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A durian is a fruit. You can see for yourself what it looks like- not going to win any Beauty Contests. And those spines are enough to intimidate your most intrepid of food-seekers.
The durian also has a really bad reputation. Bring up durians in conversation, and people will inevitably hold their noses and tell you how foul they smell.
I was a victim of this widespread misrepresentation. As of two weeks ago, I had eaten duck fetus, but you couldn’t get me near a durian.
How misled I was.
I had my first durian at my friend Stephanie’s house on the island of Mindoro. She adores durians, and actively seeks them out to savor their strange, squishy insides. I decided I wanted a taste.
A durian is nothing like I have ever tasted before- but I LOVED it.
The flavor is this slightly sweet combination of onion and almond. It tastes like a really great cheese spread. Maybe a hint of melon-fruit flavor.
I know. It is weird.
But Stephanie, you can put me on your short list of converts to the cult of the durian. Delicious!
And it doesn’t smell that bad, people. For a population that will readily consume barbecued day-old chicks, chicken feet, fish eyeballs, a blood and intestine soup, and the aforementioned duck fetus, durian should be no big. For real.
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Everyone needs a mani/pedi at the office every now and then…
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North end of the Underpass
I took this picture on my 3 minute walk to work from my apartment this morning. I unlocked the two sets of gates separating my apartment from the rest of the world, crossed the street and stepped onto the dusty underbelly of the underpass; the culprit behind the blackened soles of my feet at the end of every day.
I see this dog nearly every morning and evening going to and from my office. He seems different than the other street dogs, being all decently fed and such- probably from the handful of sidewalk barbecue carts and lomi houses. Maybe he even gets thrown a fried fish ball or two once in awhile, the scent of which I can never quite get off of my clothes.
The Underpass is an entity all its own, and I began to wonder about the small dramas that unfold under its broad shadow.
At the northern end of it, trike drivers congregate and attempt to lure customers. If it is after lunch time, most of them are contentedly napping in the cabs of their machines, seemingly oblivious to the heat and the racket of traffic and the convergence of all sorts of dirt and muck dredged in by the masses of jeepneys, busses, trucks, motorcycles that lift and mix tiny pollutants and soot from burnt-trash piles of yesteryear.
At more active times of the day, they play checkers and tongits (a Filipino betting game) with bus company employees on makeshift wooden tables of uncertain stability.
For a long time, a large, tattered grey-blue sofa materialized under the south end of the underpass, nudged in just before the elevated road meets the highway again. This became a popular hangout place for teenage boys skipping school or spending a whole Saturday. Four or five boys would pile up on it and climb its arm rests, pushing each other, trying to eke out a place to spend a few hours. They would wave and yell to me on my way to work, and wave and yell to me on my way back from work, subconsciously taking small drags off their cigarettes.
When I walk to the office, I usually look at the ground so as not to catch someone’s eye and be the center of interminable barks of “whereareyougoingwhereareyougoingwhereareyougoingwhereareyougoingwhereareyougoing” that the bus people seem set on attacking me with, even though they see me every day go to the same place, past their bus stations.
Looking at the ground around the underpass, I regularly see bones. Yep, bones. My own little faux archaeological site. Little chips here and there, so small as to be unidentifiable. Mostly metatarsals of chickens. I see the dogs pick them up and happily trot back beside their colossal cement pillar of choice, and greedily gnaw on the last of the last remnants of someone’s merienda.
I live by The Underpass, it is its own community unto itself, no barangay council, no barangay hall, but if a camera crew spent any length of time in this splotch of scraggly, half dead vegetation, ashes of burnt waste, repository of busted tables and abandoned sofas, I wonder what kinds of stories they would discover.
]]>Volunteers work with local schools and teach about the importance of properly disposing our waste, reinforcing environmental principles and instilling a sense of pride about a clean, trash-free community.
This particular project also addressed the need for more school buildings.
How?
