My first excursion in the Philippines

The last weekend was a whirlwind.  I'm still not sure exactly what my "take away" thoughts and emotions are.  It is rare that I need so much time to process my feelings about an experience.  Contrasting emotions such as: enormously thankful; shocked; contented; a little skeeved out; exhausted yet fullfilled and energized at the same time; understanding so much more, and yet still mystified . . .  These all swirl in my head as I try and put this down on virtual paper.  I'm just going to start to tell what happened, and where I can insert the feelings I will.  Where I cannot, I can only hope that the pictures and the story help to convey at least a hint of what I experienced.

The morning of Friday the 9th found me headed to Infanta in the North Lamon Bay area.  The itinerary had some vague suggestions of what I would be doing, things like "participating in program activities of ISO", "staying in staff house", and "traveling by boat."  We drove for almost 4 hours over some incredible mountains to the east of Manila, and to the north of Laguna de Bay.    



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Draw a line from Rodrigues to Infanta (yeah, that part where there are no roads) that's the route we took.  It was some incredible scenery, interspersed with local communities early on, with those fading out to tiny settlements of 2 or 3 houses as we climbed into the mountains.

The first 1/4 of the trip was like this.  There is considerable
sprawl surrounding Manila.

It slowly gave way to houses like this spaced out
much further as we continued to climb

We began to climb, slowly at first and then steeper
and steeper.

we kept climbing until we were directly under the clouds 

Know what kind of farm this is?  No?  It's a rooster farm.  Not just any poultry,
Specifically cocks bred for fighting!

In the mountains there were small settlements such as this,
well above the lower clouds and in the sun.

 See those two little vehicles there?  They are everywhere here in the Philippines.  They are mostly four stroke Kawasaki 175's.  They have a rigid frame attached to them, providing not only a cover for the driver, but a small compartment on the side.  Later in the trip we would take one of these down the second worst road I have seen in the Philippines.  Thankfully we transferred to a Jeepny for the worst one.  Now, I showed a picture in China of cargo stowed on a bike. I complain to my parents when they want to put 6 of us in their minvan for a trip.  Just remember that.

Upon arrival in Infanta we had a short lunch, and then proceeded to the Staff House for ISO, my hosts for this trip.  ISO, or the Institute for Social Order  is a NGO founded in 1947 by Fr. Walter Hogan a Jesuit Priest.  Their work, while having spiritual undertones is focused almost exclusively on improving the lives of the less fortunate through: The education and training of local communities in the fields of social change, human development and management development;  The organization of communities for livelihood and income generating projects as well as productive employment;  The provision of assistance to local communities in the areas of social research, organization and technology development.  The Staff House was a combination field office, bunk room for staff and volunteers (without the bunks), and meeting room for the Integrated Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Council (IFARMC) of Northern Lamon Bay.  We arrived during a meeting of this group, as they are supported almost entirely by ISO.  IFARMC is a community based natural resource management group.  In the Philippines, each municipality has oversight on its "municipal waters" - those waters extending from its high tide line to 15 kilometers.  "Commercial fishing" in this zone is illegal (commercial fishing does not included small scale local fishers, in covers the larger boats using purse nets, trolling nets, long lines, etc . . .)  In an effort to coordinate their management of the area, 9 municipalities have joined forces to have one integrated council.  Additionally the council is integrated with the fishers themselves, the local municipality, the Philippine Navy, the Philippine National Police (PNP), and several NGO's.  The meeting was really for my benefit and they took some time to explain what they did.  To give you an idea of the situation here for the fisher folk or fishers as they are known, they are the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.  They usually fish for 8-10 hours each day, 7 days a week using hook and line, gill nets, or spear fishing (all legal methods) and in some cases dynamite and cyanide (illegal methods.)  During the 3 month peak season an average catch for those using legal means is 15-25 kgs of fish per day.  During the leaner times (the other 9 months) the norm is closer to 5-10 kg.  The fish, depending of the remoteness of the landing site is anywhere form 40-80 pesos per g (current exchange rate is 41 pesos to the dollar.)  During the lean month the fisherfolk are making $5-$20 USD per day, working 8-10 hours each day.  The boats are open, roughly 15 feet, have dual outriggers and are normally paddled by hand with the fishers going out anywhere form 2-12 km offshore each day.

