Happy Birthday Baby Bakhawan

           We're down to our last week of PCT (Peace Corps training), and things here have been moving fast. We’ve had lots of language classes in preparation for Thursday's language placement interviews and have recently completed our technical training. Last week during our final tech class, I gave the last student-run lesson on the topic of networking and alliance building. It was also the last choice for topic. Below is the example network map that I made for my presentation.

Most of last week was spent working on our CP (Community Project). My cluster decided to do a mangrove planting project. Mangroves here are Banate have been vastly depleted, as they have been on many coastlines not just in the Philippines but all over the globe as well. Mangroves are very valuable coastal resources because in addition to protecting the shoreline from storms and serving as a habitat for young fish, they help clean the water by reducing sedimentation, stopping trash, and filtering runoff before it gets into the ocean. In Banate, there are has been some progress in replanting mangroves, and we wanted to aid in that effort. Our CP began on Tuesday, when we had a mangrove education program followed by a trash cleanup with kids in the community. Because there was no school last week, we were able to get almost 50 kids to help out. We went out despite the raining, and the kids had a very fun time. They’ve really enjoyed having our group of Americans in their hometown, and it was fun getting them involved cleaning their environment.  

Wednesday was the mangrove-planting day. We rallied some community members, and again lots of kids, and went back out to the coast and planted over 200 mangroves. On Thursday, our cluster went out to check up on them. Despite the heavy rainstorm the night before, every mangrove was still there. Then on Friday, as part of our awareness efforts for the project, we had a birthday party, complete with the singing of happy birthday and a cake that said, “Happy Birthday Baby Bakhawan” (meaning mangroves). I'm not sure if the kids got our humor, but we agreed it was a great idea. We showed pictures from the project on a computer (since the brown-out prevented us from using our projector), and continued to spread the word about mangroves. Mainly, we just had a good time with the kids.

Tyler, Darwin, and me before the trash cleanup. 

Hard at work on our mangrove-cleanup day.

Helping to plant the new mangroves.

Some of the volunteers with the baby mangroves in the foreground.

Some of the kids of Banate watching a slideshow from our Community Project.

Our language teacher, Alvin, giving out some napkins for the cake.

My host brothers Mark and EG were there at the celebration as well.

Elliott trying unsuccessfully to get Tyler to eat a beetle. He had more success putting it on Stef's shoulder. She was not amused. 

Laura giving lots of "a-pear's."

 Despite being kept busy with our CP, I’ve had a chance to go on a few adventures outside the classroom. On Sunday, we went to Pototan, a municipality about 45 away for a soccer game. It is also the home of Bobbit, our group’s driver. The municipality is beautiful – so clean and has a great field to play on, except that it was covered in mud. The conditions may have reduced the quality of play, and despite losing one pair of socks and being covered from head to toe, the game was a blast. It helped that we stopped off at Bobbit’s friend’s house to hose ourselves off before heading back home.

Pototan

Teamed up with the Filipinos, I was victorious against the other Canos.

On Saturday, we had to sit through a 3-hour event called the Dynamic Outreach Teaching (named after our mayor, whose nickname is Dot), which celebrated the Saturday teaching program that took place for the past few weeks. Unbeknown to us at the time, our environmental education lesson a few weeks ago was part of this larger program, so we were being thanked for our participation. It was early in the morning and already getting warm. I found it amusing to watch representatives from each grade go up and play some sort of game (usually a word or memorization type of game) and many interludes for singing and dancing. Particularly when it started downpouring, most of my clustermates were ready to get out of there. Just when all (seemingly) 5,000 certificates and prizes had been distributed, and it seemed that it was about to end, the MC said, and now we will have a dance from the Peace Corps volunteers. We all just looked at each other without moving. Then she said, "C'mon guys, Jensen promised." Whoops. Lots of death stares at me followed. I had totally forgotten that she had come up to me earlier and in passing and asked if we would do a dance, and I guess I said OK. The group reluctantly got up on stage, and as we’re about to go, Dan pushed me out in front and says, "You're the reason we're up here. We’re following you." So the DJ put on Justin Bieber’s "Baby Baby," as per usual, and I tried my hardest for 3.5 minutes to wip out every Bar-Mitzvah dance in the book, with the rest of the cluster behind me following. I admittedly had some difficulty following the music, but in the end everyone was happy, and the MC said we did a very good job. 