By having the kids clean and stuff thousands of discarded plastic bottles with residual trash, stack them, wrap them in chicken wire, cover it in cement and BUILD A SCHOOL.
from Pura Vida
Love. It.
An NGO in the area, Pura Vida, was the first to come up with the idea and refine it, as a way of helping displaced people who had lost their homes due to hurricanes, in addition to simultaneously addressing the nasty trash problem that plagues so many developing countries.
Peace Corps volunteers got wind of the idea and ran with it, getting help from the American non-profit Hug it Forward, that helps with both manpower and fundraising.
They made the trash collection into a contest for the students to make it fun, and the process of stuffing and stacking the bottles is so simple that anyone can help in the construction- kids, women’s groups, farmers.
The projects in Guatemala have received a good amount of international attention, with articles from local newspapers, ABC News, and the Discovery Channel’s “Planet Green” offshoot, even the White House blog. And I can see why- this type of innovation has the potential to impact not only Guatemala, but many similar developing countries with waste problems (such as… the Philippines).
photo from Peace Corps Times
The beauty of this is that yes, you can build a school. But if you are a volunteer that is busy with primary projects and not up to building a large structure, you can build smaller things too, like benches or a short wall around a garden.
This is the kind of project that had I more time here, or had I decided to extend my service, that I would undertake. However, the Lions Club of my city is just about ready to begin construction on a new clubhouse. I was able to contact some of the Guatemala volunteers involved in these projects, and the staff at the PC Guatemala country desk were great in sending me resources and contacts.
Information in hand, I pitched this idea to the Lions Club, and this unconventional method got very good reception from the members. If not the whole structure, they may at least attempt to use the method for a wall or two (one humorous fellow suggested they build the CR with bottles and name it after me- pshhhh, thanks!).
In my spare time at the office, I continued to do research. This type of “eco-building” lead me on an internet search that yielded some really cool ideas. This one man built an entire backyard playland for his kids out of plastic bottles:
Trash Playground
And I was astounded at the amount of research being done by architecture schools and firms on using alternative materials, like this stylish glass-bottle wall that creates a stunning whimsical effect on the space:
Nifty, unique way to use light... and trash
So, just thought I would share something that piqued my interest. If you want to donate to a bottle construction school-building project in Guatemala, go to the Hug It Forward website, I am pretty sure they have one or two schools underway at this very moment.
https://www.puravidaatitlan.org/english.html
Hopefully I can pass the resources I have gathered to volunteers here in the Philippines who will not be so close to the end of their service, as I am, and can really develop and run with it.
]]>Of course, it just so happened that Saturday night, a birthday blow-out was exploding just below my window. The videoke machine of bad, bad, horribly awful adult rock and contrived love songs was agonizingly loud, so much so that I could not even hear the audio of a movie I was watching on my laptop; I was smashing the pads of my headphones against my ears in utter exasperation that I swore I almost touched my eardrums, all the while seething and mentally noting all of the heavy objects in my apartment that might make a large enough dent in the machine to bust it up and make sure it never breathes god-awful Billy Ray Cyrus again.
Did I chuck anything out of the window? Well, no, because everything I own of any weight, I would probably regret flinging out of my window in my aurally assaulted, sleep deprived rage. Not even Peter Frampton or Celine Dion could make me drop my fan or my refrigerator out of my window.
I stared at my ceiling until about 4:00 am when I think my body just shut down, probably part of some evolutionary survival mechanism.
Thank god I received a text from Lynn. We had a wonderful time walking around beautiful, rural Ilijan (even though we always happen to pick the muggiest days to go on these sojourns). But at least we weren’t sucking in jeepney exhaust fumes or getting a nice layer of grimestuck to our faces.
