Just the facts

First the rumors:

• Women run the show.
• Going south will get your white butt kidnapped (says the first Filipino I actively sought out to ask about the country!).
• There's little trash service so if you bring and use tampons your host family may have to burn them in front of you.
• Underwear dissolves from all the hand-washed scrubbing. 
• Ants get in to everything.
• They eat dog as a delicacy.
• The sound of animals is deafening.

 

And some facts?


I'll be working in the Children, Youth and Families program of the Youth in Development sector. My sector manager writes that the work I'll be doing is considered to be very challenging, physically tiring, and emotionally draining. But equally fulfilling. (Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point)

 I don't know what or where and won't until a while after I get there. I could be assigned to a short or long term residential facility, a community-based program that targets rural and extremely poor communities, street community-based programs targeting urban areas, or some combination of those.

The Philippines is on the other side of the world. So when it's Saturday for you it will be Sunday for me. I'll be 12 hours ahead of EST.

Most Filipinos are Roman Catholic and I have to wear skirts below my knee.



Americans occupied Manila during the Spanish-American War and during World War II.  

1 Philippine Peso is equal to $0.022 of a U.S. dollar.

There are 87 native languages there. English is a second language to nearly half the population. I have to learn Tagalog and may have to learn another language at my permanent site.

There are 7,100 islands that make up the Philippines and about 2,000 of them are inhabited. 

The average temperature is 80 degrees and there are about 15 typhoons every year between July and October. The dry season is from January to June. 

Malaria, dysentery, GI funkiness, fungal infections, heat rash/exhaustion are common foreigner ailments. And sometimes dengue and typhoid fever. 

I can get mail! Send me a postcard and mash some USA all over it:

Nora Balduff, PCT

US Peace Corps

PO Box 7013

N.A.I.A.

Pasay City, Philippines

1301

 

What was I thinking?

I was drinking an ice cold Blatz with my friend Skunky. I think we were talking about the twists and turns life takes and how you're a damn fool if you think your life is going to proceed as planned. I said that when I was younger, I'd wanted to join the PC but hadn't, because I stayed to live with and eventually marry my ex.

Skunky turns to me, "You know, you can join the PC now." In my memory the moment becomes instantly bright, like a big spotlight got turned on over our heads...and here I am. Skunky, meanwhile, has already spent a year in Swaziland.


I think it's probably wise to write down why I'm going now, so that when I freak out later I'll have this to refer to.


1. It was time to leave my old job--despite the generosity of mission, impact, salary/benefits, challenge, support--because, right now, I need less time around the powerful and the privileged and more with the real people so many programs are developed to support, with the poor, old, and vulnerable. 


2. I am healthy, childless, homeless, dogless, debtless. It's crazy, right? Who could plan that?

4. Uh, a snorkel was in the suggested items I bring with me. Which means beaches, which means heat and sun and sand. A Central Ohioan's day dream.


5. There's no time like the present to become disentangled from my definition of myself. I want to do things that are really fun or really important.

What will I cry over when I'm gone? Probably not a Blatz. More likely it will be for:


1. The moments of purity I'll be missing in my nephews and niece's childhood, watching the evening news with my parents, euchre with my sisters, brother and lucky in-laws.

2. The kindest man I ever met, who over the past couple of years has shared so many really fun times with me I can't stand it.


3. Kickball! And the commissioner of kickball especially! And all of the weird nerds I've met in cbus.

4. My kind, strong, competitive, funny, smart (and smart ass) colleagues working to provide the bedrock of a civil society and the fuel for social justice.


4. Not being noticed, air conditioning in bedrooms, massive spinach salads, steady electricity? I have no idea.

Onward!