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For the past few months since arriving to Taiwan, life has been quite busy with teaching a full load of classes, as well as completing a Master's. In short, time has flown by and I've finally arrived to my first full trip while living in Asia. This next trip would take a different angle though, in that it would be with the focus of community service that would not be by myself, but instead, with a group of fellow teachers and students with a mission to help a new and struggling village to build more homes for families. While this may have been one of my more challenging vacations, it was by far one of the most rewarding. We stayed and worked at this village near Toledo for four days. During this time, we were welcomed like family, made plenty of friends and were able to build more in our given time than this outreach group has ever seen. Thus, I left feeling quite proud of our group, students and teachers. After this volunteering time, I decided to stay in the Philippines for a week by myself. Over the next few entries, I'll do the best I can to condense this
entire experience, as well as seek to reveal some of the real beauty this land offers. Wish me luck.
The first video shown is simply from my perspective of waking up in our hotel room. What I found interesting was the vast amount of tropical land that still retained an untouched presence, as well as the sense of calmness. Perhaps this was just myself taking in the calm before the storm of getting to work. The second video provides a quick glimpse of our arrival to the village. This was without any doubt my first time being greeted by an entire village, full of children offering 'Kumustas' (hello) and thanks for arriving to help. The feeling of being so welcomed was quite humbling. In case you may wonder, in the Philippines, children show respect by touching an adult’s hand to the head. The next video was taken during our arrival dinner. Here we sat and enjoyed many local foods, while the hosts gave speeches and dances were performed. As I saw this first dance, it became quite clear to me how influential the Spanish really were in their time here. There is perhaps no more evident point of this
than the high population and strength of following the Catholic Church retains here. The last video is of the children performing one of their favorite dance numbers. When I say one of their favorites, this is with all sincerity, for the children have a number of different dances they enjoy practicing. As I saw the second dance, it also became quite apparent that a strong religious influence was powerless in stopping the cultural connection to dancing. In short, after many evenings here with the families, I have been given consistent and documented evidence that the Filipino culture is one that very much appreciates music.
As for background knowledge, the Philippines is a tropical island paradise in many ways, containing over 7000 islands. More than a tenth of the population lives overseas, which makes up a significant percent of the nation's gross domestic product with the wages remitted home. From the mid 1500's to the late 19th century, Spain enjoyed a strong imperial control over the area, brought to an end with local uprisings and American intervention in the Spanish American War. In fact, the name Philippines originates from King Philip II who was the ruling monarch at the time
Spain became involved with this area. Still today, around 80% of the population is Roman Catholic. By the end of WW II, direct foreign influences came to an end with the withdrawal of the US. Once the US left, the Philippine's was finally left to its own control. With destruction from WW II and being such a new nation, gaining stability, in both political and economic terms, has been a major goal for this nation. Soon after WW II, the Philippines was considered one of the more wealthy nations, with Japan the only nation in the region ahead of them. With a 20 year period of political tension and conflict though, the country fell into many hard times. While there has certainly been much progress, the Philippines is still known as one of the most impoverished countries of the region with around 45% of the population living off of less than 2$ US dollars a day.
Once we drove through Toledo on a tour provided by the community, I was able to see firsthand many of these influences and conditions. For starters, the group we worked with, Gawad Kalinga, is funded and centered on the church. This means many
Fresh papayas!
I've never enjoyed so much delicious mango in all my life, though these fruits shown are not mangos, but papaya. Ha, thanks for the support. of the speeches involved prayers and praises to god. Further, the steady stream of churches and lifestyles of the people represented much of the Catholic Church influence. The majority of the population who spoke a decent amount of English also evidenced the American influence pre WW II. Perhaps one of the obvert conditions was the economic divide. In this, Manila presents a wealthy face of the Philippines I was able to quickly surmise from being around the town, but in many outskirts within the country, I came face to face with the 45% who live below the poverty line. While the people were very kind and optimistic, I couldn’t help but to be impressed by the resilience considering how tough some of the conditions seemed to myself.
After a fist impression and a night of getting to know each other, we were off to our hotel nearby to get some sleep, for the next few days would involve manual labor with limited tools and famous Asian tropical weather. While I had an idea of what would be in store, the next day presented many surprises that I never could have anticipated.
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camille
non-member comment
fresh mangoes...NOT! :)
hi, just want to correct you, the pictures are not mangoes.. they are unripe papayas.. but yes mangoes are very delicious... hope you had a great time in our country... thanks! :)