Learning Cebuano Second Lesson

The second lesson was also a conversation between the two index fingers:
"Unsa kana?"
"Unsa, kini?"
"Oo."
"Pancit kini."
"Lami ba?"
"Oo, lami kaayo!"
So we learned how to ask, "What's that?" "What, this?" "Yes." and answer, "This is pancit (Filipino noodles)."  "Does it taste good?" "Yes, it tastes very good!"
After that we knew the golden words, "What is that?"  and our vocabulary lesson expanded as we asked our teacher about everything in the room.  
Lessons continued with basic things like: man, woman, mother, father, child, grandmother, grandfather, under, over, to the side.  
Elsa and the other Cebuano teacher wouldn't speak any English to us during classes.  They would have us repeating sentences and we soon learned, "Usab."  "Again."
By the time we finished and arrived in Dumaguete for in-country training, we could actually ask for directions and even teach a short lesson in our subjects.  It is very empowering to be able to get around without speaking English!

Learning Cebuano

I remember the first lesson we had in Cebuano.  Our teacher, Elsa Yap, stood at the front of the classroom and using her two index fingers, proceeded to have a conversation between them.  
First finger, "Maayong buntag."  Second finger replies, "Maayong buntag sub."  First, "Kumusta Ka?"  Second, "Maayo, ug Ikaw?"  First, "Maayo pud."  
We then broke into pairs and repeated the conversation between ourselves until we could say it in our sleep.  (and lo, these many years later!)  She never talked in English to us, and never told us what she was saying.  We had to absorb the words and guess the meanings.  Later that lesson she drew a clock face on the board and pointed to 8am and said, "buntag".  Pointing to 12 o'clock, she said, "udto."  2 o'clock was "hapoon."  6 o'clock brought, "gabii."  We then knew how to say, "good morning, good noon or lunchtime, good afternoon and good evening!"  The rest of the conversation was "How are you?"  "Good, and you?"  "Good also."

Our Life in the Peace Corps - a summary

When I heard about Peace Corps, I was a high school student. I remember seeing the Life magazine articles about the rigors that the volunteers went through in their training. I read the book “Ugly American” and thought that it was just wrong the way some people acted when they were overseas. I really didn’t think about joining the Peace Corps until I met and married David Lipman. He wanted to apply, so after much discussion, we applied. We finally heard that we had been accepted in February 1970. I was on top of a mountain studying snow flakes when I learned we would be going to the Philippines. Where is the Philippines? I discovered that this Asian country is made up of over 7000 islands. I found out that one of my friends a the University of Wyoming was actually from the Philippines. She told me about her country.

TRAINING
We packed up our apartment, visited our families and left for training in Saxons River, Vermont! This small New England village was very different from the Philippines in climate but similar to a barrio or town in the Philippines in make-up. After spending over 300 hours learning Cebuano, the language of the central islands, and almost as much learning how use modern teaching methods and cross-cultural studies, we were declared ready to leave the chilly East coast and go to the warm tropical Far East. We got on a 747 in New York in September and after traveling 36 hours (an overnight stop over in Japan) we got off the plane in Manila. It was like walking into a wet sponge. The air seemed very heavy and damp. A few days in Manila then back on a plane to go to Dumagette for some in-country training. More language training, some classroom training and a visit to some volunteers living in a nipa hut further prepared us for our assignments.

TORIL, DAVAO CITY
We were assigned to Toril, Davao City. There are two school districts in Toril. David would be working with science teachers in Dalao district and I was working with math teachers in Piedad district. We were introduced to a family that had a small house to rent and we settled in to life in Toril. Toril is like a suburb to the main city of Davao, but still part of the city. It is 18 kilometers south of the center of the city. (how many miles is that? I never really think about the conversions - I just know it was 30 minutes by jeepney). Toril had a daily market with fresh meat, fish and chicken as well as fruits, vegetables and rice. 20,000 people were considered residents of the district of Toril. The various barrios (now they are called barangays) ranged from sea front villages to villages up near the top of Mt. Apo which is the tallest mountain in the country and a dormant volcano (not dead, just hasn’t erupted in 800 years). Our school districts went from the central schools to small primary schools on the mountain. We soon became close to our “family” of Juanito, a banker his wife Christita (we called her Nang-Tita, a Cebuano title for an honored woman) a school teacher and their 7 sons and daughters. Nang-Tita called us her “American son and daughter”! Juanito's extended family included a total of 15 siblings and their families. We were included in social activities by them and many other new friends from our schools. We soon added a helper to our household, a high school girl who did laundry, marketing and house cleaning. Patring ended up living with us the whole time we were in the country. A couple of dogs and cats completed our house.

