Aftermath

I have no idea how to start this blog, so I will start with my own current situation. I’m at work, in a temporary office where my computer screen is visible to anyone who walks down the hall. I leave the Philippines in three days for the next leg of this half-year journey. I’m listening to George Winston’s “December.” Usually, Thanksgiving marks when I begin listening to this album, because it reminds me of driving home in the dark and the snow from Thanksgiving at my relatives’ house, listening to the sounds of the piano and linking them inextricably with happy feelings of the holiday season. I listened to it in college when I was missing out on all the Christmas celebrations in New York City, busy toiling away on final papers. I listened to it in Micronesia when I missed Thanksgiving for the first time and was looking forward to spending Christmas on the beach with my family in Guam. I’m listening to it now, because it’s snowing in New York and I want to be a part of that, despite the relentless hazy, humid heat outside my office. Beyond that, I guess, I want to think of my home and force myself to feel a constant gratitude for it while other people struggle with the reality that theirs have disappeared.

Last weekend in Manila, we had about an hour’s worth of heavy rain and wind. I was almost excited to step out into the typhoon weather, and watch the squall from a café window. It was just a passing burst of a storm, and then it was over with a pointed definitiveness. But in the aftermath of it all, as numbers and statistics and stories incessantly roll in, this impression of finality has quickly faded. I want to make this tragedy personal because it is so close to me, but it really isn’t. I was oblivious to the chaos that was happening while I was out to dinner, drinking poorly made mojitos, wishing my jeans weren’t wet to the calves. During my short time in the Philippines, there has been more than any country’s fair share of crises: typhoons every other week, armed conflict in Zamboanga, and the Bohol earthquake. None of them, I imagine, made many headlines outside the Philippines despite their terrible and widespread effects. But everyone back home, in their concern and their confusion, wondered if the thing they did hear about, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, had any immediate impact on me. I want to say that it did, because it’s what I feel is expected. But just like the humanitarian crisis a few hours’ flight south of me, and just like the earthquake that violently rocked a place I had visited just two weeks before it happened, Haiyan’s effects just leave me feeling heavy and disoriented, in a powerless and ignorant kind of way.

I want to illustrate how I feel about Haiyan, but have been wildly unsure how to do that, because my feelings are tumultuous and complicated. My colleague and friend put it well to me saying she feels no different here – an hour’s plane ride away from mass devastation –  than if she were back home in the States, thousands of miles removed from it. Oh, another big typhoon in South East Asia, what are the chances.

If my petty frustration over the potential for my weekend plans to be ruined by the rain is any indication, I unwittingly feel the same way. I am so much closer in proximity, but there is still a deep and cavernous distance separating me from it. I feel a very detached sense of sadness, the kind you feel after hearing about any sort of disastrous third world event. The only thing really tethering me to this particular tragedy is that I have been to these places, and met a good number of people in them. I keep thinking especially of our boat drivers in Coron, the first place I visited in the Philippines for a quick holiday, and their houses that they happily pointed out to us, situated right by the shore. Now in Coron, 14,000 people are without homes; most of them were destroyed.  

2.5 people need food. Everyone needs water. There is no health service delivery, no schools open, in some places no way to communicate. 4 million people have had their livelihoods and sources of income destroyed. 50,000 women face gender based violence. Thousands of children have been displaced.

Usually, the numbers are just numbers; to me and to everyone who can’t comprehend what it is to be immersed in catastrophe. Listing them does little but overwhelm or inspire sympathy. 11.3 million people affected; almost 700,000 displaced. Reports of death tolls from the hundreds to upwards of 10,000. These numbers are too large to be fathomable. But now they represent people I’ve met in places I have been to, and that’s an entirely different sensation. I can’t consider the sums, because I can’t wrap my brain around what they really mean – how vast the devastation is and how many people have become just faceless figures in these stacks of statistics piled into towers of categories and databases. I can only consider the people to whom I can put a face, and wonder where they are, and imagine what has happened or could happen still, and that is heart wrenching enough.  

I don’t really know how to react. Talking about it, listening to reports and anecdotes, volunteering, donating… these things are meant to make me feel closer to something that is still so far away from me, and better about the fact that I have something to offer. I obviously want to help, but how much can I really do, and how much of it is for me more than it is for the people that need it? It’s difficult sometimes not to reinterpret altruism as self-righteousness, or to feel like anything short of delivering immunizations or rescuing a child from a pile of debris is ultimately superfluous, even when it’s not. These are all part of the complexity of things I’m feeling: how much is too much, or too little? How intensely should I feel, and how do I really feel? Am I actually helping, or just trying to assuage my own sense of powerlessness?

