Adventure Time with Keri!

Day 11-14

Printer worked this morning!!  Thank goodness! Guess it just had to be on a flat surface (was trying to print on my bed last night).

After a quick briefing meeting in the morning we walked across the street to make a quick courtesy call to the Mayor of Guinayangan and scored t-shirts! Then we headed back across the street to make another quick courtesy call to the Vice-Mayor and meet a few of the council members. Bhakti and Katie then facilitated a KII with someone from the Department of Agriculture. While the rest of us finished up the Nutrition Survey for the Case Study and struggled to stay awake (and it wasn’t even 10am…sad times). 

Took tricycles over to the Barangay Health Office to conduct a few KIIs with Barangay Health Workers (BHW) and Councilmen. First time working with our translators who did a great job. Later on we conducted our first Focus Group with Mayra and Weanne, who translated. Went well for it being our time! The participants (all fishermen) actually responded a lot, which we had been afraid that we’d have to coax them to answer. 

After our rousing Focus Group Discussion (FGD) we split up into three groups and went to people’s houses to conduct Case Studies. Monique and I followed one of the BHWs who led us to an area a little ways down the road to a house which was almost in the ocean, but not quite. We were told that the walkways would flood when high tide came. Monique led out on the Case Study with the lady who was a fish wholesaler.

When we got back, we bought a bunch of groceries to gear up for the impending doom of Typhoon Glenda coming our way. Four of us wanted to get massages…but the two ladies that were supposed to come…were super late…but we got our massages eventually! (Thank goodness for home-service massages! I promise we’re not stuck up. You would too if it was less than $10.) 

We had been told that the typhoon had already a nearby province, so we were expecting it to hit us in the morning. We woke up to raining but nothing special. People were still puttering around and going about their business. We had already cancelled conducting research for that day so we all slept in and read our various books. I woke up with a horrible headache and stiff neck/back that morning, which was not very enjoyable…but I guess that’s what I get for getting a massage the night before. 

The electricity kept on going on and off plus we kept on overloading the generator so then our landlord, Jun, would come in to switch on the generator. We prepared a big dinner that night since Maggie and Kai (another IIRR staff) came over to stay with us (their place was in a flood-prone area). The electricity went out during dinner and we ended up having a candlelit dinner. How romantic, right? =.= Lol. We ended up sitting at the table for a really long time just singing random songs. Well, that’s how it started and then Helen would give us a movie and then we had to sing a song from that movie. We actually have a very vocal group, and by that, I mean, we can all sing quite well. 

The wind started picking up later that night and we all went to our rooms to lay down or sleep. Since there was no electricity, it was unbearably hot in our house. We all ended getting up around 11pm because none of us to really sleep. We played half a game of Uno (thank you, Mayra for bringing it….lol) before we gave up. By then the wind was howling horribly outside. We could hear shouts from outside, see flashlights and the wind bending the trees, and people running to the church across the road. We were actually only about 50m (150ft?) from the coast and they were evacuating the people who lived near the ocean due to the high wind and possible water surge (we’re talking about very flimsy houses here). We were asked if we could use one of our downstairs common-rooms as an unofficial evacuation site. A bit later people started streaming in. We had probably close to 30 people in our kitchen taking shelter from the typhoon raging outside. Thankfully there were no major injuries, just cuts and bruises. One lady, however, had lost her house and everything in it already. Our group mostly stayed upstairs telling stories and singing more songs to stay out of the way. Helen, Maggie, and Weanne made sure those who were soaked to the bone had a blanket of some sort and got warm. Kai, somehow, slept through the whole entire thing. I don’t know how she did it. Lol. Anyway, even though the typhoon was probably the strongest storm I have ever been through to date (actually, I take that back, the typhoon that left me stranded in the HK airport for 27 hrs was the strongest I've been through, but we were in a sturdy building), I wasn’t too scared, although there were a few moments of intensity (and banging) where I became concerned for our safety. Thankfully all our windows had metal bars on the outside (it would be harder for something flying around to crash through our windows), our building was made out of concrete, and we were between two buildings, thus helping shield us from the powerful wind – or so I thought. On further inspection the next morning, I realized we were only shielded on one side of the building, thankfully the one that mattered most. But, back to our exciting night. There were definitely multiple prayers said that night, but we all managed to keep our spirits up by singing, telling stories and asking each other silly questions. At one point, we heard something flying across our roof – pretty sure it was the roof to the back porch that they had just installed because when we went outside the next morning, the roof was completely gone from the frame. The door in Weanne and my room that led to the back porch started leaking and leaves were blowing under the door.  Late into the night, we were told the tail had passed…except the violent wind and rain didn’t stop, it got stronger again. Turns out the storm changed directions. Sigh, it seemed like a very long night. At one point, we looked back outside and realized the trees across the street from us were no longer… well…trees.  I ended up going to sleep to the howling wind around 2:30am. 