The first Christmas we stayed in Toril. All of the teachers from my school received a bag of flour from the US charity, CARE. We felt a little guilty about receiving one of the bags so we made cookies. On of our neighbors brought over a record player and a case of soft drinks and we had a Christmas party for all the kids in the neighborhood!

The second December we had a science conference in Manila, then we went north to Baguio City and on to Bontoc. We then journeyed up to Tuguegarao for the wedding of another Peace Corps volunteer and one of the language instructors. We joked that while other PCV’s were having a circle trip of SouthEast Asia, we had a circle tour of Northern Luzon. We also visited the famed Banaue rice terraces and had several exciting rides on the local buses.

TAGBILARAN CITY, BOHOL
After our first two years, we extended our Peace Corps tour by accepting a new assignment in the province of Bohol. We moved to Tagbilaran City with Patring, as well as our dog and one of our cats. We made quite a picture traveling deck class on a boat that rounded Eastern Mindanao and landed in Cebu. Then another boat ride took us to Tagbilaran. We made many new friends there and were accepted into several local families. There we worked with the math-science supervisor for the school division that made up the entire island. We ended up doing a training project that gave every one of the elementary school teachers (5000 of them) a week long seminar in methods of teaching modern math and another one in process approach science. During this year and a half process we traveled to most of the towns on the island. (Bohol is 12 hours in circumference by provincial bus!) Several of the towns involved traveling by “pump-boat”. Cebu city was just a 5 hour boat ride away, so many weekends we took the Friday night boat, arriving there early in the morning. We would visit the Peace Corps regional office, run errands which might include making stencils for running off materials on the Gestenter printer we had back in Bohol. We would usually see some of the other volunteers there or go to a movie before taking the Saturday evening or Sunday morning boat back. We were on one of these jaunts to Cebu when President Marcos overthrew his own government and declared martial law. We stayed at the home of the US Consul for several days before being able to return to Bohol. Martial law did not change our lives very much. Our friend the Philippine Constabulary commander offered us curfew passes but really, what was there to do in Tagbilaran between midnight and 4 AM anyway?

GOING HOME ON EMERGENCY LEAVE
While living in Bohol we learned that David’s father had terminal cancer. So, after a conference call between David at the regional office in Cebu; the Peace Corps office in Manila; the Peace Corps Philippines desk in Washington, D.C.; and David’s mother who was called at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where Pop was being treated; it was decided that we would go home on “emergency leave” while he was still alive rather than waiting to go to the funeral. We left less than a week later. Looking back on it, I don’t feel like I had “culture shock” when I went to the Philippines, but I had it coming back to the States on that trip. We had both been sick the month before and David had lost a lot of weight after his bout with Dengue fever. He had been in the hospital in Cebu for a week. I had had an attack of Amoebic dysentery at the same time, so we were both a little rocky. We flew over to Cebu on the DC-3 that went on the Tagbilaran to Cebu trip. Then we the dinner flight to Manila had a hot dog and a glass of pineapple juice for the meal. We were put on a Philippine Airlines flight from there. Of course the food was Filipino and the plane was full of brown, shorter Filipinos. Going thru customs in Honolulu at 2 AM was a trip. We landed in San Francisco towards evening. I remember David saying, "None of the women are wearing bras." and then he said, “Look at all the white people!” And I added, “and all the black people.” We then saw a group of very tall black men wearing heeled boots with large hair and hats. I remember thinking that they were either a group of pimps or a basketball team! (remember that this was in 1972) After overnighting in a motel near the airport, we got onto a Western Airlines plane to Denver. Before taking off the flight attendant asked us if we wanted a Bloody Mary or Screwdriver before breakfast! Then they served real eggs. After breakfast they served champagne while flying over the Rockies (their slogan on their champagne flights was “the only way to fly”). We landed in Denver where we were met by David’s sister, Jeanne. She had gotten a divorce the year before. Accompanying her was her ex-husband. It was very strange. Then we took off for Sheridan, also on Western airlines. We went Denver - champagne - Cheyenne; Cheyenne - champagne -Casper; Casper - champagne - Sheridan! Meeting us as we staggered off the plane in Sheridan was David’s dad who looked better than David did by that time. I discovered that the price of my favorite LifeSavers had gone from 5¢ to 25¢ during the two years we had been gone! I saw the waste that every family produced here in America. In the Philippines we had seen some extreme recycling. One day our fish was wrapped in our neighbors child’s math test! Children in our neighborhood would pick up shards of glass and sell them by the kilo to the glass recycler who sent barrels over to the glass plant to be made into new bottles. It was very strange to interact with my sick father-in-law and then to go to Minneapolis to meet my new baby niece. It reminded me of the start of the “Ben Casey” TV show - “birth - death - male - female - eternity”. David and his Dad decided that we would return to the Philippines and finish our project. He also told us to “take the trip” that we were planning, to see more of the world on our way home when we left the Peace Corps.