A fisherman's boat sits on the deserted beach in Ilijan
I showed Lynn the church where my host sister had gotten married about two years before, the high school where the coastal district sports competition was held last year, we talked to some nice folks who knew me from Bantay Dagat meetings, we walked over the bridge and past the barangay captain’s house, who happened to be walking down his dusty driveway with a smart-looking new haircut, I sucked down a pepsi and Lynn ate a whole bunch of fruit at Bicolandia, my favorite sari-sari store and local eatery in the area. The owner’s grandchildren were happy to see us:
At Bicolandia
We decided to stop at the bakery, where I bought a couple of confections baked with sweet mungo paste, smeared with a thin layer of margarine and topped with a healthy dose of sugar crystals. After taking some pictures of street dogs, we proceeded to a waterfall that my coworkers had shown to me over a year ago.
We didn’t make it to the waterfall (the underbrush had grown so much I could not locate the right path), but we met many friendly faces along the long, relaxing walk up into the mountains.
This is Anjelica, a beautiful, shy girl who politely told me her name and had probably never seen a digital camera in her life.
Anjelica
A view of our path:
winding path through the mountain
These are the things I will most miss about my time here. The everyday things. Simplicity. Seeing kids having fun playing outside. Families laughing and washing their clothes in the creek. Men weaving bamboo on the side of the dirt road. The intense colors of a Philippine mountainside.
The quiet. After the night I had spent, the sheer quietness was absolutely sublime.
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75% OFF ALL CIRCUMCISIONS COME ON DOWN!!!
Because everyone young boy dreams of a $22.50 circumcision.
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Maybe this should be the Peace Corps logo?
I had a meeting in Manila. The time of the meeting was set at 3:30 pm. I was to meet with a prominent Filipino marine biologist, the director of Reef Check Philippines, part of an international organization that trains scuba divers in coral reef assessments.
Reef Check is perfect for my coworkers. The assessment methodology focuses on human impact to the coral ecosystem. In an area focused on economic coastal development and the home of an international pier, this particular training would address the environmental challenges of a Philippine metropolis such as Batangas City.
However, the marine biologist wears many hats and is extremely busy. Not only does he manage Reef Check Philippines, he is a professor at De La Salle University and also works on marine projects with the University of the Philippines. It took me a handful of emails and text messages, and upwards of a month, to schedule this meeting.
A trip to Manila is an opportunity to kill many birds with one stone. The Fisheries Division was in need of maps of two barangays wherein proposed MPAs are situated.
We made our way into the city; our first stop was NAMRIA, the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, which occupies a large campus situated on a hilly, green area off of a highway. I was impressed with the complexity and modernity of the buildings. They had the academic feel of an American university; the wide wooden halls, the impressive array of antique maps spanning the length of the long corridors, the doors upon doors leading to office upon office, all with very official, scientific names: geodetic divisions, GIS specialists, cartographers, GPS training divisions, and so on. The aura of professionalism was surprising.
That is, until one office sent us to another office for the maps, and that office only sent us to the original office for the very same maps. Finally, we were sent to the fourth floor of another building, where we were told that the only maps they had… we already owned.
These maps are from the fifties, and were done by American consultants who helped set up NAMRIA. Fail.
However, the NAMRIA website says they offer mapping services, and maybe the hydrology division has some maps that we might be able to use.
Where is the hydrology division? Surely it must reside in one of the ten buildings in the immediate environs?
Oh, no, it is across town in a completely separate compound, and we’ll have to snake our way through half of sprawling Manila to get there.
Two thoughts:
1) Wow, I wonder what all of these GIS, GPS, and cartography specialists have done for the past sixty years because it sure seems like they aren’t creating any damn maps (so much for that veneer of academic study and professionalism).
2) Good thing we left really early in the morning and our coral reef meeting isn’t until 3:30pm- we have time to check out the hydrology division, although I was skeptical that this route would prove fruitful given our circuitous wanderings around the main offices.
