Happy Birthday Baby Mangroves!

So our community project is well under way and going great! Tuesday we got the local kids together and after giving a short talk about why mangroves are important, we went together to the local mangrove nursery ground and picked up trash. There was so much plastic and other household trash everywheree in the mangroves, but the kids went full speed ahead to pick up everything. After only 45 min all of our trashbags were full and heavy and it started to rain so we called tapos na (all done). They were all so into picking up the trash that we had to tell them several times that we were done! And they all pitched in to carry the bags to the street to be picked up. The mangroves looked great and ready for the next days's activities: planting!

It has been a rainy couple of days but thankfully the rain held out for our planting day Wednesday! The kids again congregated and we showed them an educational powerpoint and video about the importance of mangroves and how to plant and take care of them... all in Ilonggo of course. They were very excited to start planting!

First we had to carry all of the mangroves to the beach. We had a line of kids and adults carrying mangrove seedlings two at a time to the beach and then back for more. Once we got all of the mangrove seedlings there the real fun began! The adults lined up all of the seedlings and spaced them out and they began digging holes with the two shovels they had. We trainees looked around at each other, then at the two shovels, then to the seedlings lined up in a row, and it didn't take us long to decide what to do. We found a plant and started digging in the mud with our hands. About 10 seconds later every kid on the beach was also digging holes in the muddy substrate and planting mangrove seedlings. In about 30 minutes we had planted over 200 mangrove seedlings in nice rows. It was a beautiful sight!

Tomorrow we are having a celebratory fiesta with all of the kids and adults that helped out with both the mangrove clean-up and planting. Our theme is 'Happy Birthday Mangroves', complete with fried limpias, homemade pizza, and of course, cake! We are putting together a slideshow of pictures from the clean-up and planting and are hoping to instill a sense of pride and ownership of the mangroves so that after we are gone they will continue to be protected and monitored. All-in-all our community project has been a huge success and lots of fun in the process! I look forward to having similar projects once I get to my site.

For now we are enjoying the slightly cooler climate of the rainy season, finishing up our CEP (Coastal Environmental Profile) for the town of Banate, and studying our Ilonggo in preparation for our Language Proficiency Interview (LPI) next week! Wish us luck! Only one more week till counterparts conference and swearing-in!

Enjoy these pics because my camera broke

Typhoon Megi has finally left the Philippines! Thankfully for all of us in the Visayas, the typhoon stayed north of us, however we did feel the affects of Megi's hard rain and wind. But today the sun is out and the heat is on its way back!

Also thankfully Megi did not interfere with our weekend in San Joaquin either! We traveled a few hours around the southern end of Panay Island for our coral reef destination. San Joaquin, where one of our PCVs will be staying for the next two years, already has three MPAs (marine protected areas) established. So we visited each one to practice coral reef assessments. It was amazing! Each MPA was better than the next, with expanding coral reef and many colorful fish!

Traveling south!

All of us and our local counterparts outside of a MPA guard house.

A giant clam L and I found at our 2nd MPA. SO cool!

We did two assessments Friday and one Saturday before heading back to Banate. But no one was ready to return yet! San Joaquin is a very beautiful and large town. They have many Barangays, including 18 that are coastal. They also have a lot of funding, which is where the PCV who is stationed there comes him. He will be able to work with the municipality to make sure funds are allocated and used in a way that is beneficial to managing the MPAs and increasing community awareness about why it is important to protect these areas. So far there is a lot of community support for these marine sanctuaries due to environmental education efforts. I hope to be able to use San Joaquin as an example when I go to my site as I attempt to raise awareness about marine conservation and protection as well as the management of an MPA. 

This week we are finishing up our technical training and getting ready for our environmental project taking place next week (for my cluster it is mangrove training and planting). For our language training we are continuing to learn about local customs, practices and beliefs. 

I have been living with my host family here in Banate for about 2 months now and have really become a part of their family. This has really helped me in getting to know the culture and language and becoming a part of the Filipino community. I never thought I would be so comfortable eating with my hands and taking bucket showers, but the local way of life has really become my way of life now too. I really love and appreciate the closeness of the family too, especially my host family. My parents are very close to their children, helping them with their homework and playing with them. Most of the men in my community seem to be a little detached from their families, usually spending time with other men in town, drinking and playing cards. However my host dad reminds me more of my dad in the states, he is more of a family man. He is always helping his wife cook items to sell in the market, working on household projects for other family members living in the compound, and making toys for the kids. I guess family life in the Philippines can be just as dynamic as it is in America. I will truly miss my family here in Banate though. I wish I could take them with me to Guimaras. 