HOME LEAVE
We returned to Bohol and our seminars. That Christmas we went home again for our “home leave” that had been planned when we extended our Peace Corps service. We got stuck in a blizzard in New York while seeing my parents. We stopped off to see my sister and family and then went back to Wyoming for New Year’s eve with David’s family. Luckily his Dad was still around so we had a nice last visit with him. We had hoped to ski while home but the weather was unseasonably cold - below zero the whole time we were there. Then back to Bohol to continue with the training. Each week we would each travel to 4 or 5 of the towns in the province where the seminars were being led by our “core teachers” that we had trained.

MORE BOHOL
That year in Bohol we attended two more weddings with PCV females and their Filipino husbands. We had a group of health volunteers and another education volunteer assigned to Bohol then so we were able to visit some of them when we went around the island. One month there were some US Army rangers who were doing a training exercise in Bohol. We organized a volleyball game between some of the soldiers and PCV’s. We called it “War and Peace”! David’s father did die that May and we did not go home then. David’s Aunt came to visit us that fall so we used some of our vacation time and took a circle tour of South East Asia with her. After one last Christmas in the Philippines we packed up our household things that we wanted to take home. We shipped two large crates back to Wyoming and checked out of the Peace Corps in Manila. After a final visit “home” to Toril we flew to Hong Kong to start our trip the rest of the way around the world with our back packs and our cameras.

FILIPINOS IN DENVER
Looking back on the 3 1/2 years we lived in the Philippines, I know that it has shaped the rest of my life. I feel like Toril and Tagbilaran are as much my “home towns” as Laramie, Bountiful and Hickman Mills are, where I lived when I was younger. I have Filipino things decorating my house. During the job that I found when we first arrived in Denver, I met a man who had brown skin and talked with a “Filipino-English” accent. I said something to him in Cebuano and he answered me! So I found Ralph Acosta and he introduced us to the Filipino American Community of Colorado. FACC has become our Filipino family here in Denver. I love going to club meetings where I can still talk Cebuano and eat some of my favorite foods like lumpia and pancit. The ladies gave me my baby shower before my daughter Rachael was born and both my girls have grown up in the community. Rach thought that she was a Filipina when she was little and Becca is proud of her connections to the group. Some of our friends joke that we are reverse coconuts, white on the outside and brown on the inside. I sing in the FACC- Mano Po choir and have learned to play the banduria to be part of the Rondalla. I am proud that David and I are now Life Members of the FACC.

VISITING AFTER MANY YEARS
Sometimes it seems like Peace Corps was another wholelife. We live life in stages and that was one, a very important one, but a 5 year interlude between my college life and my married life with children. I look back on my time in-country as a mostly wonderful time. There were some difficulties but for most of them I can look back and laugh. In 2002 we joined the Uplift Internationale medical mission and returned to the Philippines after 28 years. We were able to go “home” to Bohol on that trip and found some of our friends there. It was bittersweet to see a close friend dying of kidney failure and to see other friends celebrating their 50th anniversary. The next year we went on the mission a second time and this time visited our Toril home. Taking a jeepney from the city out to Toril I asked a tricycle driver if he knew our Nang-Tita. He dropped us off in front of the alley that goes back to her house. Some women were coming out of a store next to it so I asked (in my best Cebuano) where the her house was. One of the women said, “Arlene is that you?!” It was one of our little sisters, Joyce, all grown up. She had been a teenager when we left. We then all piled into a tricycle to go to her sister’s house where we found Nang-Tita sitting in the front yard. Joyce went thru the gate and said, “Ma, we got company.” Nang-Tita dropped her crochet and gave us both a huge hug. After she finally let go, she said to the children and men who were playing mahjong under a tree in the yard, “Kids, come and say hello to your Uncle David and Aunt Arlene!” (I know they were thinking, “Who are these people?”) We also were able to reconnect with several other friends in Toril including Patring who had lived with us. She had become a midwife after we left. I sometimes wondered if we really had made any difference.
 Last year when a group came to Denver from Cebu I met the superintendent of the Mandaue schools. She asked if I was the Arlene Lipman who had been the Peace Corps Volunteer in Bohol. I found a photo of the seminar she had attended as a young teacher with me as the PCV in the front row and her among all the teachers. I asked her if it had been useful. She said it had been good. It was nice getting validation 30 years later! 

