I just read a current PCV blog "Eleven Degrees North" by Philippines volunteer Ryan Murphy who is living near where I was stationed there. This is a comment that I wrote in response to his post yesterday:
Language confusion
"Take the Trip"
On of Becca's friends is trying to decide on extending her Peace Corps service by going to another country or to go home. This is what I told her.
My Father-in-law gave us this advice when he was dying of cancer (while we had just started on our second assignment) and David had to choose whether to return to our assignment in Bohol and then our planned trip home or go home to help him out and take over the store: He said, "go back to Peace Corps and take the trip". I know that it is not the same situation but my advice is, "do what you want to do"!
I have given this advice to a number of young friends over the years. I can still remember several times that we didn't take the advice: Once in Zamboanga, we were invited to go over to Basilan to a Yakan wedding. We chose to return home to Davao. I'm sure we had things to do but I don't remember now. Basilan is now off-limits to tourists because of the AboSayaf (Filipino branch of AlQueda) I wonder how the Yakan are faring with the militants hiding out there on their island?
The trip home - Venice
My daughter Becca just had a short vacation in Italy When we were in Venice (and still on a PCV budget on our way home) we were camping for a week just outside the city at Mestre. We wandered the streets during the day buying our lunch from the pizza shops or other street vendors. I don't think that we sat down in a restaurant for a meal the whole time we were there. I do remember the day that we came upon a shop that had fresh chickens hanging in the window. We decided to have fried chicken for dinner. The other campers thought that we were truly crazy when we brought it back to the campground. There we sat in front of our tent making dinner one dish at a time. We only had one small pot and were cooking on a one-burner camp stove. First we heated up some tea, then made some vegetables the we started to fry that chicken. We breaded it with some semolina we had gotten in a grocery and fried it in some oil that we had gotten also. We could only cook 2 or 3 pieces at a time in the little 6 inch pot. It took hours to cook the whole thing! We had it for breakfast and lunch the next day too, because traveling like we were, we didn't have any cooler either. I think that was one of the most unusual meals that we made while we were on our own at the European end of our trip.
The trip home - Afganistan
This is a comment I posted on the blog of a friend, David Searles, who was our country director during part of our PCV stay in the Philippines.
My husband David and I COS’ed (Close of Service) from the Philippines in January of 1974. We did the “long trip home” for most of the year in 1974. We picked up an English tour bus in Kathmandu called “Swagman Overland Tours”. Needless to say, it was full of Ausies taking their “Walk-abouts”! It was definitely a “budget tourist” way to go. We camped most places, sometimes with the tents that were carried on top of the bus, but often just on our ground pads and sleeping bags out in the open. We went overland from there through India, into Pakistan and into Afganistan. We must have gotten our Afghan visas in India or Pakistan because we didn’t have any problems at the border. Our small problem was at the gate to the pass. We arrived too late in the day to cross all the way to Kabul before dark so were turned back to start again the next day. The border guards said that they couldn’t “protect your women”! We found a hi-way construction camp on the road back to Rawilpindi and the workers allowed us to camp there. We drove through the pass the next day, stopping at a town in the middle for tea. We could have bought all sorts of smuggled goods there from “pen” guns (holding one bullet in a fountain pen) to coke (and not cola). We arrived safely in Kabul in the late afternoon and stayed in a budget hotel there. We celebrated the 4th of July in Bandiamir, camped near the beautiful lake there.
Clean Water
One of my Facebook friends shared this link with me:
Thanks Ronda!
It reminded me of my days in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. We had water off of our roof for 2 years in Davao. Every time it rained the gutters would funnel rainwater into the two tanks we had. One tank was behind the house and connected to the tap in the bathroom as well as one behind the house that Patring used for doing the laundry (by hand of course). We had a flush toilet but the water wasn't hooked up to it. We would fill up the bucket and pour it into the tank or directly into the stool to flush the toilet. (A modern flush toilet is just a water-seal with a tank.) During one dry season we had to go to our neighbors to pump water by hand. In Bohol, we had city water but the pressure wasn't any good except during the night so we had to fill up a tank in the middle of the night.
Thanks Ronda!
It reminded me of my days in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. We had water off of our roof for 2 years in Davao. Every time it rained the gutters would funnel rainwater into the two tanks we had. One tank was behind the house and connected to the tap in the bathroom as well as one behind the house that Patring used for doing the laundry (by hand of course). We had a flush toilet but the water wasn't hooked up to it. We would fill up the bucket and pour it into the tank or directly into the stool to flush the toilet. (A modern flush toilet is just a water-seal with a tank.) During one dry season we had to go to our neighbors to pump water by hand. In Bohol, we had city water but the pressure wasn't any good except during the night so we had to fill up a tank in the middle of the night.
