Classes would not successful; that barrio mothers would be disinterested or too lazy to attend. After probing and listening to local people, I tried anyway because I suspected that past programs had failed for a myriad of reasons, including such things as scheduling classes to be held weekly, when the mothers in the barrio did not operate on a weekly schedule or pay attention to any day of the week, except “market day” of course. Some classes had been scheduled for 1 p.m., not allowing for siesta which is so critical in a tropical environment with a standard of living that requires building fires to make meals, going to the river to wash clothes, pumping water to wash the baby. I’d gone house-to-house and talked with every mother in the barrio. I shared my passion, and by their responses, I knew they cared deeply. Before I started the program I held a symposium in town. I started the symposium stating an assumption I would make:  that we all had a singular goal in common with every barrio mother, for healthy, happy, thriving children. Then I put up two visual images of a healthy child and a severely malnourished child. I’d commissioned a talented local person to sketch these poster-sized pictures. We brainstormed about the elements that contribute to the malnutrition. We followed that by giving everyone spokes of the wheel to fill in what would support a healthy, well-nourished child. We placed the spokes around the image of the well child noting that every spoke is critical to the functionality of the wheel. This approach equally validated everyone’s contribution as we created the mothers classes to be most effective for the child. The nurse and doctor, the school principal and social worker, the sanitary engineer and the community garden specialist, the agriculturalist and the soils expert, the family planners and midwives all contributed. Each of the local experts shared their perspective on preferred elements for the educational content of the program. Then we discussed the pros and cons. After one family planning expert shared her content, another person mentioned a woman who died from an IUD infection and it was recommended that content around IUD’s take a back seat. In another barrio a person had fallen in to a pit toilet, so we decided to make visual aids to demonstrate how the water seal toilet would not be placed directly over the pit. We tweaked the content, got to know each other’s content, and strategized stories to bring the content alive and complement each other. I had not been taught to hold a symposium or bring the local contributors together in this way. I had never seen a similar approach. It was a creative discovery that came from  my frustration with the cynical veteran volunteers and other naysayers who’d warned me that the program would not be successful. I was also pushed to this approach by my lack of confidence and awareness of my own language limitations. I had a humility that was justified by reality; I possessed only rudimentary knowledge of community based health care work, the local culture, and the local language. I designed a planning program to gather as much information as possible and to let those with local knowledge take the lead in content development and cultural understanding. I served as a catalyst by my status as a foreigner and my sheer passion for the work. People were willing to come together for the “Cana” (Americana).

At the end of the month, I attended a technical retraining program in Cebu City. I interviewed and was accepted into a Parasitology Class at Valez Hospital. The class was supposed to prepare me to  set up a make-shift laboratory in my village to diagnose parasitic diseases and tuberculosis, which are often treated without laboratory confirmation. The laboratory never became a reality. Still, I enjoyed the academic class. I was surprised by what I remember from college and enjoyed the instructor and my fellow students. I spent my one day off making visual aids with Pat and Linda. Other volunteers occasionally dropped in to chat. I enjoyed the crafty, hands-on aspect and planned to use the posters in my Mother’s Classes.

Slowing Down, Enjoying Life Around the Edges –
Beyond Work

While the work is now feeling successful, I have found the need to adjust to a different pace and work ethic. I’ve had the slows about everything lately. One weekend was spent gloriously alone in the Nipa Hut on the Belison beach, just lying in the hammock, reading, sleeping, eating, playing solitaire, writing letters, and watching the colors of the day come and go. It was very relaxing and mellow. And I really enjoyed a pace much slower than I ever could have a year ago. You might even think I’m blending into the local culture.

