Two weeks ago we had a conference in the City of Smiles, aka Bacolod, and while we were there, we found out our permanent sites! My site is in the province of Antique, in a super rural barangay (village). My barangay is inland, but not too far from the ocean, and sandwiched against the mountainous region of Panay Island. The elementary school I’ll be working out is really small for a school here; there are only about 480 students. My counterpart seems really nice, and so does my new host family. The house at which I’ll be staying at is surrounded by rice fields and banana trees; it’s so peaceful and quiet- it will be a nice change from the hustle and hubbub of where I’m at now.
One challenge that I’ll be facing my first few months at site is that they speak a different language! Right now I’m learning Hiligaynon (aka Ilonggo), but they speak Kinaray-a at my permanent site. Luckily the languages are related, and the grammar seems to be mostly the same. But still, it’s a bummer that I’ll have spent three months learning a language I won’t really need. Oh well.
One thing I haven’t gotten used to yet is the mosquitoes. They love me here! If I don’t have pants on, with some sort of DEET on beneath, my legs will be dotted with at least a dozen bites within the hour. It’s really unpleasant. Once last week, while I was eating lunch- I got 14 in ten minutes!
This past week has been full of fun things. On Sunday, I went with a few fellow PCTs to a beach about an hour North of here. We took a bus, and then a boat ride out to a white sand island. We had the whole beach to ourselves. The water was a beautiful clear turquoise color, but goodness it was warm; almost too warm. Getting in the water didn’t give me the same satisfying cool down that swimming normally does. But it was still nice to get out of Banate and actually see some of the spectacularly beautiful coastline I had heard about.
On Monday, we took a field trip to an indigenous community, to visit the Ati. The Ati are the indigenous peoples of Panay Island who were here long before people came from Borneo and Malaysia and settled here. They have their own language, and traditions, which they fight hard to preserve. While up in their community, which is a reservation, we learned a bit about their history, traditional weaving, and saw a traditional dance performed. We spoke with one of the leaders of the community who told us about how they got their reservation. Apparently, in the 1980s they had a Peace Corps Volunteer who helped them through the paperwork, as well as to help preserve the integrity of their land through the planting of trees. It was awesome to hear about and actually see the success of another PCV’s service.
Tomorrow I’m becoming a godmother to a baby I’ve met once. All four of us in my language cluster were asked to be godmothers to the baby, and apparently it’s rude to not accept, so tomorrow I’ll stand up in church, hold a candle, and become one of the many godmothers of Ernie Dave.
As a thank you to the community that has been so welcoming to us for our training, we are doing a community project. The community, aka the school we have been working at, decided they want an English camp. So the week after next, while the students are on semester break, we will be conducting a two-day English camp with some sort of environment theme (undecided as of today), which will include the production of an environmentally themed mural painting. I’m excited about the project because, well, I love camp. It should be fun- and our four counterparts, and the school, are excited about it too.
I can’t believe I only have three weeks left of training, and then I’m off to permanent site! I can’t wait.