DAUGHTERS
Another indication that we have done something right is the fact that both our daughters studied International Relations in college after completing High School in the Center for International Studies magnet program. Rachael met her husband during her sophomore year studies in Jerusalem and Rebecca received her Master's Degree from DU. Rebecca is leaving in 2 weeks for her own service as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I summary: We spent 3 1/2 years in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer. When we came to live here in Denver, we found and became members of a wonderful Filipino community. This is my life.

Of girls and dogs and cats

Toril and Patring
We then departed for Mindanao and Davao City. We were to live in Toril, the southern unit of the city. Toril is more like a town of it’s own, a suburb 18 kilometers south of the city proper, but still in the city limits. (we learned that Davao is the world’s largest city by area, including the peak of Mt. Apo - tallest mountain. in the country - within the city limits) Host country folks had found us a little bungalow to rent - three rooms. I thought we would be in a nipa hut! Our house had two bedrooms, a closet bath and a “great room” of living room with kitchen area at one end. We even had electricity! We bought a bed made from fishing line strung in a web on a bamboo frame. We hung a yellow mosquito net from the poles on the corners. For a mattress we had a woven banig mat. I tucked a sheet over the banig and then we tucked in the net under the mat. The bath consisted of a room the width of a toilet seat with room to swing the door open before it hit the toilet. The shower and the faucet below it were connected to a roof fed water tank in the back. There was only enough pressure to really shower if the tank was full after a rain, then the water was cold! We heated water to pour into the bucket, then took can showers from that.
After only a few days there, we told a neighbor (our landlord’s sister) that we were thinking about getting a labenderra (someone to wash the clothes). The next morning she told us that she had found us a “helper” but she couldn’t start till the 2nd, two days away! What to do? We had been told that we should have “SIP” smooth interpersonal relationships and not rock the boat - how did we say that we hadn’t decided yet? So we decided to give it a try. Patring arrived, she would be staying next door where her cousin was going to be the maid, and would work for us. She was 16 and attending high school in the evenings in Toril. She lived in a barrio up the mountain (Toril was actually near the base of Mt. Apo) so going home after school was sometimes a problem as the last jeepney (a local method of transportation) sometimes went earlier than she could go. She did the laundry in a tub behind the house using water from the tank then hung the clothes up to dry on a line in the back yard. Patring also cleaned the house and did marketing and some of the cooking. For this we paid her 30 Pesos per month (about $5). This was a little more than average for a “helper”. She paid her tuition out of that. I was happy to let her do the marketing, I really don’t like looking dinner in the face and have a hard time buying fish that are looking at me, or beef cut from a haunch hanging from a hook. After a month her cousin was no longer working next door so Patring asked if she could move into the other bedroom. During the 2 years we lived there the next door neighbor went thru probably 18 maids but Patring stayed with us the whole time.

Pochontis
One day Patring was very upset. She kept saying, “Ang polo ni sir!” (David’s shirt) Someone had climbed over the fence in the back and taken two shirts from the clothes line. She was certain that she would get fired for allowing that to happen. We just asked the landlord to move a clothes line to the front where it could be watched more easily from the front room. That weekend Patring went home to the barrio and came back the next day with a “watch dog”. We decided to name her Pocahontis, since she would be the “American’s dog”. We called her Pokie for short. Pokie turned out to be an unfortunate name which caused snickers among our friends. When asked to explain, Nang Tita said something about flowers and boxes. A list of “green words” that was distributed to agricultural PVC’s later explained the problem. Pokie was a slang term for a part of the female anatomy! A cowrie shell is also called “pokie” for it’s resemblance to the same part. By the time we found out the real meaning, it was too late, Pokie knew her name, and Patring said that we said it with the accent on a different syllable. So Pokie she stayed.
Pokie had been the runt of the litter and could be held in two hands. She soon grew up to a fine looking dog, about the size of a terrier. People thought she was an “American” dog because she was so healthy looking. Philippine dogs were usually watch dogs, not pets.