A long standing problem has been the use, by some fishers, of cyanide and dynamite to catch their fish.  Using dynamite will likely yield a fisher almost 500-750 kg in a single day.  The site they fish on however will be decimated and unable to support fish for another 10 years.  That afternoon, around the time most of the boats started to unload their cargo and sell it to buyers, The IFARMC set up a mobile checkpoint on the sole road from the primary site for offloading fish (the municipality of Real) to Manila.  They had originality planned to take me on a sea patrol, but with several recent "interactions" between the patrol and armed fishers, they elected to instead do the checkpoint on the road.  It was sited at a "normal" checkpoint manned by two members of the Philippine National Police (think a cross between our FBI and Army) equipped with automatic rifles and sidearms.  These checkpoints are on almost every major road in the area, normally every 50-100 km or so.  They are used to try and control illegal logging, fishing, and to apprehend members of any of the half dozen active Muslim terrorist groups operating in the country.  While incidents in this region were rare, we were only to take the road we did over the mountains during the day, I was told that it was unsafe due to possible ambushes when traveling at night when I asked about the safety at night (my question was more geared towards a few massive landslides we saw, a few where large portions of the roadway itself were gone.)

The IFARMC, made up primarily of local municipal officials and volunteer fisherfolk have the power to inspect the fish, and to sieze illegally caught fish, and even to press cases in court, do not have the "might" it takes to get the job done in this country on their own.  Hence the partnership with the Philippine Navy, and PNP when operating on land.  As vehicles approached, usually trikes or small open bed trucks approached, members of the IFARMC would indicate to the PNP officers which vehicles they wanted to inspect (easily identified by the styrofoam coolers full of plastic bags and ice).  Sometimes the PNP officers would flag other vehicles over as well, usually any vans with all tinted windows, trucks that looked like they might have logs under their tarps (all commercial logging is now illegal in the Philippines), or vehicles with more than 3 or 4 18 - 45 year old men.

Most of the fish were reef fish, fairly small in size
that we inspected.  The IFARMC only has
jurisdiction over the municipal waters and fish
caught inside them.  Most of these are smaller reef
fish.

We opened each box of fish and looked first for fish that
appeared to look mangled in some way -
bruising, discoloration, etc . . .

Those fish were then handed down
to the actual inspector who would
cut them open and inspect the
interior organs.  While we found
none that day, I was shown pictures
of the internal organs of fish found
the previous day at a market
inspection, mangled and destroyed
beyond recognition from the blast.

Around 10:00 we returned to the Staff House, a two room condo with the first room being roughly 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide.  That room functioned as the kitchen, office, dining room, and milling around room for the 15 (yes 15) of us.  There were four chairs and the rest just lounged on the floor.  In the back of the room was a door into the "bunk room", a 10 x 10 room with two single mattresses leaning against the walls.  After dinner all but 9 of the folks went to their own homes, the remaining ones being too far from their homes to return that night (in some cases they came from island communities in the bay.)

These guys were some of the warmest, friendliest men I have ever met, all very eager to share whatever they had and struggle through a sometimes less than conversational ability in English to communicate with me. They raged in age from Justin (65+) to Melvin who was in his early 20's.  5 of us bunked in this room, two sleeping on a rollout mattress no wider than two feet, two sleeping on an actual mattress on the floor, and myself on my own matress.  I offered to take the smaller rollout one, seeing as how they were letting me have my own to no avail.  before bed each was texting a girlfriend or wife. Few use the phones for calling, its too expensive (not "expensive" by most Philippinos' standards, but these guys are far poorer than most Philippinos.)

By midnight we went to sleep, alarms set for 4:00 am to get up and get on the ferry to Polillo Island.  At 4:00 we were up, and on the ferry by 5:00 am. It doesn't get light here till around 5:45, so please forgive the grainy picture.  It was a 4 hour ferry ride to the island.

All the boats here have outriggers.  Its just the way they build
them.  Large or small, they all got 'em.  This was our ferry.

The city as we were pulling away.
The sun had finally come up.

Over the weekend it rained 5 or 6 times each day.  When it did it RAINED.
It would usually last for 5 or 10 minutes though.

It would pour for a few minutes, then be gone . . .

The ride was uneventful but it was a long one, having had only a few hours sleep and I frankly I was still getting used to my dramatic shift.  Just 48 hours before I had been in one of the most advanced, developed cities on earth, staying in a true 5 star hotel, with a chauffeur and a personal guide/translator.  I was now tagging along with about 10 local fishers and an ISO staff person busily doing her work, sleeping as I had mentioned, and feeling awkward enough to leave my raincoat in the bag, being the only passenger out of roughly 100, on the boat with one, and frankly it being one that costed more than any of them made in two months during the difficult seasons.

On the out islands, petrol is sold, by the litre,
in one litre glass pepsi or coke bottles.
That sure wouldn't fly back home.

