One of the first things I should mention when starting this day was one of the first things my friends told me: traffic rules in the Philippines are mere suggestions. People merge left and right with no signals, they make lanes wherever there’s room, despite the street markings, and motorcycles and what they call tricycles travel between cars as if they are always seen, darting here and darting there. Because of this the coordinators decided we needed protection so the two buses, one for our group and one for a group of Filipinos, were sandwiched between a squad car in front and a SWAT car in back as well as a few cars from the Embassy since they had set it up. On the way I took a number of pictures of the poor conditions: the shacks the people live in, a pile if trash that almost looks like the recycle bin somewhere, people on bikes, people in jeepayes, some pictures of their tricycles, an interesting picture of a billboard for corned tuna… I’ll put those up soon as we hit home port again. Jeepayes are cars that lo k kinda like pickups but have a cover with open sides and benches inside. They seem to serve as the main city buses here, traveling a specified route but without marked stops anywhere. Thy see, to be privately owned as each one is decorated differently though many are merely “decorated” with brand names and advertisements. The tricycles are pedal bikes or motor bikes connected to a seat with a cover that rolled next to it. The tricycles seem to be the poor man’s taxis as there are actual car taxis around too.
I guess the project is actually a community H4H has basically built from the squatters up to actual cement homes. Apparently landowners get annoyed at squatters (people who live and work the land but don’t pay rents or such) when the land is doing bad and they need more land so they kick the squatters off. The H4H group in Manila got a large donation of land from a church and decided to build a community for those squatters. By the time we got there, over a hundred houses had been built in over twenty years by H4H and other houses had probably been built by the inhabitants. It was a nice community even if it was really poor. Most of the houses were one story and maybe ten by ten or fifteen by fifteen for an entire family. The project we were to work on was the daycare/preschool for the community. Some of the guys worked on shoveling rocks into the mixer while others passed the buckets of cement up to the second floor to lay it out and the rest of us painted black metal pieces red. It was an interesting morning. Did you know Tagalog is the main language of Manila (behind English) but that it’s not quite the main native language? If I understood the guy right, each province has its own dialect that is basically a different language. I hadn’t known that. Anyways, they brought lunch for us all and it was donated by McDonalds, the main pizza place in the area, and KFC as well as we were given samples of strawberry Oreos. (for the record, the Oreos were not disgusting. The strawberry filling was rather tasty and the cookie was the regular Oreo cookie, but they were not good mixed.) The food was delicious but I had been hoping for local cuisine. Oh well, it was what it was. Unfortunately I had two cups of soda. I had meant to only have one but didn’t want to be rude a decline another. Yeah, hot day, burning sun, and I always have trouble getting enough water. The soda was not a good idea. When I went back to painting it was to dizziness every time I straightened up. Luckily I only had two more pieces to paint to we got o sit down (the painters) and watch while the community kids finished a game. Then the other painters joined a game until it started raining and we dashed to the community center to avoid the downpour. Fortunately for the community the rain held off until a few minutes after the cement layers had finished so everything that was supposed to get done that day got done.
We ran for the community center as the guy in charge from our ship had a plaque to give the community members. Yeah, big group, small area, everyone talking over the pelting rain on the metal roof, people trying to get my email and while away the time talking. Forcing smiles gets really annoying after a while. Eventually I realized the bus was open and a few people were already in there so I made a dash. Hmm, silence, or at least order. Not long after that we headed out and made it back in time for me to get chow, do some work, and do my laundry.
Well, that's all for the second day so I'll sign out now and wish you all a lovely day until tomorrow.
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