Alcindor
One evening we decided to go to the movies in town but on the way to the highway to catch a jeepney, there was a lot of yelling by our neighbor’s house. A neighborhood boy had been throwing rocks at on of Juanito’s dogs. (they were named Chamberlain and Alcindor for the American basketball stars) Alcindor didn’t like being tormented so he bit the boy. Philippine dogs aren’t usually vaccinated against rabies so that was a concern. We helped by catching the dog and tying him up with Pokie’s leash. Then in my best Cebuano, I told the kids of the family that we needed to keep him tied up to watch for rabies. David got our Peace Corps first aid kit and cleaned the boys bites and treated them with merthaolite and bandaids. I then told the boy’s mother that he should get a shot for tetanus so he wouldn’t get lockjaw. I was quite proud of myself for all the talk in Cebuano. We slept late the next morning since it was Saturday. When we ventured out we discovered the “rest of the story”, the mother had gotten the boy a shot from our neighbor, a doctor, then taken him to a “mananambal”, a local herbal doctor who chastised her for letting us clean the bite. He then proceeded to slap a poultice of mud and who knows what else on it. Juanito hadn’t heard what I had said about watching Alcindor for signs of rabies so he gave the doomed dog to his cousin who proceeded to make a stew out of him. I lost my cool! Juanito was educated, the brother of two doctors, and the dog was cooked! They tried to reassure me that Alcindor had also bitten his litter mate (a pregnant bitch the doctor owned) but that day I did not have any “smooth interpersonal relationships” like the Peace Corps training preached.

Makililimos
Pokie wasn’t our only dog in Toril. “Maki” showed up at the back door, begging for food. He was licking up water from the kitchen run-off . Patring felt sorry for the puppy so she started feeding him some of the leftover rice and fish we had. Each evening he would stay outside when we closed the doors. One night he looked at me with big brown eyes as if to say, “Can I stay in?” I told him, “Okay, but if you want to go out and wake me up, that will be it.” He stayed the night and from then on we had two dogs. We named him Makililimos which means beggar in Cebuano. We called him Maki for short. Poor Maki was clearly besotted with Pokie. She wouldn’t have anything to do with any of the dogs in the neighborhood, including Maki. Maki grew healthy with Patring’s “dog food”. He thought he was a lap dog even when he outgrew my lap. He would hop on the settee with me and drape himself over my lap. Again, a Friday evening in town to see the American movies at one of the five nicer theaters in the city. Coming home only Pokie was there on the porch to greet us. We called for Maki but he didn’t come. The next morning, he still wasn’t home so I started to walk around the neighborhood asking people if they had seen them. Most said, “Geihaw segurio!” to the question. “Probably eaten!” Now, I don’t have anything to say about people eating dog. It is a Filipino custom in certain areas and tribes. And Filipino’s have a different outlook about dogs. But this was my dog they were nervously chuckling about. And it looked like someone might have taken him. Only one person said she was sorry about the lost dog. I hoped that Maki bit the guy who took him! Months later Patring told us her brother had heard some young men had indeed taken him. He didn’t want to tell us because he was afraid that David would do something rash, but then the guy was killed in a knife fight in a local bar so then wanted us to know.

Tabian and Aswan
We had another pet in Toril, a cat we named Tabian, meaning talkative. She seemed to own our house, she just let us live there. She kept it free from mice and when she had kittens, they were distributed to neighbors who needed mousers also. We kept one of the kittens that we named Aswan, meaning witch. They would play hockey on the kitchen floor with the giant cockroaches we would get. Nothing would kill the cockroaches, not even a direct spray with “Raid” ! The other animals in the house weren’t pets but a source of entertainment since we didn’t have TV. They were the little suction-footed “tiki” lizards that lived on the ceiling. We liked them because they ate mosquitos. The tiki were called that because of the sound they made “tiki, tiki”. About 4 inches long, they were territorial, and would get into standoffs over prime ceiling space, the best being near the light which would attract other bugs - “yum-dinner”. Sometimes we would bet on them like a prize fight. David was convinced that one of them liked him because it would position itself on the ceiling when he was reading on the settee and then drop down upon his head. It would sit there for a little while then scamper from his shoulder to the wall and back to the ceiling.