Upon arrival in the town of Polillo we had lunch (around $15 US for the group of us) at a local restaurant and after saying good-bye to a few of them who were going their own way, the 10 of us remaining climbed onto two of those trikes I mentioned.  That's right, 10 passengers and two drivers on two small motorcycles with sidecars.  three sat in each sidecar (to say it would have comfortably fit one would have been a loose use of the words comfort or even fit for that matter. two sat side saddle behind the driver on the motor bike itself.  Our bags sat on our laps.  We then proceeded to drive for about an hour over the bumpiest roads I had ever been on in my life.  We pulled into a small village and I said my prayers, thankful for our safe arrival.  Until they told me, oh no, this is just where we get on the jeepny, the roads past here are too rough for the trike.

thankfully we had switched form the trike
to the Jeepny by this point!

For those of you who don't know (I sure didn't) a jeepny can best be envisioned if you think of an old WWII Jeep.  Cut it in half just behind the driver's seat, extend it about 10 feet and put a bench down each side of the back.  Then put 14-16 people in the back, (in that 10 feet of space, with their bags since the roof is full of cargo) and proceed another hour and a half.  Now as the crow flies its only about 60 miles from Manila to San Rafael (a small village in the municipality of Bordeos) our final destination on Pilillo Island.  It had so far taken around 4 hours by van, 4 hours by boat, an hour by trike, and another hour and a half by jeepny.  And we had to walk the final 20 minutes since the bridge into the village was too decayed to hold the jeepny with us on it safely.

As we walked over the bridge into the village of San Rafael I
got this picture of kids swimming and bathing as one of the
women watched and washed clothes in the river.

A typical  higher end home in the
village, this one had concrete blocks
for the walls on the entire ends,
and halfway up the sides of the house.

Once we arrived, the ISO staff and volunteers got to work.  We were visiting the village to validate the results of the data estimations, from information supplied by the villagers for a resource assessment report for the village.  It is part of an anti-poverty planning and development project.  Local input is crucial in the planning process here.  It was intriguing and informative, but I want to save the topic for after a few more meetings I have in the next few days.  The meeting was held in the multi function hall (the one room structure to the left).  It serves as the office of the economic development council, health clinic, community hall, birthday party center, and much more.  The two sides facing the prevailing winds are concrete with wood slatted windows, the other two sides are just wooden slats.  Roughly 25 people were there from this 1,700 person village to comment on the data, and change what they felt needed correcting.

While they worked many of the youths either played basketball, or watched the others play on the court outside the hall.  That is the village drama stage you can just barely see on the right of the last slat.  It is open on three sides, with a lean-to roof and solid back.  Rice fields were behind the houses to the east of the main road, woods behind the houses to the west.  There is one road in town, with 343 households  stretching along 1 km on both sides of the road. virtually every resident is a farmer or fisher, or a combination of the two.

The process went long into the night and while they were finishing up, Justin took me to visit some of the local households including the village captain, the youngest on Polillo Island (municipalities elect mayors, burungays, or villages, elect captains.)  Justin said that all was fine for us to walk around the village itself this late at night (around 10:00 pm) but we shouldn't go outside of it.  A few months ago there was a crime that was committed at night and the PNP refused to come until morning.  In this area, one considered very safe, three PNP officers were ambushed an killed in just such an incident less than a year ago.  People have an odd sense of "safe" here.  The road we went on to Infanta was safe - as long as we didn't go at night for fear of ambush.  This village was safe, but military personnel, in a heavy jeep wouldn't venture the 2 km from their outpost to the village at night for fear of ambush . . .

We finally got to sleep around midnight.  In most of the houses people slept on the concrete floor, I first slept on a bench in a living room, and then in a hammock in a kitchen.  The constant crowing of the roosters, barking and fighting of the ever present dogs over scraps of food, and the loudest frogs I've ever heard, followed by the 1:00 am wake up time to repeat the process back to Polillo town to catch the 5:00 am ferry made for maybe 15 minutes of total sleep.

After setting out on foot from the village at 1:00 am and running the whole process backwards, I arrived at my hotel in Manila around 1:00 in the afternoon.  We had taken a different route back, from Real, this time passing many lowlands.

I'm now a world away, but at the same time just 60 miles from where I was.  Manila is a massive city, surrounded by mountains and a Manila Bay.  Its a far cry from where I was this morning.

The people from San Rafael had so little.  The poor housing, the complete lack of opportunities, virtually non existent sanitation, poor nutrition, the depleting fishing stocks, and the incredible ordeal of such a short journey have left me drained and morose in many ways.

At the same time they have so much.  Optimism, love for one another, culture, and smiles all around.  The warmth and friendship shown to me by a small group of fishers, joined together by a common cause to protect not only their livelihood but the natural resources around them for the next generations was so invigorating and uplifting.   It was an experience I'll never forget  I feel drained and probably a bit depressed, while at the same time grateful, uplifted, and happy.