For now, my days as a PCT are quickly coming to an end and soon I will be sworn in as an official PCV!

Halong!

Grupo Terrible/Great

Another week and weekend come and gone in the Philippines! I really can't believe it is October already and my two month mark is coming up fast!

This past week was focused on Environmental Education and coming up with our community project to take place here in our training site of Banate. For the Environmental Education bit, the two CRM clusters split up into pairs to teach hour long sessions on either Solid Waste Management or Marine Ecosystems. There were four sessions this past saturday and there will be two more on the 23rd. Elizabeth and I lucked out and we are teaching on the 23rd so we have a bit more time to prepare for our lesson. We will be teaching Marine Ecosystems to grade 6-7 youth.... oh boy!

We also presented our bio-assessment (mangrove, coral reef and seagrass surveys) findings to the community this week and discussed with them what type of project they would like us to do for them. This was a little more difficult that I expected. We constantly have to deal with the perception that because we are American we have money and access to so much funding. We had to stress to them over and over that we only have a small amount for the project and that the main purpose of PC is not to fund projects (because we have no money really) but to lend our skills and expertise. I have a feeling that I will be explaining this concept a lot over the next two years!

After A LOT of talking to the community, it was decided that our community project will focus on mangrove planting and training. We will have a week of activities including awareness and education about mangroves, training people how to plant and maintain mangrove forest, and have a clean up and planting day as well. I really hope everything goes well, especially since the Barangay Captain elections will be right before our project begins!

Only four weeks left at our training site, before we leave for our counterparts conference, swearing in as official PC Volunteers, and then off to our sites for the next two years! And we are all really lucky that we really won't be that far from one another, which makes it much easier for collaborating on projects together and just generally supporting each other! Just to give you an idea, below is a map of Panay Island (where I have been training) with all of the sites where PCVs will be... and this is just one island of many in the Visayas where PCVs are/will be.

The future PCVs of Panay Island!

None of us can believe how fast time is going by! We are enjoying our time left here and are already planning holiday get-togethers. I am definitely excited about going to site and start getting things done, but I sure am going to miss Grupo Grabe! We have so much fun together :)

Playing soccer with some locals, including ex-national players.
Just one of our weekly routines :)

J, S and E having fun at Supervisor's Conference.

E, L, S and T hanging out in Bacolod.

The guys of Grupo Grabe decided to start a trend of mohawks, and the trend has already spread to our TCF. Next Banate, Panay Island, the Philippines, and then the world!

Getting ready to run in the Milo Marathon (the 5K part that is)!

Grupo Grabe - I love these guys!!!

That's all for now!

Halong!

Site Debriefing

So I had my site visit this past weekend and as excited as I was before about my site being on Guimaras, I am even more excited now!

We left Thursday morning for the ferry from Bacolod back to Iloilo (and by we I mean me and my Supervisor, and Rob and Jensen and their supervisors). Our CRM Guimaras group had bought tickets for the 9:50 ferry, but when we got to the wharf at 8:20, the 8:00 ferry hadn't left yet. So we quickly exchanged our tickets and made a fast run to the ferry, getting upgraded to first class (not sure how that happened actually).

When we arrived in Iloilo, Rob and his supervisor went their separate way, since his town in Guimaras has their own wharf. Jensen and I continued on with our supervisors to the Jordan wharf and boarded the pump boat for a 20 min ride across the sea to the island paradise of Guimaras.

Guimaras, as I mentioned before, is known for the sweetest mangoes. Mangoes from Guimaras have been served to President Obama in the White House and in Buckingham Palace. And the people of Guimaras take their mangeos very seriously! They don't allow any mangoes to be brought from outside onto the island so as to not "contaminate" the sweet Guimaras mangoes.