In Manila, just like back in New York, things bustle on as usual. There’s little change. People wonder how I am feeling about all of it, physically and emotionally.  They shake their heads at the tragedy and at the numbers, rising every day. But if we saw the face behind each of those numbers, if we were forced to confront each of the millions, how deep into us would our sympathy dig? How much would our compassion and sadness be intensified? The only thing that draws me to this in a very personal way are the people and places to which I’ve become connected in the short lengths of time I have spent with them. I can’t imagine compounding this by the thousands; it exhausts me to try and measure the loss. 

Early Hours

I see a lot of interesting things in Manila; a lot of things that make me laugh because I find them so ridiculous; things that make me raise my eyebrows in surprise, or shake my head in disgust. There is a lot of sadness and hopelessness too, when the brute force of the poverty and the desperation of some of the city’s people confronts me. As difficult as it is for me not to stand out here, it sometimes feels equally challenging for me to actively notice the people living with and around me because I get caught up in the chaos of my day. When I am coming home from work, usually around 4, it’s a peak hour, so there are crowds of people elbowing through down the sidewalk. While people often look my way and sometimes try to talk to me, we always all push on without much engagement. But arriving at the office is a different story. At 7am, everything is still relatively sleepy and quiet, and I can more fully feel the harsh fabric of the streets. This morning, for instance, I clicked across the road in my heels with my coffee and oversized bag, and encountered a man sitting in the middle of the sidewalk fanning a fire he had built there of trash and palms and other things. I stood next to him for a minute, and the two of us watched the flames burn into the concrete, me with my collared shirt and sunglasses, him in his bare feet, cut-off jeans and poorly rolled cigarette. Two women seated on the sidewalk under a food stall watched me with narrow eyes and whispered to each other. These things are probably always going on as I walk around Malate, but at 7am is when they all seem to take shape and slow down so I can really observe them. Like children. There are obviously always children around, but the yawning emptiness of the morning is when I see them waking up from their sleep on pieces of cardboard unfolded across the sidewalk, or crawling out from the shelter of a pedicab or an umbrella. They sit sleepy and undisturbed by the curb side, or sometimes in the middle of the road, bigger siblings holding onto the smaller versions of themselves.  The women who watch over them crouch silently against buildings holding empty plastic cups, wordlessly asking for coins.

In the morning is also when I feel myself standing out the most. It’s the time of day when I have the energy to wear heels, but not enough to go without holding a latte like it was another accessory. It’s quiet and peaceful enough that I can feel the burn of everyone staring at me, but there is still morning Manila traffic forcing me to hustle awkwardly across the road while everyone watches with incredulity. Tall, white, fancy – somehow important, but in the way that also makes me sickeningly oblivious: this is the picture I’ve painted of myself from the eyes of my onlookers. I have no idea if this how anyone actually perceives me but their stares tell a multitude of stories, all of which cast me as foreign and unrecognizable. And no one on the street that needs money hesitates to go out of their way to ask me especially for it. Stupid, or rich or full of sympathy and compassion. I must be at least one of these things. And even though passing by begging women and children after just visiting an ATM stings with a certain kind of privileged shame, I’ve only given away money one time; to three women who helped me cross the street in the middle of a flood. I came out of work with a short skirt and heels in the middle of a downpour, and the road had become a river. The locals seemed slightly put-out, but they kept on moving, generally unencumbered. I stood on the sidewalk switching my shoes to flip-flops while someone held an umbrella over my head. Pedicabs rolled by, their drivers imploring me to get in and just end my misery with a quick and relatively cheap ride. But I only needed to get to a building across the street, and sought the assistance of three women who grabbed onto me and helped me tightrope my way across a thin wooden plank they were holding for pedestrians, while standing waist deep in the water. They held out cups for change, and I gave them coins; probably the equivalent of a few cents.

