KFC Thanksgiving

I’m finishing up my third week of work at OMAS (Office of Municipal Agricultural Services), and things are going well here. I’ve gone all over Nueva Valencia in the past couple of weeks because we have the BFARMC reorientation and reelections that I described in the last blog entry. We've gone to about half of the 16 coastal barangays thus far. I’m getting my introductory speech down cold, and the community members are eating up my Hiligaynon. I’m really enjoying getting to see so much of Nueva Valencia, and I’m having fun hanging out with my counterparts, Joe Ann and Fermin (Fermi for short), and the representative from the national government, Jelpi. 

Last weekend, I celebrated Thanksgiving in Iloilo City with the rest of my clustermates. Even though it had only been two weeks since we all left for our permanent sites, it felt great being all together again. Initially, we had planned to meet up with a big group of volunteers in Northern Panay Island, but Elliott was stuck in the hospital with a bout of Dengue Fever, so the rest of us decided to stay behind. Despite the countless visitors and copious amounts of food brought to him, Elliott was (literally) itching to get out of there after spending the entire week in the hospital. I can vouch for him – even without Dengue, overnights there were not pleasant. In the Philippines, hospital patients need “kasamas” (i.e. hospital buddy), since medicines aren’t delivered to the rooms but instead need to be picked up in the pharmacy downstairs. Tyler, the volunteer whose site is nearest to Elliott’s, had the pleasure of being Elliott’s kasama for the week, so I decided to give him a night off Friday night. My “bed” was a couch with a plastic covering that was long enough that I only need one extra chair for my feet. Not that I had the chance to do much sleeping. Nurses came in every 2 hours, starting at 1AM, to do tests on Elliott and check up on him. They would come, turn the lights on, do their tests, and leave. They left the lights on, no matter the time, leaving me with my first official kasama duty: turning off the lights. At approximately 5AM, they came with a receipt to order some tests from the laboratory, also located on the first floor. That's where the kasama really comes into play. Not that I had been sleeping anyway, but going downstairs in my matching grey t-shirt and sweatpants was not the best early-morning activity that I could think of. After returning to the room and falling asleep after an hour or two of tossing and turning, the nurses came back at 8 to cancel those very tests. I decided to keep up my momentum of sleep, so I put the note in my pocket and passed back out. Maybe an hour later, the nurses came in with another receipt. This time I had to pick up medicine, so I had to go right away. First stop was the Business Center to get a notice that Peace Corps would cover all the costs. When I arrived, I was number 43. The sign in front of me said that they were currently serving number 15. It was the start of a long morning. From there, I was sent to the Laboratory, then to the Pharmacy, and then to the Nurses' Station upstairs. I returned to Elliott's nearly an hour and a half later, but thankfully during that time, the doctor came bearing the wonderful news (for all of us) that Elliott was in fact going to be released that afternoon. 

Being a kasama (for one night) was obviously nothing compared to having Dengue for a week, but Elliott was a real trooper. And on the bright side, the juxtaposition between spending a week in the hospital and spending a night with our friends in our big hotel room made our Thanksgiving celebration all the more festive. For the holiday, we went to the mall, saw a movie, and picked up two "Festival Christmas Buckets" from KFC. As they say in the Philippines, it was “namit gid” (very delicious). 

On Sunday we had a great time spending the afternoon at a bowling alley (duckpins, of course), where we hung out, played Scattogories, and bowled. I’m really lucky to have found a group of volunteers that I always have such a great time with and with whom I feel so comfortable. It was surprisingly a little sad leaving everyone behind, even though we’ll all be reunited again for New Years. Nonetheless, it was nice going back to Guimaras, where I’ve had another great week learning at work, hanging out with my host family, and meeting more and more people here in Nueva Valencia.