Poverty Thoughts

I haven't written in a while. Life in Cebu has hit some sort of a rhythm now so many days just feel slightly routine and therefore don't seemingly give me much to share. Well unlike how that statement might make it sound, life here certainly is not boring. And if I really think about it, just being here should give me lots to write about. Like things that are different about Cebu as opposed to living in North America. Or how I am affected by seeing such poverty around me. This is the first time I actually lived in a place where poverty was more the norm than anything else. Sure I have traveled to places like Brazil and Mexico and have seen poverty. While living in Thailand I traveled to the Thai/Burma border regularly and saw it upclose for short periods of time. In Chiang Mai I taught English in a poor neighborhood twice a week for two years. But in general, where I came from in the US, was a really nice place to live and in addition, Chiang Mai was a very nice place to live. Sure there were dirty parts to it and pockets of impoverished people but Cebu City is so different from all that.
In my opinion, this city is not a very nice place to live. It's dirty and not that nice to look at. It is not a place with pockets of poverty. On the contrary; there are pockets of wealth - with some level of poverty being the majority; ranging from low-income wage earners living in squatters or very basic apartments to unemployed, destitute and homeless people.
Last Sunday I went out with a group from our church to the streets to visit and hang out with the poor. There were about 50 of us that split into ~10 different groups, each going to a regularly-visited area. I ended up in a group with 3 Filipino women from church. We visited a family of 7 - all living in a small 1-room squatter. The family consisted of a mother, father, 4 children and the mother's adult cousin. Their source of income is dependent on the father's ability to find people who need their cell phones fixed. The oldest daughter was attending high school (which here is 7th-10th grade and in most places in the Philippines is night school (4-9:30pm) since there's not enough space or resources for everyone to go during the day) but recently stopped going because of a gang of boys that kept following and threatening her. The 4 year old boy in the family has a twisted colon and can not poop. He needs surgery (and has since birth) but the family is unable to get the 10,000 pesos ($220US) to pay for it. Each month it is a struggle to pay the 150 pesos ($3.50US) for the tube needed to manually extract this boy's bowels. Some month's they can't afford it. Each month he faces infection and distention of his abdomen which I imagine is accompanied by some level of discomfort and pain.
Each adult in the family shared with us their struggles. We ate ice cream together. We asked about their lives. And then we prayed together. The mother of the family told us she knows God works because the last time they were prayed for whatever the problem was, got better. While we prayed with our hands on her shoulder she cried. God was enouraging and blessing this family. We prayed especially for Samuel, the 4-year-old. We layed hands on his body and prayed for healing. We prayed for each spoken need. It was a really nice time and the family seemed encouraged by our time together. All of us were really excited for the opportunity to pray for Samuel and are eager to return in two weeks to see what happened.
On our way back out of the neighborhood we came across a single mother and her 4 children, two of which are babies, all lying on a pile of cardboard boxes which was their home. A man standing near walked over and asked me if I had anything like this is my country. I said, Yes we have homeless people but not as many as you have here. As we drove back, I realized that I have never seen a whole family with young children like this living on the street. I wondered why. From what I understand, young children like this would not be allowed to stay on the street but would likely be taken into protective custody and then perhaps put into foster care or something so at least their very basic needs for food and shelter were met. I felt bad that I initially had equated America and the Philippines by saying, Oh yeah we have homelessness too. And yeah, sure we have our problems and it is really sad that there is homelessness in such a rich country as ours but the poverty in America is no where near what is so ubiquitous and tolerable here.

More of the Midwifery Story

For those of you who don't know, I am currently in the process of becoming a midwifery student through a distance learning program of the US-based National College of Midwifery (www.midwiferycollege.org). I will be completing a minimum of 1 year of clinical experience (which I've already started) in addition to course work. Both the course and clinical work are overseen by my preceptor, the director/head midwife of the clinic where I am now working. Hilary Overton is from Texas and she and her husband started the Glory Reborn Clinic (www.gloryreborn.com) 4 years ago. Hilary studied to be a midwife through a similar program in Cebu 7 years ago. It is a delight to work with Hilary and the other experienced midwives in the clinic.
How did this opportunity come to be? Well it's an interesting story b/c there is no way i would have guessed i'd be doing this. Prior to moving here when I told friends I was moving to Cebu, at least 2 people told me of people they knew who had studied midwifery in Cebu. This peaked my interest as I had considered going to midwifery school years ago in Seattle but had just finished my nutrition degree and felt it was best to start making some money before borrowing more for school. Once again the idea of midwifery was planted in my mind. I thought to myself, "Maybe I could become a midwife while in Cebu, who knows?"
When Andrey and I were here the first time (in March), we got to talking to two Starbucks employees. They asked if we were living here and if we spoke Cebuano yet. Naturally we told them we were planning to move here soon and would need to study Cebuano. They began to tell us about an American missionary guy that they had helped learn the language. They mentioned that he and his wife were here working in a maternity clinic that gave free services to the poor. Excited and with the strange sense that God was up to something, we left our contact information and asked them to have the American missionaries call us.
They did contact us - not for the reason i was interested in but b/c they saw IJM on Andrey's business card. They had a friend visiting who was in law school who wanted to learn more about Andrey's work so that is what initially brought us together. We had Hilary and David over for dinner and I just couldn't wait to hear about the clinic. Hilary invited me to come and see it and soon I was asking if it were possible for me to become a midwife. Within the month I began working & studying at the clinic regulary. I am now spending close to 30 hours a week there.
I learned that depending on where we live, it is possible for me to practice as a midwife in the US and maybe Canada someday. Even though we really have no idea where we'll be living next (and when that will be), I've decided to go for the midwifery degree anyway, trusting that because i feel the Lord has led me, has given me excitement to do it, and has provided the resources needed, that he will open the door for me to practice some day in some other setting.
There is no doubt that as long as I am in Cebu and really anywhere else in the developing world I will have opportunity to work in some capacity as a midwife.
As for my nutrition and breastfeeding education experience - I'm using this knowledge all the time at the clinic. I'm hoping to help train some of the other midwives in these areas in order to better serve our clients.
I am simply elated that I get to do this work. I am beginnng to gain some confidence in a few areas. Just last week I got to "catch" my first baby! -Closely supervised by midwives, of course. I love connecting with and ministering to the women who come to the clinic. In addition to labor and delivery services, we provide prenatal care, education, postpartum checkups and have worship and prayer times for them. There are many opportunies to bless and encourage them. This is my favorite part of the work. And of course being a part of such an integral time in a family's life is a joy. Being a witness to God's activity in bringing life into this world is awesome. I am fascinated by the whole process and am learning a ton!
I hope to be better about sharing my thoughts and experiences from my times at the clinic on this blog. I hope you enjoy reading about it!