I recently read and passed along an article about how giving money to children is one of the worst things you can do as a Westerner in a foreign country; it propagates systems of child trafficking, keeps children out of school, and disrupts dynamics within families. Even giving gifts and food is not a good idea because they sell them, or it compromises their health - better to take the time to teach them some skill, or play with them. But some of the children I’ve met don’t seem interested in playing with me. They seem interested in eating. I wonder if articles like that are theoretically sound and probably on many levels make incredibly good points about complicated issues; but are also a convenient excuse to ignore the excruciating reality that we can’t change the situation of these people. And moreover, we aren’t obligated to. That is probably one of the most difficult things to face; that a lot of the time, no matter how many reasons we have for not doing something, for not helping, for not acting, for not giving what we have to make someone’s life easier (at least in the short term), much of it boils down to the simple fact that we just don’t have to. We don’t want to; it’s part of the social climate here for beggars to bother foreigners; to rip them off, to steal from them. And, they’re everywhere, so what’s the point in trying to help one when it means being swarmed by 100 more? But that’s the only glimpse of their life we are usually offered – the one where they are a nuisance and part of a larger social ill. That’s why I simultaneously like the early morning, and also feel shamed by it, because it’s when I see the big brother holding his baby sister while she slowly wakes up. A malnourished woman still half-asleep against a brick wall breastfeeding her small baby. The little girl petting the very thin stray cat while she cries. The two boys who are arm-in-arm laughing and counting the coins they have. These are the actual lives that they lead, and the ones that I can conveniently accept or ignore as I choose.

Last week I had some problem with my credit card, and couldn’t use it because it kept getting declined. It was more frustrating than anything else, and how lucky for me that I also have an ATM card, and some cash, and another card for an Australian account. It made me think about money more generally though; like the fact that I feel I don’t have much of it. I am often very anxious that I am not making any money as an intern here, especially when I realize how quickly I am running out of what little savings I’ve been able to accumulate. I’ve worried about not making enough money when I did have jobs, and becoming destitute when I didn’t. But in the back of my mind, I have never actually had to worry about money, or about actually being destitute. Because I have my parents and my family, and it’s like a breath of relief when I think about the security that protects me, and its overwhelming to try to feel thankful for it when you know you will most likely never comprehend the feeling of actual desperation. Of lacking so much of what is fundamental – clothes, food, water, a home, a bed, someone to love - and to consider that your normal life. And there is a gap when you realize that no matter how much you travel to a developing place, you will always have so much of everything, even when it feels like you don’t – and it gives you the luxury to dismiss the people that need.

"The excruciating minutia of every single daily event"

Since my last blog, I have done some interesting things. I went to Taiwan for two days, did karaoke for about 5 hours, and got severely ill (the two are not necessarily related). I also went to see the Philippine Philharmonic in the middle of a typhoon. But rather than talk about these things, I feel like being David Sedaris-esque and recounting some of the random observations I've been making in my daily life here. I feel like I write a lot about the big events that happen - trips and projects and super big challenges, and not so much about the little nuances that really make up my Manila experience. I've been meaning to carry a small notebook around with me so I can jot down whenever something really interesting happens, but in the absence of that, I sometimes use the notes app on my iphone. Here a few of them, with slight expounding, from the past week or so, in no particular order and with pretty much zero cohesiveness:

1). 10/1 Tuesday, Robinson's supermarket - in the US, I feel it is more common and even appreciated when people use credit cards because it's faster than waiting for someone to dig out their cash. Here it just seems like a massive inconvenience and requires lots of typing in of long codes and the signing of many receipts. Also, even though there is a long line of people behind me (the guy directly behind me is only buying a loaf of bread and two beers) the woman is taking her time carefully bagging all of my items with some kind of special bagging technique, tying all the bags, and placing smaller items like a toothbrush in their own tiny little bags and placing those in bigger bags. I feel like I should apologize to everyone waiting behind me, but unlike in America, no one here ever seems to be agitated to wait for anything.

2). 10/2 Wednesday, walking home from work - all the guards at the bank are all huddled around the steps intently watching two guards play chess on the concrete. All of them are holding what looks like AK47s. Just A little ways down the street, two other men sit on the curb playing a game whose board is the bottom of a pizza box. Demarcations for the game have been made with pink highlighter. The pieces are bottle caps.

3). 10/10 Thursday - same guards are seated in a line on the curb, still holding their guns, all reading different newspapers.

4). 10/3 Thursday, Robinson's supermarket - man taps on my shoulder while I am looking at cheeses. I have to take out my earphone. He keeps repeating milk, milk, milk and shrugging. "milk - like a cow"  I point to the section with milk, lots of milks - lowfat, full fat, skim, already chocolate-ed. "milk COW."
I go over, pick one up and point to the picture of the cow on the carton. He seems suddenly satisfied. "Where are you from? What part of the world?"
"USA - America."
"Ohhhhhh. I'm from Kuwait."
"Nice."
"Kuwait. KUWAIT."
"I know, that's really interesting."
"It's ok, USA and Kuwait are friends"
Apparently, this man thinks I'm incredibly dense, and what does that say about me when he can't find the milk in the dairy section?