None of us could sleep, so we hung out in the hallway and sang and entertained ourselves.

Somewhere between 8-9am, the wind and rain finally died down to just a drizzle and the people downstairs went back to their homes – or what was left of them. We surveyed the damaged from our front and back porch. It was quite sobering seeing all the damage firsthand and right next to us. It’s one thing to see the damage from pictures on the internet one or two weeks after it’s happened, it’s another thing to wake up and walk out your door and see it personally.

Outside our window...no more trees.

No more trees.

This is our backyard

More of our backyard

To the right of our backyard

The street we lived on.

We meandered around the house while it finished raining before we went outside to help – yay for immediate disaster relief efforts. People were starting to fix their roofs and salvageable parts of their houses while picking up all the debris from the trees, various vegetation, and materials from other people’s houses. Katie, Mayra, and Helen helped with picking up the debris and things like that on our street. Weanne, Bhakti, Monique, and I went with the Municipal and DSWD staff to go hand out bags of food to those in the harder hit barangays. In the bags were two kilos of rice, two packets of ramen, and two small cans of sardines. They only had a certain number of bags allotted for each barangay that we went to, so it was pretty depressing when we had to turn people away that had waited patiently in line the whole time. While getting there, though, we saw a lot more damage and more homes destroyed. We were told by the mayor that 60% of homes were damaged and 98% of the crops were destroyed in the typhoon. 

Disaster relief supplies - food

Talking to the Mayor

Giving out food

Our awesome team from the Mayor's and DSW office

Despite all these sobering sights and facts, it was definitely awesome to see the whole area work as a community. Everywhere you looked you could see and hear people helping each other – even the littlest ones lending a hand in the effort. The mayor and vice-mayor were also out and about assessing everything and had their teams everywhere.

As mentioned before, the day before we halted our research project – today was no different as we were forced to stop the research portion. Did I mention that we didn’t have internet since Sunday night? A bit difficult to do literature reviews when there’s no internet. It’s amazing how much we depend on internet nowadays. Anyway, despite the fact that we obviously couldn’t conduct KIIs, FGD, and CSs, we were still able to talk about our formatting and other necessities of our paper.

So, those of you that know me know how much I loathe mosquitoes just as much as they love me. Since the electricity was out, the generator wasn’t charged, and it was hot enough to steam buns in the house, we kept our door and window open – which is an open invitation for mosquitoes to come in to have a feast, of course. Naturally, I was getting bitten up, which was keeping me from sleeping, aside from the fact that it was sweltering hot. I finally reached my threshold and got up to find Mayra’s Jungle Juice (which is basically 98% pure Deet) even though I know it’s probably going to burn my skin away since it’s pure chemicals and I hate the smell of Deet to begin with. After slathering it on, a thought crossed my mind – I obviously can’t put this stuff on my face b/c it’ll either burn my eyes out or I’ll somehow accidentally ingest it and die…mosquitoes somehow love biting my eye (please refer to my summer trip to Tonga)…I should wear my eye mask to prevent this…but it’s so hot…I don’t want to move…oh well. Needless to say, I was NOT amused when I woke up in the morning with a nice bite on my eyelid, thus hindering my eyesight more so than it already is.

We changed plans on our project yet again that day. Instead of going to assess the highlands and lowlands, we were switching barangays and assessing just one – the midlands. We took a very battered and rundown looking jeepney which sounded like it was going to die a few times going up the hill. We arrived in a very rural village and promptly started our KIIs. The group conducted four KIIs and then waited around for people to come for the FGD. Things rarely start on time here, FYI. So what do you do when you’re waiting for people to show up? You eat the coconuts that are lying around the ground as a result of the winds from the typhoon. Some nice man from the village used a machete to slice them open for us.