It’s summer now, and hot. I have developed the ability to get cold here whenever the temp. drops below about 80° (which is only at night and only on occasion). My metabolism begins slowing as the heat and humidity rise. My eating hasn’t slowed. Everyone keeps trying to get me to eat. Their concept of beauty is fatter than ours, so they compliment me if I gain weight. There is a lot of inactivity, with long nights of darkness and no electricity, and daytime punctuated by a siesta. I try to do an hour of exercises daily, but my big interest seems to be reading. I’m nearing the end of my short book supply. Over these first three and a half months on assignment, I’ve spent a lot of time lazily reading for pleasure. I’ve been conditioned to devalue myself when I”m spending time on seemingly unproductive pursuits. When I gain weight and don’t get anything done at work, I feel unproductive, ugly, lazy, depressed, even though I enjoy just laying around reading or hanging out with people. Some personal discipline doing yoga and strength exercises really helps. Learning to better balance work and life, and not be tied to a work clock is a desirable take away from my life here.

Even during my city time I enjoy slow-paced living. When I traveled to the city for technical training with my fellow volunteers, I found city life hectic and enjoyed when I could have a quiet day away from the crowd.  The city was giving me headaches. In Bugasong, where I’m sandwiched in between mountains and ocean in a fairly inaccessible province, I’ve gotten completely out of the rat race. The “big city” has shown me how much I like my town. I’m feeling a need for simple happiness without self-centered pursuits like the many men seeking prostitutes.  The thing I enjoyed most was not partying, but easygoing, unscheduled life with little luxuries like hot showers, flush toilets, electricity, taxis, movies, friends, etc. One day James, Toni, Inday and I walked up to the Trappist Monestary Guimaras Island off Iloilo. Beautiful view and cool breezes. Then James, Toni, and I met Mike Z. and Neal and we went to dinner and a movie.

It is true that some of my slowdown may be due to illness that makes me tired and nauseous a lot., some days vomiting. When I went to the city for retraining, I ended up really sick in the hotel the first day before everything started. I spent an evening and a day in the hotel by myself and got so sick—diarrhea, fever, vomiting—the works. Other evenings I went to bed early with headache and fever. Many times I can’t eat much.  I’ve always got a painful side, probably a swollen liver. Some type of hepatitis Dr. Dodong thinks. Such is life. It’s not bad so long as I don’t do much exercise or stay awake too long. Can’t eat much either. Actually I’m pretty much carrying on as usual except for sleeping about 16 hours. But even that isn’t noticed much in this culture

Revelation—I’ve discovered a new way of coping when I walk and people point (mosty kids), stare, and shout “Cana” (for Americana). Now I just point back and say “Pina” (for Filipina). It works. Everybody loves it. If they call me “Joe” (for GI Joe), I respond with “Hi Phil”, and they laugh.

News Flash !!!!!–

The doctora (who I live with and is more or less my boss) had her baby at 9:40 A.M. on Wednesday, April 9th. I’m going to be the Godmother, and the custom is that the parents may ask the Godmother to name the girl. It’s a girl. They named their first girl “Peachie”  So I decided to name the second girl Cherry after my sister. (It would have been “Cromwell” if it was a boy!) They planned to use the name Cheryl (my sister’s real given name) and only use Cherry as a nick name ( I never told them….they just figured it out that Cherry comes from Cheryl). However, my sister had not liked that name and officially changed it to “Cherry”. So when Evelyn and Alfredo (Dodong) were registering the baby, I convinced them it should be Cherrie because that’s what everybody would call her anyway. I told them that if they gave her the name Cheryl, she might hate it when she grew up. My persuasiveness was effective because she is officially “Cherrie”. I also learned this week that my sister-in-law is pregnant and I will miss the birth and first year of my first niece or nephew. A little twist of fate I guess. I’ll get to watch Cherrie grow up.

Left Unsaid

I’ve shared so many conversations
and pieces of me given to you
in my imagination
miles away you read my poetry;
telling you who I am
we now meet in smiles,
exuberance,
and superficial conversations
leaving my corner in your mind
empty

To my friends—

We can dance, we can smile, we can drink
we can talk ever so pleasantly
share our last frustrations
but can we give each other
simplicity and ideals