5). Funny and nonsensical things on people's shirts I've throughout the week:
"Got soap?"
"I left my other shirt in my ninja"
Various sexually explicit shirts that are clearly meant for men, being worn by women. I wonder if this is some kind of thing here, of if they just can't be bothered to know the meaning.

6). 10/3 Thursday, the coffee shop which is weirdly located in the lobby of the hospital, and also at the WHO cafeteria - I got coffee three times today, and twice was asked if I had exact amount. I only did one time, and was very kindly thanked for my thoughtfulness and foresight. The times when I didn't, I got a very loud and disapproving tongue clicking. This country has a real problem with giving people change; they act very put out, and will sometimes say they don't have any change when it's pretty clear that they do.

7). 10/7 Monday, walking back to work from getting coffee - small children on the street selling pens to other children who are on the way to school and might have forgotten their own. Reminds me of walking down from Taal volcano when two local girls approached us, asked for chocolate and then: "Do you have boyfriend?"
"Actually, yes I do! do you have a boyfriend?"
Girl scowls. "I didn't say boyfriend. I said ball point. Do you have ball points. For school."
I don't usually take supplies of chocolate or pens with me on hikes, so I had to disappoint her. The kids selling pens on the road side seem to be doing a good deed. But their customers are headed to class; why aren't they going to school too?

8). One of my project entails reviewing medical records at the ER. The first step is getting a sample of road injury patients, so I have to look through a years worth of uncomputerized records that are organized by date, but not by injury type. While road injuries don't seem to be so common, some extremely common causes for ER admission include:
 - bites, of various kinds (cat, rat, dog, mouse, hamster, monkey)
 - mauling (as in, "patient was mauled by two assailants after they robbed him")
 - fishbone caught in patient's throat, usually just shortened to"fishbone"
Everything also seems to be classified as "severe." I know it's the ER, so you would assume that people would have a good reason to be there. But there are just some things I can't picture: "patient severely injured himself while peeling some shrimps," "patient severely injured himself while trying to open the cookie jar," "severe pinky trauma" for example.

9. 10/13 Sunday, Nailogy - I am here for a manicure, and it's very crowded, but mostly with men. Most of them are getting pedicures, but some are having their hands massaged and nails painted with clear polish. A surprising number of them have fallen asleep in the chairs.

10. 10/13 Sunday, outside Robinson's - Almost hit by an SUV because the crossing guard was too busy staring at me to direct traffic

11. 10/12 Saturday, Oarhouse - a local talks to us about all the prostitutes that hang out in and around Robinson's, and is surprised that I don't know how to spot them (aside from ones who are obvious at nighttime outside of dodge massage places and bars). Because Malate is the red light district, there is a lot of prostitution - male, female, and child that is constant and pervasive, and apparently right under my nose. I already know that Malate is less than classy. Walking around at night, you are approached by people who want you to come into their various sketchy establishments. Also I've been personally approached by female prostitutes which was more confusing to me than anything else. I don't want to always be judgmental of particular men or scenarios that I often see in this area, but with so much trafficking, forced sex work and what basically amounts to slavery, it's hard not to feel slightly embittered and disillusioned.

12. 10/11 Friday, walking home from work on Pedro Gil Street - some kid, maybe 13 or 14, in a school uniform is in the sidecar of a pedicab (basically a little car attached to a bicycle), presumably being taken home. He sticks his head out of the car and the driver (biker? peddler?) deliberately elbows him in the side of the head, signaling for him to get back inside. This kid has no shoes and no backpack. I am wearing a $50 shirt, pants that were not on sale, Gucci perfume, and I have a driver take me to work in the morning.
Even so, I am tired and sweaty and I think: Spoiled brat, you can't walk home like the rest of us?

Working for the weekends

I haven't had much time to write here, busy with all kinds of work and play. I guess the upside to having a typhoon in your city is finally getting a day off to decompress. 

The weeks are long here, and work is generally low-key. I'm there at 7 and leave around 4 and so far my days have been mostly filled with computer work and research. It's an interesting office environment - quiet, but somehow still always busy - and thankfully there is a small, relatively close-knit group of interns to commiserate with, though people tend to come and go very quickly and for better or worse (depending) the group is never stable or static. 