Once we arrived to Guimaras, Jensen and I parted ways and I went with my supervisor to the municipal hall, where the Office of Agriculture (my office) is. I met all of the people who work there, who were all very welcoming and friendly! My counterpart seems very motivated and knowledgeable about fisheries; he has also worked with PC volunteers before so I look forward to working with him. I also was able to meet the Mayor and Vice-Mayor and some of the SB (town council) members. I am very fortunate that our vice-mayor is very proactive and my supervisor and the mayor are on very good terms. This will all be important when I go to them to get projects approved and funded. My supervisor already talked to the mayor about getting me my own transportation to take me around to the different coastal barangays (barangays are basically neighborhoods or parts of town) and it sounds like I can count on my own transportation starting in Jan!

That brings me to the next part of my tale, getting to my host family house, it is no short trip. First I have to ride on a jeepney for roughly 10-15 minutes depending on how many stops it makes, then take a tricycle (motorcycle attached to a side car) for another 10 min up the mountain. I definitely foresee the travel from home to work as a potential pain, both for times sake and money. PC is giving me money to buy a bike once I get to site but it would be one rough bike ride back up the mountain! Because there is really no main road through the island, it can take awhile to get even short distances as the roads wind around the mountains. This could make getting around the different barangays a little time consuming!

My host family is really nice though and they have a really nice house. My host mom works at the LGU as the treasurer, and my host dad works the farm. They have a hog farm in the back, along with dogs, chickens, pet parrots and a goat. They have two kids, ages 8 and 5, who warmed up to me pretty quickly, especially after I let them play games on my computer.

I get my own bathroom complete with shower. The family also has a fridge, oven, two TVs and a room with AirCon. They also have their own videoke game, which we played all Saturday evening! On Saturday they took me to a famous monastery in town where they grow mangoes (one of many places on the island). They  told me about the Mango Festival every April. There is a mango eating contest and all you can eat mangoes for 50 pesos (roughly $1). Last year's champion ate 12 Kilos.... maybe I can be a contender ;)

All in all my site visit was great! There will definitely be a lot of down time (including the hour "rest time" from noon to 1 in my office, where the lights turn off and everyone takes a nap). But there will be other PCVs near me and there is so much of the island to explore. It is so beautiful and far less trashy than Banate. Needless to say I think I am really going to enjoy it there!

Well now I am back in Banate to finish my training for another month and a half. We will be working on our community project here, and I will enjoy hanging out with Grupo Grabe (as we call our training group) before we all go our separate ways to site in November.

Halong for now!

Mango Heaven

This past week has been a very busy one! We did our socio-economic training in our community, which involved doing interviews with community members and holding a focus group community meeting. My host mom was good enough to go with me and Jensen when we went to do our interviews which ended up being a HUGE help so she could translate for us. We had our questions written in Ilonggo but sometimes she needed to rephrase the question for people to understand and she was great to translate their responses for us since we are still learning the language.

The Community Meeting was a huge success too! So many people showed up and they were very excited to participate. We had them draw a community map, identifying resources in their Barangay, make a list of needs, and give us their daily and yearly schedules. All of this information will be vital as we plan a project and continue to seek their involvement! 

Saturday my cluster plus a few from the other CRM training cluster went to the nearby town of Baratoc Nueva to play soccer on an actual soccer field. This has become a weekly event for us! Our PC driver, Bobbit has a lot of friends who play soccer so we usually meet up with them to play. Most of the time the Filipinos beat us pretty badly but in our defense some of them are ex-national players... no lie!

Sunday some of us traveled early in the AM to IloIlo City, about an hour away. to run in the annual Milo Marathon. The actual marathon is held in Manila, but in Iloilo there is a half marathon, 10k, 5k and 3k, so we all ran in the 5k race. Even though I was feeling a bit under the weather I mustered up some strength and ran. It turned out to be a really great race and a lot people came out for it. The starting line was packed but everyone took off as they sounded the buzzer! They had water stations along the way and also handed out plastic string necklaces at every kilometer. There were quite a lot of PC volunteers and trainees running in the race and many many Filipinos! We all had fun and already plan to re-unite every year in Iloilo for the race :)

So this week we are all in Bacolod, a city in the next island over, for our highly anticipated Supervisor's Conference. We are staying at a really nice hotel with showers, flushing toilets, AirCon and really really really good food! It is almost like a vacation for us.... except we are still training.