In the car, my counterpart tells me he needs to quickly drop off a document at an office building in Makati. It is before noon, so we are in no huge rush. I nod my head in acknowledgement from the back seat, and as we come upon the building, my counterpart jumps out of the vehicle, leaving us to idle by the curb and wait.
And wait we do. And wait. And wait…
About 20 minutes later, I get restless and leave the car to check out a SCUBA shop I spotted nearby. I browsed through the clearance wetsuits, checked the prices on fins, noted the selection of rash guards, and made forced small talk with the saleswoman.
A little perplexed, I texted my counterpart. No response. I returned to the car.
Our driver had no idea where my counterpart was either, but he seems not too concerned, and content to nap in the driver’s seat. A little more than an hour later, and I am both frustrated and infuriated, a volatile combination. Our driver is softly snoring, like a five year old after an afternoon snack of warm milk and cookies. Shit.
I finally end up stomping into the office building, eyes to the floor, ignoring the jolly security guards who are leering at me and generally acting like infantile twelve-year-old boys. I am pissed, and shoot them a stony glare that says I am in no mood to deal with silly cultural bullshit right now.
As luck would have it, I see my counterpart coming out of an elevator down the hall. I resist the urge to explode, or kick him in the shins.
In my best trying-really-hard-not-to-display-bouts-of-anger-unbecoming-to-a-representive-of-the-U.S. Peace Corps, I gently ask, through clench teeth, where the *^(^%&* he has been for the past hour and a half.
He was dropping off his resume. The man asked him to take a qualifying test of math and English comprehension questions.
The worst part is that he was smiling, as if he had done nothing wrong. He said he couldn’t very well text me back as he was in the middle of an exam.
A slew of four letter words raced through my mind, and I’m sure it registered on my face, because my counterpart began to look at least slightly sheepish.
The best part of this story occurred five minutes later, as we walked out of the building, and my counterpart announced that he has to go back inside because he needs to take one more part of the test. It is 2pm now. Our coral reef meeting, one that took me a full month to acquire due to scheduling conflicts, was in an hour and a half. And I still had to stop by the Peace Corps main office; my sector manager wanted to talk to me before my meeting.
What could I do? I said if it took longer than half an hour, I’d leave him and have the driver take me to Peace Corps and the meeting by myself.
He was out in 15 minutes, and had the gall to text me demanding where I went after I popped into a coffee shop for a much needed caffeine fix.
I’m in the car, and my counterpart directs the driver to proceed to the Hydrology Division offices across town. It is 2:30pm. My meeting is in an hour, the whole point of coming to Manila.
I ask why we would go to the Hydrology Division if our VERY IMPORTANT meeting is in ONE hour and we are still sitting in traffic. I flatly say that we now have no more time to try and get the maps.
“But what about the maps we needed, what will we do?” my counterpart whined, throwing up his arms in exasperation.
It took every last infinitesimal speck of energy left in my body not to whack him on the back of the head with my binder.
I curtly replied that if he had not taken us on an unexpected detour in which we wasted two hours for no fucking reason, we would have been able to get the maps AND make the meeting, and any human being with a modicum of logic and sense would have inferred from our distance and the time that we would not physically be able to reach the Hydrology Division without being inappropriately late for my meeting.
Well, I did not curse. But I did desert any pretense of equanimity I had adhered to up until point.
He stopped talking, and I made it to the meeting, which went great. And lord knows I was not in the best of moods upon arriving. By the time the meeting ended, an hour and a half later, my spirits were lifted and I tried to forget that just earlier in the day, I was very close to strangling my counterpart.
My counterpart said I was great in the meeting and was proud to be there with me (even if his only participation in said meeting was to dutifully consume three pieces of provided pizza and request for a Coke).
It is amazing how quickly I can go from a wretchedly foul black cloud of negativity to a lighthearted, dizzying cool mist of exhausted happiness.
This type of experience is fairly typical when working on a project. Everything always works out and always gets done- eventually, and maybe not in the most professional of manners.
But it always gets done.
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