When I titled this blog Manila to Micronesia I didn't have in mind that I would always be comparing the two, but I know I am constantly doing it. I want Manila to be a separate experience with its own positives and negatives, but I have a hard time seeing it for what it is, by itself. Living in this city is a lot different than living on the islands. Things were slow and generally inefficient in Chuuk, but it was easier to roll with the punches. In Manila, all of these things are compounded by the unpleasantness of the city itself. I have hot water and electricity and (usually) internet, so there have been some upgrades. But the the poverty, the danger, the pollution and all of those other urban burdens give me frustration rather than a renewed sense of patience. 

Almost every weekend, we have tried to escape the cities for greener pastures. My second weekend, a few of the interns went to Coron Island in the province of Palawan. Coron is only an hour flight from Manila, but the difference was startling, and I couldn’t help but feel all the similarities with Micronesia. Everything brought back memories of island life, from the small houses with metal roofs, to the expat/divers' bars and overwhelming smell of the shore and the Pacific, to the power cutting off while I was taking a bucket shower. We spent the day island hopping with two friendly tour guides/boat drivers who took us around to Kayangan Lake (supposedly the cleanest lake in Asia) and some post card-esque, nearly deserted beaches. The weekend after, we swapped white sand for volcanic rock, hiking up Taal volcano in Tagaytay. As seems to often be the case in the Philippines, the real adventure was trying to navigate how to get there. We first took a taxi to a bus station that had no signs and no apparent schedule. Most of the time, locals are more than willing to try and help, but they also fear offending you or admitting they don't know something, which often means being pointed in the wrong direction. We found the right bus after being led there by a motortrike driver who wanted a tip for his trouble, and took it two hours to a drop-off point where we encountered the same ordeal with a circuit of jeepneys. Jeepney is the popular mode of public transport in the Philippines; a cultural remnant of WWII jeeps, and always packed to cracking point with people. We occupied ourselves trying to learn some Tagalog words, as being crammed into public transport has been the only real way I've interacted with locals outside of shops and my hotel. They had the jeepney stop for us at the top of a long, winding hill where we had to hire and haggle with motortrike drivers to take us all the way down to a boat, which we took across to the volcano in the pouring rain. After all of this, the hike was about 30 minutes long with a 5 minute stop at the top to admire the view and the crater lake. It was beautiful, but the grandness of it was somewhat mitigated by the daunting task of getting back home. The bus back took over three hours because of the rain and city flooding, which I should have taken as a sign that traveling here will never be smooth.

This past weekend, we traveled to Bohol Island, another beachy spot more touristy and developed than Coron. While Manila was caught in the crosshairs of a typhoon, we had perfect weather and toured around the island visiting popular sites. We walked up one of the Chocolate Hills, one of over a thousand grass-covered limestone hills shaped like Hersey’s kisses, and to reserve full of tarsiers, small, endangered primates that looks more like some kind of marsupial gremlin. Of course we also went to the beach, which was small and not as impressive as Coron’s. There was a solid cluster of bars and restaurants along the shore, as well as shady and persistent "tour guides" aggressively offering boats to other islands. You couldn't stand on the street without being immediately harassed, in the same tired and insistent manner. While having coffees under palm trees right across from breaking waves went a long way to making those walks worthwhile, any stress that might have been relieved by poolside drinks and sandy feet was rekindled trying to find a way back to Manila. Our Sunday evening flights were cancelled because of the typhoon, and delayed again the next morning after we had woken up at 4am and dealt with a particularly hostile cab driver. Now that I am finally home, I have the chance to look back on the amazing things I am able to do here and weigh them against the challenges that come with every weekend trip. Not that it's news that these things happen, especially in developing countries, but dealing with street hassling, negotiating rides from sketchy "taxis", and just generally existing by myself in any given public place are all skills that I need to hone Traveling While Female here in the Philippines. It's always necessary to have some sort of guard up, but of course it's different when you look so different, and are giving off the air that you realistically have no idea what the hell you are doing. It's not exclusive to this country by any means, but it continually aggravates me that everywhere is potentially somehow dangerous, and everyone is persistently trying to rip me off. This again feels like Micronesia, where the surreal experience of having white skin means you are the exotic minority and always prone to be stared at and engaged with. Not everything was rainbows and cupcakes being a foreigner in Chuuk, but the threats and the chaos seem more tangible here in the center of a city. Having to always structure and hold up walls against all things unsafe is exhausting, and takes away the freedom and enjoyment of the relaxion you are supposed to feel on holiday, or simply the banality everyday tasks, like walking home with your groceries. I can't excuse it away by saying it's just how things are here, but I also can't ignore or deny it. I can only try to momentarily escape it in the corner cubicle of my office, or the small private spots I claim on the beach.

