Host site visit, November 18 – 22, 1976
The pampering was over. After one week we finally experienced the rural environment that was to frame our eventual lifestyle. We were assigned individually to spend a one week assignment with a veteran volunteer. Several of us (Mike Z, Mike McQ, Rob, Peter, Tom, Sioux, and I) set off on the Sweet Lines to the island of Bohol. We left the port of Cebu about 10 p.m., claimed our canvas cots on the open deck, and arrived at Tagbilaran around 4:30 a.m. Seven of us had breakfast before departing for different towns. I traveled with a tall blonde woman named Debbie. We went 70 km. along the coast to the town of Duero. The wooden-frame bus was crowded, the seats were too small, and the driver sped along the narrow curving coastal road at incredible, life-threatening speed while constantly sounding the horn as a warning that everyone must move themselves from the path of this monster—or be crushed. I wondered if I would ever learn to sleep on such a trip as my mentor was doing.
By noon we arrived at the nipa house of the host family. Except for the constant racket of the passing buses, jeeps, and motorcycles, the barrio was picturesque with bamboo homes and palm trees silhouetted against the ocean horizon. Even so, disappointments were emerging. I stifled them, determined to retain a positive outlook. The houses were horridly close together. I was prepared to cope with rustic, even unsanitary conditions. I was not expecting overcrowding. It wasn’t my vision of “rural life”.
On superficial inspection, much of the culture seemed submerged in western trappings. Many of the women wore polyester knits and platform shoes. They bamboo houses were cluttered with cheap plastic decor. It was becoming obvious that acculturation would not mean a return to a simpler time or an Albert Sweitzer-type experience. It’s hard to explain just how unglamorous the whole thing felt—while in the telling of it, in retrospect, it seems not glamorous, but very exciting.
While in Duero I wrote the third of almost 100 letters I would write to my sister Cherry.
November 18, 1974, Duero, Bohol
Maayung buntag (Good Morning)
Right now things are happening so fast, I don’t want to get too far behind. A million things have happened already, it seems like it’s been at least two months, though it’s not even been two weeks.
I found a really good mat for doing yoga in the market today. The living styles are so simple and unpretentious…but luxury compared to backpacking. Right where I like to be. The little kids come up and giggle and smile, and stare…say “Hi Joe” with bare bellies and penises hanging out below their T shirts. They really respond to a kind smile. Everybody plays guitar and sings. We eat natural foods. The vegetables are cooked like Chinese vegetables, rice with every meal, fresh fruit, and fruit juice, and a lot of fresh fish and eggs. You can even get good ice cream in the city. I’ve never eaten so well—but my appetite has been at an all time low and I’ve lost about 10 pounds. I haven’t had to have meat once yet. It has rained almost every day with thunder and lightening sometimes. Today I hiked several kilometers up into the mountains for a barrio clinic. On the way back there was a small tropical storm and I went slipping and sliding down the muddy mountain side for 2 hours. I was wetter than if I’d been swimming. But talk about a view: green palm tree forests cover the mountain except where rice grows. And everywhere below is the ocean. The people really do live in grass huts (Nipa huts) with no electricity. For a week I’m staying in a barrio on the island of Bohol, which is in the south– just north of the large island of Mindanao. I’m staying with an old P.C. volunteer on my “Host Volunteer Visit”. She’s great—we’re having a good time. And there are 2 really neat little girls in the house.
The house has open walls. You take a shower by pouring buckets of water over your head. The yard is full of tropical flowers, coconut palms, and banana trees. There is a grass covered gazebo on the beach in the back yard for shade. The ocean is warm and there is never anyone else there. Down the coastline the mountains can be seen. I feel like I’m on vacation. This has to be better than Hawaii. We even got flower leis when we landed in Cebu Saturday, after a week in Manila.
Manila just has to be the most crowded, smoggiest city in the world…and we stayed in the crowded part of town because they couldn’t get any rooms in the tourist trap area. (We stayed in Quiapo I believe.) That made it a real experience, living in the center of an economically challenged section. I’m glad we did it—just for what I could have seen no other way.
Then going south to Cebu Island by Philippine Airlines on Saturday was so fantabulous because we’d all had it with Maniler (as the Iowa kid says).
From Cebu we rode directly out to Pakna-an—a barrio in a rural area. There are little kids everywhere, and grass huts and goats, roosters, dogs etc. It’s great. All the little kids came to our welcome party Sunday.
My only real bummer was Sunday night. We spent Sunday at the beach swimming, drinking fermented coconut juice, and playing Frisbee. We had an absolutely great time—everybody getting sun burned and some sun stroke.
November 22, 1974 (HVV) (Host Volunteer Visit) (Journal entry)
I sit here in a bamboo and grass gazebo on the beach, alone for the first time since I arrived in the Philippines. My mind just can’t settle down to anything from this flood of emotions. My second night in Manila, as I set my head down for the night, I tried to think about all that had been happening since this epic began. My thoughts didn’t even get me off the ground in the San Francisco Airport. My mind just can’t keep up with this rapid progression of experiences. And so I find my mind sorting itself out, piece by piece, from one conversation to the next, and in a dozen or more letters. I speak and write about the most abstract emotions and disjointed experiences. And everything keeps rushing through me at an incredible pace. Things are so intense I can hardly notice the difference between drunk and sober—I’m always drunk. Drunk on people, especially the other volunteers; drunk on palm trees and bare-assed children peeking through my screen; on mangos and rice and meriendas; on jeepneys and pedicabs and buses, boats, and planes; on mountains and oceans and sunburn and rain; on crowds of people staring and yelling “Hi Joe”; on rum and champagne and San Miguel Beer. And only the basic things surface and become important: eating, smiling, singing, sleeping, laughing, crying, dancing, and drinking. Nothing else can yet be approached or sorted out in my mind.
Annotation, 40 years later:
There are a few other things I remember about the host volunteer visit. I remember being served Anejo rum and raw fish at a card game. The gathering included my mentor, her host “father”, and several other Filipinos. I was as skeptical about adjusting to rum and raw fish as I was that I would ever learn to sleep on the busses. I remember my mentor telling me that her year of isolation had honed her skills at pleasuring herself to such a degree that she swore a man would never be able to please her. She also told me of an affair with a handsome, young priest. I was being familiarized with the crustier side of the Peace Corps experience. I heard later that she terminated early and was sent stateside (if you terminate early, you are not given the choice of traveling the world on your way home, but are sent directly stateside). The word was that she had made it only as far as Hawaii, where she became a topless dancer.
toughestjobyoulleverlove 