I had dysentery during my time there, probably due to water at places other than our home where we had to boil everything we drank. You had to remember that ice is made with whatever water is at hand.
The water supply in the cities of the Philippines, especially where we lived has improved over the years, but many communities there still don't have reliable, clean water.
Here in Colorado, water is one of our most important assets - too much growth and not enough water will be the problem in the future. The water rights issues between the front range and the western slope often end up in court. Did you know that California has the right for some of the water that flows out of our snow melt into the Colorado River system? If we pollute the Platte river here in the metro area, what does that do to the communities down river? It all reminds me of one of my favorite singers, Tom Lehrer from 1965 and his song "Pollution":Facebooking friends from the Philippines
One of my first friends when I got on Facebook was one of my "little sisters" from our time in Toril. I didn't see Nening when we visited Davao in 2003 because her husband was working in Saudi Arabia, but we did talk to her on the phone. Her sister Joyce has just joined up and I discovered that one of their nephews? has formed a group called the Agton Family. So I joined it - after all Nang Tita (our "Mama") calls us her "American son and daughter". 
I also have a good friend in New Mexico on Facebook who was a PCV with us in our other assignment in Bohol. We reconnected with her when she was acting in a play our friend Chuck was directing up in Cheyenne. Over the years we have seen Linda from time to time including our visit to the Balloon fiesta in Albuquerque and when she comes to Denver for a dental conference.
Looking forward to finding more old friends!
Looking forward to finding more old friends!
Our first trip home 1972
I never had to come home for medical care but I did experience a number of treatments for amoeba and was once hospitalized in Cebu for same. That one turned out to be lucky since David came down with Dengue fever on the first day I was there and ended up being put in the room next door for over a week! We did emergency leave about a month later to see his father who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. My worst culture shock was on that trip, August 1972:
First: finding out that he was dying and ending up leaving with only a day's notice (it was decided to go home when he was still alive on a conference call from the PC office in Cebu, Manila, D.C. and Mom in Minnesota at the hospital)
Second: leaving Tagbilaran on a DC3 and connecting with a Filipinas Orient Airways (now defunct) flight to Manila from Cebu, it was a dinner flight; there were no tray tables, just drink holders; the dinner was a hot dog and a glass of pineapple juice.
Third: the flight back to the states on PAL (Philippine Air Lines) because NW (Northwest Orient Airways) was on strike; having SanMiguel (beer), pancit (noodles), chicken adobo (garlic chicken), and rice for the meal on the plane; landing in Hawaii to go thru customs at 2am, then landing in San Francisco.
David, "Look at all the white people!"
Arlene, "and all the black people!"
D, "none of the girls are wearing bras!!!"
A, "and all the tall people!"
Then walking along the concourse came a group of very tall black men in high heels and tall hats, I concluded that they were either a basketball team or a group of pimps. After overnighting in a motel near the airport we went back to catch our next flight. In the waiting area I saw a family(??) of people who looked like they had stepped off the pages of a 1950's "Archie" comic book. We boarded our flight to Denver on "Western Airlines, the only way to fly!" [do you remember their commercials with the bird on the tail drinking champagne?] Once we were airborne the stewardess asked us if we wanted a Bloody Mary or a Screwdriver before breakfast! which consisted of real eggs etc. and champagne over the Rockies!!
Fourth: Jeanne, David's sister met us a the plane in Denver with her ex-husband. (We had only found out a few months earlier about her divorce.) Then we got on the Western Airlines puddle jumper to Sheridan.
Take-off Denver; champagne;
land Cheyenne take-off; champagne;
land Casper take-off; champagne;
land in Sheridan where we staggered off the plane to be met by David's dad, Harry. At that point, weighing in at 119 lbs. after the dengue, suffering from jet-lag and Western Airlines' champagne flights, David looked worse than his dad!
Fifth: my next shock came when I went into a store to buy my favorite Peppermint Lifesavers (I had been addicted to them in college). The price had gone from 5 cents to 25 cents in the two years we had been gone!
Sixth: We spent Labor-Day weekend up in the mountains with Jeannie, her ex, David's mom and dad and his aunt Leia. Another evening we went to a local bar with David's friend and someone played "Knock Three Times on the Ceiling if You Want Me" on the jukebox. It had been much overplayed on every cariendaria juke box in Davao and Bohol the previous year.
Seventh: I flew by myself to Minnesota to see my new-born niece. Birth and Death was a very strange concept. It was great seeing my mother, sister, brother-in-law and other niece.