One Week Down

I've been in Manila almost a week, and as fast as time seemed to go living in Micronesia, that's how slow it seems to be passing right now.

There's not too much to report about work. I wake up at 5:40 in order to make the 6:40 van from the hotel to the office. They always wait until 6:45 in case anyone else gets in, but no one ever does. Despite the early wake up, the morning van is a huge perk of staying at Tropicana. I walk home, even though the driver said if I called the hotel they would send a car for me, and it takes about a half hour in the blistering heat and depressingly heavy humidity. Once I'm home I can stand in my underwear in front of the blasting AC and then take a shower, but at work I would just have to sit and stew in a sweaty suit. So it's better to get there early and not have to smell like a sidewalk heating grate.

I get there at 7am which is earlier than most people. So my first day I went to the cafeteria for a coffee, which costs me 30php or about 29 cents. I was still bitter that I had to pay until I remembered that back home I usually go to Starbucks or some other coffee shop once a day which costs me about $5 UNTIL I ALSO remembered that my same Starbucks drink here only costs me $3, and is worlds better than the cafeteria coffee. But it's in the opposite direction from the office, and somehow as amenable as my van driver is, I'm not sure he would be up for a coffee run every morning.

That first day, I had my coffee with two Filipino admin workers who were very friendly and showed me down to my unit where I discovered that I had my own office. And by office, I mean a cubicle  that has my nameplate on it which still sadly makes me feel more professional than ever before. Inside my cubicle there is a computer and a desk and a swivel chair with a broken arm and a task list left by my supervisor and not much else. There were two pens but no paper or staplers or clips or folders. I got the impression somehow that all those things are probably in short supply and high demand, so I bought some for myself this weekend.
So far the one thing I really like about work is the coffee and snack cart that comes by my cubicle twice a day. The guy who rolls it out knows by now that all I will get is the coffee for 15php, but still tries to get me to buy a sandwich. It seems typical for people in the office to eat small meals or snacks throughout the day, and maybe it appears odd or even sad that all I get is a plastic cup of coffee. "Are you sureeeee you don't want a sandwich ma'am?" Everyone calls me ma'am here and it makes me feel really old and important, which I'm not.
My task list includes things like report writing and literature reviews, things I did at uni but not really so much yet in my professional career. I still maintain that my best skills involve working with people - as un-me as that sounds - and I'm going to try and push to get some fieldwork or some kind of outside experience since that's what my inner anthropologist demands whenever I am somewhere new. But, I haven't even met my supervisor yet, and I have this dreaded feeling that it's going to be like that Seinfeld episode where George does nothing all week at his new job but transfer the contents of a file into an accordion-style folder.

Because I start work at 7:30, I leave at 3:30 which is also nice. The walk home always offers me some new and interesting experience. I can't even begin to describe the streets of Malate, which are crowded, dirty and full of all kinds of people. The smell, which is a mixture of sweat, street food, diesel and sewage is taking some getting used to, and I feel like I will leave here with a shriveled, blackened pulmonary system. I have never seen another westerner while walking home, and with my giant black purse and intern badge I am the sorest of thumbs. Everyone stares at me. And I can't even stare back lest I be mowed down by a jeepney or motorcyclist, something I feel is almost inevitable whenever I leave my hotel. I am trying to get over my instinctual reaction to stop and wait for cars but rather, as everyone else around me does, run for dear life with complete abandon to the other side while honking vehicles barrel down the road. My strategy involves waiting for someone else to have to cross the street so I can follow their path and try to learn the best ways of not being roadkill.
The poverty on the streets is more striking to me than in Micronesia, but I don't know enough about the lifestyle here to make any kinds of judgments. There are lots of people begging for money, lots of shoeless, very thin looking children in dark corners. The other day I saw a very old man, very crippled, crawling across the sidewalk with a can for money. Yesterday a boy, maybe 14 years old, was sleeping across the sidewalk. He was covered in dirt and was only wearing a pair of torn, short pants and a huge smile. It's difficult to reconcile this poverty, and the street life of Malate in general, with the photos I see of Makati, a different part of Manila. I haven't been there yet, but the photos make it look upscale, clean and fancy. Apparently, I've heard, it's where most of the ex-pats live.

