Another busy and exciting week has come and gone here in Banate. We have had an upsurge of brown-outs, which have been uncharacteristically frequent and long in duration, but other than that, life has returned to normal after our permanent site visits.
We’re back in full swing of things with our Hiligaynon lessons, and technical’s been busy this week too. On Tuesday, our whole technical class gave a presentation to the Barangay officials of the Talokgangan and Bularan. The purpose of the meeting was to present the findings from our various activities thus far and determine what our community project our group will be working on. Our cluster will be planting a mangrove nursery in Talokgangan, while the Bularan group will be doing a Solid Waste Management environmental education project. Our other big activity for the week was an environmental education activity. In pairs, we led a lesson to a group of about 40 school children. We were expecting twenty. Lindsay and I led a lesson on Marine Ecosystems. It was unclear how much the kids picked up, but they were all entertained and loved playing the games we led: Eco-Bingo, Web of Life, and our recently invented game of Mangrove Tag.
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| Rob and Sam preparing for our presentation. |
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| Lindsay discussing Solid Waste Management. |
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| Barangay officials from Talokgangan and Bularan. |
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| Tyler giving his environmental education presentation. |
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| Playing "Web of Life" with some of the schoolchildren. Our driver, Bobbit, in the back helping to translate |
We have also had a great week outside of class. On Tuesday night, Elliott’s family had our language cluster (Grupo Grabe) over for Elliott’s homestay dad’s birthday. Elliott’s mom, Jane, is a great cook and prepared a feast for us. We had curry chicken, pasta with hotdog slices, tasty homemade pizza, a gelatin coconut dessert, and the most delicious thing of all: small squids stuffed with pork and other seafood. It was much better than I had expected. We had a great time, playing with all the kids that were hanging around the house and later having some Tanduay (Filipino Rum) mixed with Tang compliments of Elliot’s homestay aunt, Bing. Bing and her husband Rollie had already had us over to their house a couple weeks ago, and they’re a riot. When Bing’s around, no one’s cup is ever empty. We even taught Bing and Jane how to play Kings, an American card game.
My biggest news of the week is probably my new haircut. On Monday, Elliott asked Tyler to buzz his hair. I thought it was about time for me to get a haircut too, and since I have never in my life gotten a buzz cut, I thought it would be fun to see what I looked like with one. Well, one thing led to another, and Elliott agreed to let Tyler give him a mohawk instead. It didn’t take much convincing, and I agreed to get one too. The buzzer died shortly after my haircut began, so Tyler did most of it with scissors. You can hardly tell (if you don’t look too closely). Then, Sam and Stef gave Tyler one too, so now all the men of Grupo Grabe have matching haircuts.
Most Filipinos seem to think they’re funny. I get a lot of "gwapo,"'s and many people have referred to us as “Rooster People.” My homestay mom on the other hand was less amused. When I walked in the door for the first time, she glanced up at me from the TV and turned back before doing a total double take. The kids laughed, but all she said was, “Why?” After putting my bag down in my room, I returned to the dining area, and she said “I like you hair.” As I’m saying, “Oh, thank you,” she finishes her sentence with “Previously.” Then before I went to bed, she told me that my haircut was “not nice,” and said, “What if I invite you to church? What will the other people say?” Guess I found one way of getting Sundays off!
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| My new haircut. |
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| Sam returning the favor to Tyler. |
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| Elliott and I with our poogy faces and new haircuts. |
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| Grupo Grabe! |
It looks like the trend is spreading. Our technical trainer, Darwin, agreed to get one if Rob did, and now they both have mohawks too. And Dan couldn't ressit either. Best of all, check out the haircut that my homestay grandpa gave my little brother Mark! I haven’t asked my homestay mom if she likes it…
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| My homestay brother Mark. Looks like the trend is spreading in Banate. |
Nice post: :-)
ReplyDeleteJust a correction though, 'bathala' is actually a tagalog word for 'god'. In the pre-hispanic philippines, bathala had the same status as 'god', 'allah', or even, I dare say, 'yahweh'.
On the other hand, the more appropriate term for "...for things that are out of my control, whatever happens happens." , is BAHALA NA.
Example:
In situations when a filipino is going to a foreign place which he has no idea about, and somebody asks him how he's going to look for lodging and his gameplan is basically just nothing, a person just says, 'bahala na', meaning he'll just adapt to the situation when he gets there...
Also, please allow me to teach you a couple of hiligaynon phrases which i think (actually, I hope) will prove handy to you:
1. Imol ako ya - I'm really just a poor person
(to be used as a defense when (a) people start pestering you for money and other valuables - I understand that PCVs encounter that a lot - and (b) cabbies, trike drivers and merchants raise their prices by as much as 100% when selling their wares/services to you and (C) other similar situations)
2. Ayos! - the filipino 'rough equivalent' of 'cool!'
(pronounced as Ah-yoz)
Also about some facts regarding your perm site:
I. Barangay - It's the Filipino word for Village. It is the smallest unit of local government in the philippines headed by a chief executive called the barangay captain and has its own legislative body the kagawad. A group of barangays make up a city or municipality. While a group of municipalities makes up a province, a group of provinces make up a region. Combine all those regions and it becomes the Phil. nation.
To put it in perspective, imagine the smallest local government unit in the US, the county, being broken up into smaller units, called villages which have their own set of executives: village heads and village council members. What you get then is a government that is truly at the grassroots level.
Barangays existed even before the spaniards colonized the philippines in 1521, so you could say that it is a unique and ancient filipino form of government.
II. Guimaras mangoes - These are the only mangoes that are free from the mango pests called 'weevil'. Thus, its the only variety of mangoes allowed into the US and Australia. This pest free status is due to the geographic isolation of Guimaras island. Plus, Guimaras has the same quarantine procedure and standard of Australia, pretty high standards for a small province.
III. The Trappist monastery offers organic food. There's only one trappist monastery in the philippines and its located in guimaras. They also sell mango ketchup and mango based baked goodies. I highly recommend that you bring home to the states some of it.
haha i think your homestay bro got the double peace sign pose from you too...must be nice having a little bro for a change!
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