Yesterday we found out our permanent sites and met our supervisors. Ever since the first week of training we all heard about the CRM site of Guimaras, home to the best mangos in the world and lots of coastal resources. Since we heard there were two CRM volunteers going there we sadly assumed it would be the married couple. But surprise, there are actually going to be three CRM volunteers there and..... Drumroll please.... I will be one of them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guimaras is a small island south of the large island of Panay that I am training at. I will have two site mates, an education and youth development volunteer. Two of my CRM friends are also going to be on the island in neighboring towns about 20 min on either side of my town too! We are really excited to be so close to each other and to the city since we are only a 20 minute boat ride to Iloilo City, where there is a mall and theater!

All three of our supervisors get along too and are already talking about our three towns working on projects together! When it comes to coastal resources management the more towns and provinces you have working together, the more effective the management is so we are really fortunate that our municipalities get along!

My town in Guimaras is the capital and also home to coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass and a Sea Turtle Conservation Center! These will be the things I will be working on for the next two years! I will be going to my site for a visit later this week so I am really excited to meet the host family I will be staying with there and the office people I will be working with! Then back to Banate to complete my training for another two months!

More to come later!

 

Halong :)

Finding Nemo

To continue with our training on how to perform bio-physical assessments, we did coral reef assessments this weekend. I was so excited to finally go to Hibutkan, the MPA (marine protected area) offshore from Banate!

We started by performing a manta tow, which is being dragged by the boat while assessing the coral reef below.

Manta tow!

Next we laid our quadrants for counting fish diversity.

Laying down our quadrants!

Then came the hard part, identifying fish!

Time to identify fish!

Of course we had help from our local friends!

Our boat captain and assistant fish identifier!

I got to see so many fish, mainly Damsel fish but Nemo also made an appearance! My favorite was the giant clam! It was so beautiful but sadly my camera died before I could get a pic. Hopefully I will see another one next time I go out!

Nemo!

That's all for now! One more week till I found out where my permanent site will be!

Halong!

Bisikleta

My "number one fan", as my host dad calls him, is always hanging around my family's compound. He is 11 years old and his name is Chris.

Chris aka President of my fan club.

Chris loves to ride his bike up and down the street in front of my house, hoping to see me (sounds a little creepy but really it's kinda cute). One day I asked my host siblings, Crystal and Jon-Jon, if they like to ride bicycles. That is when I learned that not only did they not know how to ride a bike, but neither did my host parents or cousins, Darielle and Dax. So I decided that I needed to teach them how!

Now I can't really remember not knowing how to ride a bike, so I wasn't sure how this was going to go. But I knew the most important thing was to have a bike to practice on! Like I mentioned before my host family does not own any bikes. Bikes here are a major mode of transportation, along with the trike (powered by motocycle), there is the sideseat, which is powered by a very skinny and in-shape guy who rides a bicycle attached to a side car. Therefore unless your bike is your job, they are kind of seen as a luxury, and one which my host parents have decided they can do without. So where was I going to find a bike...... Chris!

Chris was very reluctant to share his bike with us, but he is my number one fan after all, so I worked my charm and got him to hand over his wheels! 

Me and my host mom teaching Dax how to ride!

It didn't take long for this learning session to turn into a neighborhood activity! My host mom, Lisa, came out and helped me push and pull the kids on the bike, teaching them to peddle and balance on the bike. 

My host mom and sister, Lisa and Crystal.

This gave me a chance to take a break and sip on some young coconut juice thanks to my Tita Nina. Very healthy to drink on a hot day!

Yummy yummy butong juice!

The kids are still learning but I remind them to practice every day!

My Tita Kisang's dog, Timay, kept laying in the way! She was about to be run over a couple of times!

Timay, move out of the way!

Here is a close up so you can see just how cute Timay is! and She is set to have puppies in a few short months!

Timay!

Timay is my constant companion when I seek rest on Tita Kisang's porch. Her house is the farthest away from the street (but still on my family's compound). It is a really nice house and the porch has the best breeze so I usually spend the hot afternoons there trying to stay cool. Timay always joins me and sometimes Neil or one of my other cousins will play cards with me. Tita is also always trying to feed me no matter how much I tell her "Busog gid ako!" ("I am so full!"). 

Timay 'keeping guard' of the porch.

A really awesome view and cool breeze can always be found at Tita's porch.
Along with lots of smiles and food!

This is my favorite spot to hang out with my family or have some alone time reading my book. I am very lucky to have relatives with land as appeasing as this. And Tita tells me they will be harvesting the rice soon, so I will be sure to take lots of pictures when that happens!

Well there is definitely an ugly storm rolling in so that is all for now!

Halong!