Eighth: Then Harry flew back with us to Seattle to see his other sister for the last time.
Ninth: just one week after our return we were in Cebu with a new Bohol PCV when we were stranded for several days with the beginning of Marcos' martial law
when he over-threw his own government. All-in-all, the whole incident was bizarre. I didn't have as much culture shock when we got to the RP or even when we went home two years later, after the end of our extension of 1 1/2 years and our trip around the rest of the world which took most of 1974.
We traveled overland across Asia and into Europe, gradually returning to the industrialized West. After being there, where even tiny pieces of broken glass were sold for a few centavos to be sent back to the factory to be made into new glass, and math homework papers may end up being wrapped around the evening's fish for dinner, I saw lots of waste here and find it hard to not recycle or reuse things.
Sometimes it seems that the 3 1/2 years spent in the Philippines was not part of this life but a dream. Then we went "home" to Davao and discovered our "family" and friends there and it seemed impossible that 29 years had passed since we were there the last time.
First: finding out that he was dying and ending up leaving with only a day's notice (it was decided to go home when he was still alive on a conference call from the PC office in Cebu, Manila, D.C. and Mom in Minnesota at the hospital)
Second: leaving Tagbilaran on a DC3 and connecting with a Filipinas Orient Airways (now defunct) flight to Manila from Cebu, it was a dinner flight; there were no tray tables, just drink holders; the dinner was a hot dog and a glass of pineapple juice.
Third: the flight back to the states on PAL (Philippine Air Lines) because NW (Northwest Orient Airways) was on strike; having SanMiguel (beer), pancit (noodles), chicken adobo (garlic chicken), and rice for the meal on the plane; landing in Hawaii to go thru customs at 2am, then landing in San Francisco.
David, "Look at all the white people!"
Arlene, "and all the black people!"
D, "none of the girls are wearing bras!!!"
A, "and all the tall people!"
Then walking along the concourse came a group of very tall black men in high heels and tall hats, I concluded that they were either a basketball team or a group of pimps. After overnighting in a motel near the airport we went back to catch our next flight. In the waiting area I saw a family(??) of people who looked like they had stepped off the pages of a 1950's "Archie" comic book. We boarded our flight to Denver on "Western Airlines, the only way to fly!" [do you remember their commercials with the bird on the tail drinking champagne?] Once we were airborne the stewardess asked us if we wanted a Bloody Mary or a Screwdriver before breakfast! which consisted of real eggs etc. and champagne over the Rockies!!
Fourth: Jeanne, David's sister met us a the plane in Denver with her ex-husband. (We had only found out a few months earlier about her divorce.) Then we got on the Western Airlines puddle jumper to Sheridan.
Take-off Denver; champagne;
land Cheyenne take-off; champagne;
land Casper take-off; champagne;
land in Sheridan where we staggered off the plane to be met by David's dad, Harry. At that point, weighing in at 119 lbs. after the dengue, suffering from jet-lag and Western Airlines' champagne flights, David looked worse than his dad!
Fifth: my next shock came when I went into a store to buy my favorite Peppermint Lifesavers (I had been addicted to them in college). The price had gone from 5 cents to 25 cents in the two years we had been gone!
Sixth: We spent Labor-Day weekend up in the mountains with Jeannie, her ex, David's mom and dad and his aunt Leia. Another evening we went to a local bar with David's friend and someone played "Knock Three Times on the Ceiling if You Want Me" on the jukebox. It had been much overplayed on every cariendaria juke box in Davao and Bohol the previous year.
Seventh: I flew by myself to Minnesota to see my new-born niece. Birth and Death was a very strange concept. It was great seeing my mother, sister, brother-in-law and other niece.
Eighth: Then Harry flew back with us to Seattle to see his other sister for the last time.
Ninth: just one week after our return we were in Cebu with a new Bohol PCV when we were stranded for several days with the beginning of Marcos' martial law
when he over-threw his own government. All-in-all, the whole incident was bizarre. I didn't have as much culture shock when we got to the RP or even when we went home two years later, after the end of our extension of 1 1/2 years and our trip around the rest of the world which took most of 1974.
We traveled overland across Asia and into Europe, gradually returning to the industrialized West. After being there, where even tiny pieces of broken glass were sold for a few centavos to be sent back to the factory to be made into new glass, and math homework papers may end up being wrapped around the evening's fish for dinner, I saw lots of waste here and find it hard to not recycle or reuse things.
Sometimes it seems that the 3 1/2 years spent in the Philippines was not part of this life but a dream. Then we went "home" to Davao and discovered our "family" and friends there and it seemed impossible that 29 years had passed since we were there the last time.
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