But, I don't have to go to Makati to escape Malate. While outside shirtless children are eating rice out of dixie cups with dirty fingers, inside the Robinson's Mall there is a Jamba Juice and a Steve Madden. I've become enamored with this mall, mostly because its so huge and interesting, and also because it's something to do that doesn't involve figuring out public transport. Here is where all the white people seem crawl out of the woodwork. Mostly I see older men with Filipino wives. Whereas the Filipinos bend over backwards to be nice to me, explaining the best ways to eat dragon fruit and pricing all my produce for me, the westerners frown at me or look confused when I try to smile at them - an effort to try and make some kind of connection with people I feel must be in the same boat as me. In Pohnpei all us mehnwai did yoga, hikes, halloween parties and boat trips together. It seems here that life among the ex-pats is a little more disconnected. Either that, or I haven't properly broken into the group. Not that I am exclusively trying to hang out with Americans whenever I'm abroad, but it's always comforting to find people with whom you share some common thread.

After smiling like an idiot at all the old white men in the supermarket, and getting accosted by a worker dressed up like a giant orange M&M, I convinced myself that it was ok for me to buy some imported chocolate. Then I convinced myself it was ok to try some fruits and vegetables, even though I've been told this is risky. I've been here a week, and haven't been sick at all, so I figured it's time to take the next step in food because I can't continue to survive on snack packs and slightly off soy milk. I headed to the American-imported pomegranates before spotting the more interesting, and much cheaper, local fruits. I bought dragon fruit, mangosteen and ponkan. If I survive this round, I'll go back for durian and guava. There are plenty interesting products at the supermarket - in the beauty aisle, I can't seem to find any self-tanner, but there IS a plethora of skin-lightening products which boggles the mind, even though I'm totally aware of the cultural desire in many places to be light-skinned. Some are made by US companies that back home make it their business telling us we are all too pasty. There are lots of "island favorites" - dried mango, spam, tinned mackerel - which remind me of life in Chuuk and Pohnpei, and plenty of Australian brands, so I can get the best of all my worlds. Buying food here gives me a good perspective of cost. As I was walking though the midway section of the mall which has shops like Aldo, Esprit and Lacoste, a woman from a makeup stand came over to me and gave me a little blue bar. I thought it was a soap sample, but evidently taking the little bar meant I agreed to come see all of her products, called Aqua. she scrubbed my nails and hands with sea salt and oils and then sat me down and took off the makeup on one side of my face to show me a moisturizer. This was before I got groceries, so I was immediately reminded of that movie the Other Sister when Juliette Lewis agrees to a makeover and the saleswoman only does half her face. Except unlike Juliette Lewis I don't have a learning disability, just really poor sales resistance. I stopped her before she could do anymore damage and said I didn't have enough cash to pay for anything she was selling. The package of things she wanted me to buy would have cost 6,000php, around $135. My groceries cost $27. The manicure that I booked for tomorrow will be $30, but I feel I deserve it.

Departure/Arrival

When I started this post, I was somewhere over Alaska, with still about 6 hours to go until Tokyo, the first stop on my journey to the Philippines.

That cover photo isn't mine. And the blog title has nothing to do with a destination wedding as it might suggest. I am just struck by the fact that I really never thought I would make it back to Micronesia, yet it somehow found its way into my recent travel plans. In two months when I complete my internship with WHO in Manila, I will head to Palau, a part of Micronesia I haven't explored yet. My final stop is the relatively familiar ground of Australia. 

Preparing to go to Manila was just as challenging as preparing for Chuuk and Sydney, even though this time I will only be there for 2 1/2 months. The most difficult part is just trying to visualize the kind of city it will be and the kinds of people, things and work I will encounter. Pictures and well-traveled friends can only help so much. Until I am actually there, it remains a very distant place in many ways. 

I am trying to consider how challenged I felt leaving for Chuuk especially, and how by the end I felt like it was just another home. But the other difficult thing is how distant those places become all over again once I leave. I have distinct memories of morning conversations with our cooks in the dining room of Xavier. It was just small talk in the most basic Chuukese, but now I have forgotten what little I knew of the language. Something that was once so much a part of my daily life is something I can hardly remember. Most of the memories feel like dreams or stories that happened to someone else, and I am just trying to guess how they must have felt and what they must have done. I guess this is true for everything in the past, but somehow it feels like it means more too lose the things you struggled with the most, and found the most rewarding. 

