Advertisement
Published: January 2nd 2014
Edit Blog Post
The first day was tough.
We woke up in the military base camp in the mountains of Capiz (also known more colloquially as woop woop). Waking time was 5am despite being up drinking the previous night until late, which was definitely a theme I would get used to. Living was fairly basic in the camp – there’s no running water and only intermittent electricity depending when they turn the generator on, which is generally never. Little did I know living would get far more rough in the coming days.
We started out with breakfast at the army general Armaludin’s house which was near the barracks. At this point I thought things were pretty cruisy. Ha ha… ha. Not to last long. My backpack was poorly packed, not even waterproofed (how was I supposed to know a backpack needs to be waterproofed?) and most of my clothes were already dirty from Manila. Did I expect a laundry to be out here? Really? Anyway, one of the guys helped waterproof my stuff and we were off into the mountains. Fun, right? Uh, well, I’ll try to describe the weather up there: try imagining a sauna, with no door to step out of. By 9am I was struggling and needing rest from the sweltering heat and humidity, but couldn’t get it. I couldn’t imagine it getting hotter during the midday hours, but was fearing the worst and kind of panicking that there was no way out of this oversized mountain sauna.
Still, work must go on. A cooler breeze slowly started to appear and I took a guilty breather by lying down in the grass while others were pitching tents, getting the supplies ready for the local typhoon-affected residents and whatnot. When I went back to join them – I was told it wasn’t a good idea for me, the only white guy these local guys may have ever seen, to be going off by myself like that. This place has had four murders in the past 12 months, a lot considering the tiny population. One of them was killed… yesterday. Gulp. Just as we were saying this a buggy was driving past and stopped at the crowd. It was rumoured to be the corpse of the murdered man. It was.
So it’s not even 10am and I’m sweltering hot, drenched in sweat and fearing I’m going to be cut up and killed. Oh well, could be worse? Time to get on with the job. The local population is made up of Indigenous residents who partially live off the land. They used to live in fairly basic houses made of local wood and banana tree materials, but since Typhoon Yolanda a lot of them are living in makeshift huts. Think of them as being as cramped as a tent, just with more sturdy materials such as wood and if you’re lucky a tin roof. The population is all made up of families, so there are a lot of kids. And the kids are great. They stare at me like I’m a ghost because I’m white and unknown, but they’ve also go this childlike joy despite their living conditions. Two kids in particular who I nicknamed “cheeky boy” and “the general” would copy me every time I said anything to them. “Hi buddy”… they copy it back to me. “Just move away now boys”… they copy. And later after one of them cheekily gets two prizes in a game instead of one by tricking us, I say “cheeky boy!”. And he copies. Hence the name. The other little one would make sure he was in the centre of the action, whether it was the fire place for lunch, or games, or whatever else. With his strut I could only nickname him “the general”, which he would copy back to me of course every time I said it. Great kids. These two stood out in particular due to their extrovertedness, but all the kids were really endearing and I’m sure their parents are very proud of their resilient, happy spirit.
So my mind’s less on the conditions now and more on the job. The first task I had was to hand clothes out for people to pick from. Everyone was speaking Tagalog though and I didn’t feel I could really contribute, so I went to another area and got involved in provisioning school materials to the kids or their parents. There were local teachers there to help and each kid would get a set provisions. All they go to school with these kids are a notebook and pen, and general Armaludin would later tell me how proud he is that the kids are able to do this and still go through school.
We then did some games with the kids – a skipping game where kids will try to jump over a rope of ever increasing height which is apparently a game all Filipino kids will play. I forget what it’s called but it’s kind of the opposite of Limbo, which we then played afterwards. Seeing the laughter and playfulness on the kids’ faces was really touching – one little girl even cried when she failed to jump the target! Prizes were given for joint winners. Basic things like backpacks and snack packs, but the kids just adored them and would proudly wear the Spongebob or Toy Story backpack once they got it like a badge of honour.
Thankfully we were able to finish this before the rain hit. And it did hit hard, at around lunch, and wouldn’t stop until we left the next day. The grounds are all red dirt with no drainage so mud would soon become the theme of the day. I started to wonder if I could even survive this trip. My clothes were drenched, I was muddy up to my knees and all in a place where there’s possibly a murderer lurking. Honestly, if I could have taken a cab out of there at that moment, I would have. I was really doing it tough. As there was no way out though in these remote hills, I just had to rough it out. I had anxiety about staying but I had no choice other than to just experience it.
Lunch was served on makeshift plates made from banana trees. It was Chicken Adobo (adobo, adobo – always adobo) and actually pretty nice. After this I was told the mission work was basically done for the day. As much as I love helping people, I was incredibly relieved. I was spent. I had a bit of a nap and then we did walking visits to some homes and handed out some food provisions. It was sad to see the remains of the peoples’ old homes. They were really brought down to basically rubble. But every single one of them had smiles on their faces from ear to ear, smiles you just never see in the first world. This was a lesson that would really hit home both today and in the ensuing days. You don’t need materials to be happy. I was and still am so inspired by these people.
After my nap night hit, and dinner was prepared, and of course, Emperador brandy. These guys work hard, but they play hard too. Think they’d go in and get an early night in the tent after such a taxing day, and considering it was pouring rain with mud everywhere? Think again. How about we just go and get plastered all night instead… I didn’t sleep until 3am, at which time there were still people kicking on. I made a bet with Macoy that he’d be hungover the next day – he was adamant that he wouldn’t be. I couldn’t see how he could avoid one.
My go-to joke was that I was sure I was going to die here, and I just wanted to go and get a McDonalds burger before I died. Macoy, a very accomplished boy scout, would say, “You want a burger? I’ll get you one! For 20 dollars!!” The group of people were fantastic and one in particular, Titsy, would make an effort to include me in things, which was very much welcomed because I did feel quite out of place in those early days. If not for her doing this I don’t know how things would have ended up. They also laughed a lot, these guys. My god they laughed a lot. Belly laughs. They always talked Tagalog to each other so I didn’t usually get the jokes, but I didn’t mind being the quiet guy on the side in this remote weird place. It was enough to just get through the days, I thought.
The first day was tough.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0484s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Haylie
non-member comment
Awesome
Just found your blog, and must say the start of your adventure, though challenging, sounds absolutely amazing and will definitely be life-changing. Will definitely be sticking around to read more! :)