As of late

In your letters and emails, you often ask, “Kate, what are you doing in the Philippines?” I mull this question over every time I sit down to write. How do I share this experience with you in an authentic way?    

In a work sense, November and early December have been jam packed with activity. During the third week of November, a few other Peace Corps Volunteers and I had a brief, intensive local language training. Although I have studied both Tagalog and Ilocano fairly extensively, my knowledge of Ifugao’s local dialect, Tuwali, is limited. The three day training was a great opportunity to gain some basic vocabulary that I can use to surprise my coworkers and small children. I have also started meeting regularly with a tutor, so stay tuned for updates on my progress in learning our local hapit (dialect).

 Last week, my office hosted a World AIDS Day panel for students at one of the local college campuses. The Philippines is one of 7 countries where the rate of HIV grew 25% between 2001 and 2009. New cases of HIV in the Philippines tend to concentrate in specific populations engaging in risky behaviors such as unprotected male-to-male sex, transactional sex and intravenous drug use. Increasingly, young children are at risk of contracting the virus, as only five per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women have received antiretroviral medicines to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

Panel members for our World AIDS Day event included two doctors, a female politician, a priest, a youth student peer facilitator, and a staff member from a Reproductive Health NGO based in Manila. After learning about the status of HIV/AIDS in our province (there are currently 5 HIV positive individuals living in Ifugao),students were encouraged to ask questions about reproductive health (HIV/AIDS, STIs, pregnancy, contraception). It was amazing to see how willing they were to ask questions in an anonymous forum. The format of this forum (allowing teens to ask questions anonymously) has definitely given me ideas for future events, as getting teenagers to talk about sex can be tricky!

Following World AIDS Day, I conducted my first PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) with 30 student peer facilitators from three different college campuses. I will be working with these students over the next two years, so the PACA marked a first step in getting to know a little bit more about the students and how we can work together to create the programming and projects that they want and need. My coworker, Maureen, was super helpful during the PACA–events always go so much smoother when you have language, cultural, and moral support! I left feeling excited about working with the college students going forward.

Currently, I am attending a weeklong training in Baguio (the largest city in Northern Luzon). At this training, we are learning how to teach parents to better connect with their teens by enhancing their ability to communicate about adolescent reproductive health and development topics. The conference is mostly a refresher, as it turns out that my office already implements these  particular  training modules. 

However,I am enjoying meeting other population officers working in our region and spending more time with my coworker, Arnel. I also met up with a fellow volunteer friend last night for a delicious vegetarian dinner and an even more delicious cupcake dessert! I am learning that it will be these small pleasures that sustain me.

So that’s what I am doing in a practical, tangible sense. But, as a purist, I am also left with the feeling that I haven’t captured it all. Thus, I leave you with some of my ideas for blog posts that get at more visceral aspects of my life here: 

– How quickly jealousy towards volunteers living near the beach fades when I remember that I sleep in a fleece and socks 

-How do all the tricycle drivers know my name when I never take trikes?

-The time thousands of ants crawled out of my plant and all I could do was weep and douse it in OFF spray 

-Part 2: Feeling depressed looking at a dead plant knowing that you killed it 

-I have been waving at a stranger for weeks because I thought he was the governor

Love and missing, duh! Enjoy these pictures of my PACA and my local church. Also featured is the delicious Korean street food prepared by a volunteer friend!