We finally got the FGD going, which went well and then we split up into three groups again to do our case studies. Guess who had to walk the farthest in the scorching sun to do theirs? Oh, pick me. It was actually really funny though, because Helen was taking notes for me and JV was our translator. We were teasing him that he hadn’t brought a machete to chop some coconuts for us since we were dying of thirst. Oh, and to top it off, we didn’t actually know where we were going…basically we were going walk in the direction they told us to go and hope that Maggie would catch up to us eventually.
After what seemed like forever, Maggie finally found us. But before we conducted our CS, we drank a bunch of coconut water because we were dying in that heat.

Bumpy ride means blurry picture

All the leaves from the typhoon

One of our smaller FGD (There were actually more ppl than in this picture...)

We're lost...in the blazing sun.

This is the road we were following...

But we got coconuts, so all is well.

A little explanation needs to go into this awesome picture. One of the translators, Danson, for the other group was teasing our group (mainly Weanne and me) that we were going to be in the middle of nowhere while they were staying at a resort (which was true). So while teasing us some more, he told us we'd be sending him a selfie with a carabao (water buffalo) while he sent us a picture of him enjoying himself doing who knows what (which, btw, never happened...). So while Helen and I were traipsing around in the middle of nowhere, we came across a water buffalo...and this happened. Haha. Too bad Weanne wasn't with us! Haha.

And this is where I stopped blogging and didn't have time to continue. So we'll just supplement with pictures!


We had canceled going to another barangay to conduct more research due to the typhoon, but then that morning we got a wake up call saying they wanted us to come.

Our jeepney

No more house

Traipsing across fields to get to our case study.

No, seriously, we were in the middle of nowhere.

Hey, look, it's another water buffalo!

Our last night there, some of the people we worked closely with threw a small going-away party. We cooked some stuff (Bhakti's famous mung beans! Lol), and they cooked some stuff too. Then we karaoke'd our little hearts away...including the mayor and vice-mayor. Haha. 

Helen is SO good at welcome speeches.... *snicker snicker*

Jk, she's better at thank you speeches. lol.

Karaoke!

Awww, our happy little family.

Katie Freeland wrote about our experience as well...in a much more entertaining manner. Read about it here!

Day 9-10

We finally got to sleep in!! Which meant that many of us read at our own leisure and lazed around. Book worms…what nerds. At some point a few of us got a massage in house, yes, house service! The lady left after first one b/c I don’t think she knew there were more of us that wanted one, so we had to call her to come back. We’re spoiled brats, haha. Since we had our own kitchen, that meant that we could cook! Thankfully the majority of us know how to cook. =) Worked on research design the rest of the night in my room since it was laid out differently than everyone else’s. 

 

Next morning Katie, Helen, Maggie, and I woke up super early to go on a boat ride. We got on a very small fishing boat with the Fishery Law Enforcement Team. We went to the middle of the ocean to see something…I’m not actually sure what we were looking at…then we went to go see the mangroves. Half-way there our boat engine gave out at sandbar (conveniently? lol). So we were stranded and had to call someone to rescue us. We were sweltering in the intense heat b/c the boat had no cover. The water looked too inviting so of course I had to jump in – fully clothed. It was probably the best decision I had made in a long time. Lol. To be fair, I was in board shorts and tank top already. After Katie looked longingly at me in the water she goes, “Will I regret it if I don’t jump in?” So Helen said, “ How hot are you?”  Katie: “Pretty hot.”  Helen: “Well, there’s your answer.”
So Katie jumped in fully clothed…t-shirt and jeans. No regrets. We carpe’d the crap out of that diem. Hahaha.
We got to swim around and hang off the boat for a very long time until the other boat came to pick us up. It was hilarious trying to get back in the boat since there was no ladder. The other boat towed our boat to nearby village on coast and we still got to see mangroves!
While we waited at the captain’s house they brought us fresh young coconuts to enjoy! We ate so many….haha.
We drove back in barangay’s SUV (barangay = village). It was a super bumpy ride…and I had to pee really bad, plus I was sleep, and still wet from jumping into the ocean – not a good combination. That definitely made for a very interesting ride!
This all happened before noon, even though it felt a lot longer for some reason. 

That afternoon we had a group meeting where we went to meet other two translators at some community place – AKA, where all the youth like to hang out. This was another meeting to go over things with everyone…Weanne finally arrived too!
After dinner we had one last meeting to finalize things before we put everything into motion the next day. We were trying to print all our guides out on the tiny printer Helen brought over with her….but the printer wouldn’t work. After trying fruitlessly for an hour, we finally went to sleep. Sigh. The struggle.