"The Dead Fish" - a fan favorite.

Of course, "The Sprinkler" (with an added clap for good measure).

I think everyone had more fun at the Project DOT Celebration that they'd care to admit.

One of my highlights from the past couple weeks was the afternoon that Lindsay, Laura and I took a bumpy 45-miunte tryke ride to waterfalls, to which the other group’s language teacher, Venus, gave us directions. We hiked up this waterfall, jumping from rock to rock and climbing up the banks of the river for a few of hours. We had some breaks to go swimming, and the whole afternoon was awesome. It was definitely my favorite place here in Banate.

Me and Lindsay at the first swimming area.

Sitting in front of the water.

Lindsay and Laura find a nice spot under the waterfall.

Lindsay trying to stop the waterfall. She was NOT successful.

Not all of my days were planned out so well. In fact, many times during PCT I’ve found myself somewhere I had absolutely no plan on going. For example, last week, Laura and I were planning on going to that mountain (the same one we couldn’t find about a week earlier). We learned that both of our siblings were dancing at (what we thought) was their school show, so we decided we’d quickly catch them in action before heading on our hike. I met Laura at her house, and we were told that they were actually dancing at the elementary school near the municipal hall and that we’d get a ride from her homestay family. Riding in the back of the truck, we quickly saw that we were ready for what was to come. We ended up driving through the middle of a massive parade, with kids from every school marching behind one boy and girl riding perched up on the back of a truck, wearing fancy suits and elaborate ball gowns. We ran into some of the Banate Education Peace Corps volunteers when we arrived at the school and quickly found out that we had just arrived at the municipal-wide celebration for Student Appreciation month. Next thing we know, Laura’s being asked to serve as a judge for the competition, and I’m being dragged on stage, where I get to sit between the school district supervisor and the mayor. I felt slightly unprepared in my hiking clothes (including smelly, previously-worn gym shorts and pretty dirty t-shirt), but I had no choice and worked hard to stay interested the entire time.

The show had many components. A boy and girl from every school introduced themselves on stage while wearing their elaborate clothing, then returning shortly after to do a dance number wearing more comfortable clothes. Then, large groups of students from every school did a dance, and that’s when I got to see my and Laura’s brothers in action. Along with the typical introductions, prayers, speeches, prizes, and thank you’s, what was supposed to be a quick stop at our brothers’ school ended up being a 4-hour affair.

Introductions made in formal attire.

Followed by dance routines in my casual wear. Check me out on stage right.

These 6-year-olds in Hawaiian-style clothes were the champs of the event.

Afterwards, deciding we didn’t have enough time to go on our hike before dark, we went to get smoothies at our favorite smoothie stand. Brown-out. Big shocker there. No power = no blender = no smoothies. We then headed to Lindsay’s. Lindsay was going to go on the hike with me and Laura before the interruption, and since she wasn’t responding to our text messages, we decided to stop by her house. Not home. In our rejection, Laura and I started walking back from Lindsay’s wondering what we were going to do next. As we past the market, it clicked. We had spoken previously we both liked the game Scattagories, and we decided to make a game. We spent hours thinking of categories from the game that we remembered as well as coming up with new categories applicable to us (like: Things Found in Banate). It may have taken almost four hours to come up with and then write out all 120 categories (yeah…. so?), but we did it. Since that afternoon we’ve played many a times with our cluster, and I must say it’s been quite the addition to life in Banate.

Now things are really winding down. We have two more days of studying for our LPI's (Language Proficiency Interviews), Stef’s homestay cousin’s 1^st birthday party tomorrow night, and a thank you celebration to all of our homestay family’s on Saturday. And that's about it. Sunday morning, we head back to the Sugarland Resort in Bacolod City for the Counterparts’ Conference, at the end of which we have Swearing-In, where we officially become Peace Corps volunteers (a step-up from the lowly trainees that we are now). Then I’m back off to Guimaras, on November 13^th, to begin my 24 months of service.