Moving
After two years in Toril, we heard that there weren’t enough volunteers for the requests they had in the new education group. So we asked Peace Corps if we could extend into one of the new spots. The regional rep told us about several that wanted two volunteers in math and science so we decided to check out the assignment in Bohol, a Cebuano speaking island to the north of Mindanao. After talking to the math-science supervisor we decided to extend our stay as Peace Corps volunteers. We told Patring’s father that if she wanted to come with us we would like to have her. He left it up to her. He was originally from Bohol, so she had and uncle and cousins there. We had to consult the vet in Davao about taking Pokie with us. We moved on a boat, packing up our stuff into a shipping crate that was made for us. We had Patring, Pokie, and Aswan with us. Tabian, after all, owned the house so she stayed with it. The boat was 18 hours to the next port of call. Pokie wouldn’t use the newspaper we had put on the deck for her, so we were the first down the gang plank when it went down. We had to stay in a hotel for several days in Cebu city before going to Bohol so we found some canned dog food in a grocery store. She wouldn’t eat it. We had to bring back “doggie bags” from eating out for her. We took another boat across to Bohol with everyone and settled into our new home, the second floor of a wooden house near the pier. We even got the landlord to put up a fence around our small yard so that we could leave the doors open for Pokie while Patring was home.
Pokie liked to show people that she was the “watch dog”. She would bark at visitors and nip at their feet until we told her to stop. One day we had several PCV friends who came calling. Pokie started her routine but Bryan stomped at her and she fled into the kitchen. After a while she ventured back into the living room when a second PCV arrived. He was of Filipino heritage so didn’t look white to her (I don’t know if that made a difference anyway) so she started her routine again and Mike stomped at her too! She ran thru the kitchen and down the back stairs. She didn’t come back in for quite a while.

The Rat and the Tom cat
One day I went into the kitchen where I found a large rat on the sink. It was eating the cat’s food that we put up there so that Pokie wouldn’t eat it all. I went back into the living room where I picked up the sleeping cat and put her into the kitchen. I said, “see the rat, cat!” She looked at me and meowed, “That rat is bigger than me, sorry!” and ran back into the living room. So then I grabbed Pokie by the collor and pushed her into the kitchen. She growled but said to me, “I don’t do rats!” and went back into the living room. I then woke up David who was napping on the couch. He looked into the kitchen and said, “What do you want me to do?” and threw a tsinella (flip-flop) at it. The rat just looked at us and laughed! We got the landlord to put up a screen around the sink area (it was open to the roof of the stairs with just slats around it) but the rat would come in under the door. Remember this is the tropics so houses aren’t built to keep out the cold. There was a gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. We then saw that Aswan had a Tom Cat calling on her. David encouraged him with bits of chicken he would leave on the step. One afternoon, soon after, the rat was in the kitchen, the Tom was creeping up the stairs, we heard a yowl and a scuffle. No more rat. Yeah, Tom Cat!!

Leaving
We stayed in Bohol for 18 months till our project was done. We had given one-week seminars to all of the elementary teachers in the province. Patring would stay at home with Pokie while we would go to visit each of the towns where the seminars were being given. When we got ready to go home, Patring told us that she wanted to take Pokie home to her barrio in Davao but “Is there birth control for dogs?” she asked. She knew that barrio dogs would have litter after litter and would end up skinny with dragging tits, not a pretty picture. She knew that we were using birth control because people would ask us why we didn’t have kids yet and that is the answer we would give. We took Pokie on a boat back to Cebu to a vet who could spay her. It cost us 100 pesos but was worth it. Going home to Davao, Patring and Pokie flew. The cat stayed in Bohol. Patring had become not just a helper but a friend, almost like a younger sister.
Patring finished her high school and took a course in tailoring. She decided that that wasn’t what she wanted so she went to a two year college in agriculture. Then she decided to study some more and became a midwife. Pokie lived out her life in the barrio with Patring’s family. Visiting Toril after 28 years, we took a tricycle to the barrio and found Patring living with her husband and child, a shingle hanging out in front, “Laying In - Patricia Igono - Midwife” A photo of the three of us was in her front room! She said, “Mam Arlene, you didn’t forget me” as we hugged.

Joining the Peace Corps in 1970

When we found out that we were going to the Philippines, I didn’t know what to think. Where was the Philippines? So we went off to training in Saxon’s River, Vermont, actually closer to being similar to a Filipino barrio than you think. We spent two months there learning Cebuano, a language of the central Philippines; our subject areas, math and science; and “cross-cultural” training. We had one more month in Lake Spofford, New Hampshire to do some practice teaching and then flew from New York to Manilla. September in New England is not warm. September in Manilla is not cool! Coming off the plane in Manilla, a wave of superheated, moist air hit us, I could barely breathe. We went to Dumagette on Negros to Silliman University for more training. A few day’s stay in a nipa hut with some volunteers was nice. A “baguio” (typhoon) was wet.