My story in Manila might be similar. It's a stranger to me now. Soon it will be my home for a while, sometimes in ways that are frustrating or confronting, and sometimes in ways that are so intense and incredible it will feel like I've never lived anywhere else. Then, when I finally am just beginning to feel some sense of settling, I'll be swept up again to somewhere new, and it will become a stranger again.

 

The first thing I saw when I arrived at the airport was a sign at immigration that said "Naia is a no wang wang zone - fall in line." It was my first impression of Manila, and I have no idea what it means.
A WHO driver picked me up and drove me what seemed like ages from the airport to the Tropicana hotel suites in Malate. My room is pretty impressive for a hotel room - nice big kitchen and sitting area. I have a decent sized TV and lockbox, but either I can't figure them out or they don't work. The internet is slow and intermittent, especially in my room, and I haven't yet seen the pool or fitness center. It was on my list of things to do today, but I'm still exhausted from my day+ of travel.
It also says on their website that breakfast is included, but this wasn't the case, and they looked really confused when I asked about it. Good thing I traveled with granola bars and snack packs, because I had no food or water in the hotel room. I boiled some water and froze it in a bottle when I arrived so I had something to drink this morning.

I took a short walk to the Robinson's Place mall which is probably the biggest I've ever been to, maybe besides Sydney's Pitt Street. If I was just going for a look around it probably would have been really interesting and even fun, but I was on the hunt for very specific items - a straightening iron, a regular iron, and a supermarket, and these tasks took me about two hours to complete. The supermarket was easy, but no such luck with the other two. After walking around aimlessly through department stores and various food courts, I finally found Starbucks, which gave me strength, but tastes a lot different from coffee at home. I was trying to jot down where stores of interest were located, but all I really had were floor numbers and other stores for reference - "chemist, floor 2, next to Cotton On." That won't help me next time I am trying to make my way through the labyrinth of chintzy local retailers. On floor 3, I came across a hardware and homegoods store where they brought me to the irons. The workers were so friendly it was almost suspicious. Usually I am annoyed when sales people talk to me in the stores, but I think that's because I'm usually feeling some kind of sales pressure. The homegoods guy was more interested that I picked the cheaper, but still sturdy brand, and took it out of the box to plug it in somewhere to show me how good it was. He went through every button and dial, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I know my way around an iron (kind of). He took all my stuff and carried it to the register for me, and stood with me until I was finished paying maybe because I look so foreign and confused. Hopefully not because he wanted a tip.
The same thing happened in the pharmacy where I found a straightening iron. They unplugged the florescent light above the makeup display case to show me how hot the irons got so I could compare them. To my dismay, they didn't let me test out any of the food in the supermarket. Maybe it's only for higher priced items. My flat iron came to about 2000php (about $65) while all my groceries came to about $40.

I also wanted to walk to the WHO office to see where it was - even though there is evidently a shuttle from my hotel that goes there in the morning. I took my life in my hands as a pedestrian. I would not say Manila is exactly "walker friendly" - the streets are small, intensely crowded, and there are no crosswalks or lights to be obeyed by the thousands of crazed motorists. Little trolley-like cars stuffed to the brim with people and rickshaw drivers are everywhere, battling for space with the venders that creep into their street space from the sidewalk. I couldn't shake the smell of the streets either. Sometimes it was the same smell as downtown Weno in Chuuk which made me think it was same kinds of foods being cooked in the street. Sometimes it was pollution, and overwhelmingly nauseating.
A lot of people stared at me, and some of them pointed. While I saw plenty of white people at immigration, and a fair few at Robinson's, I saw none on my walk down Taft Avenue to the WHO office - about 15 minutes away from my hotel. As a tall, pale American, I obviously stand out. I am trying to dress conservatively and look intimidating and properly urbanized when I walk instead of how I really feel, which is totally confused. I still can't decide what it means to dress appropriately here, and if it matters who you are and what part of the city you come from. Most people around my area seem to wear long pants or dresses, but the billboards and signs in Robinson's advertise miniskirts, and some younger girls inside were following suit.

Tomorrow is my first day at the office. I am going to try to start the day off right and get there without being hit by a motorbike.

For anyone interested, my address for the time being is
Tropicana Suites Hotel
1630 Luis Ma. Guerrero Street
Malate, Metro Manila, Philippines, 1004

No sim card yet, but always accepting emails and skypes :)