The Local Men's Room

What is it about a place that makes it okay for men to piss where they please? This is definitely an area where Chiang Mai was different. Apparently in Cebu City it is the norm for men to do their business publicly - on the street, against a wall or a fence (usually of someone's home or business), on a telephone poll, between two parked jeepneys... Thankfully, they at least turn their backs in the direction of the most people or traffic but when you're pissin' on the street there's only so much you can hide from. I wish there were some warning sign that would allow me to avert my eyes pre-emtively. Similarly, I wish there was some warning when I'm walking on the street to know when to hold my nose. Ick!
There are numerous signs around the city that say something to the effect, "Don't urinate here." We may have to put one up at the house we are living in. Today just after the delivery of our drinking water, I saw the delivery man take a leak on the concrete fence that surrounds our house. He was just outside the main gate and I saw him clearly from upstairs where I was working! He didn't know I was there. Naturally, thanks to my sensitive automatic reflexes, I was quick to look away but I couldn't help but glare at him as he got in his truck to drive away. I would have happily allowed him the use of our toilet inside.
I must say in their defense, the men who I assume do this most frequently are taxi drivers and jeepney drivers who usually work 24 hour shifts. Granted, there really are few public washrooms they can access. (The washroom here is called the comfort room, or CR and trust me there's not much comforting about them except for the one in the mall where you have to pay 15 pesos ($0.35) to use it. It's worth it.) I guess it's good that most of the drivers are men because what are women supposed to do? Clearly they find a way because I've never once seen a female havin' a squat for a little relief. Yeah, maybe we're slightly jealous.

Trip to Bantayan Island

Last weekend, to further celebrate our 5^th anniversary, Andrey and I traveled to a nearby island to stay at a simple cottage on the beach. We enjoyed 4 days/3 nights in what was indeed a simple beach cottage ($28 per night) that was ideally placed on what proved to be the best part of the beach. Our cottage not only faced the beach but was on the beach. It was a fantastic location. The food wasn’t the best but on the second day we discovered a very unlikely restaurant that had definitely the best foreigner food on the island. We ended up having all our remaining meals at the very rustic White Sands restaurant that was also primly located on the beach. The sign-less restaurant was totally unassuming. In fact, we almost missed it because when we came across it we couldn’t even tell it was a place of business. As it turned out, the owner, a German-French gentleman by the name of Robert, was an excellent host and made sure everything was made to order. It’s amazing how good food can bring such happiness. Perhaps it was because we set our expectations quite low after our previous meals on the island. Some of the food we enjoyed over 3 days included fresh grilled snapper, some of the best scallops we’ve ever had cooked in brandy, roasted potatoes, Italian antipasti-type salad, pizza, seafood pasta, and 2 really good American breakfasts with real coffee which is very hard to come by. Thank you Robert!

Bantayan island is just a 30 minute ferry ride northwest of the northern tip of Cebu island. Going there involved a 3 hour bus ride to the northern part of Cebu. On the way there the bus trip was great as it wasn’t crowded and traffic wasn’t bad. On the way back however, the bus was completely crammed, traffic was awful, it was hot and smelly and it took us 4 hours instead of 3 to get back into the city. We learned that since many Filipinos come to Cebu City for work, many times leaving their family to do so, many of them travel home on the weekends. That makes Sunday evening a really bad time to get back to the city. We met a woman who works 6 days a week. Each Sunday, on her only day off, she travels 3 hours on the bus each way to go home, see her family, perhaps bring them some money - only to stay for 3 hours before heading back to the city for another week of work! It’s amazing what the people here must do to earn a living and support their families. The bus trip only cost 50 pesos (about $1.10 US) each way which was great because with the money we saved on travel and on the cheap room we were able to splurge on eating good food at White Sands.

Te small town where the beach is located is called Santa Fe, which is a small friendly place with shade-lined streets. There are hardly any motorized vehicles on the roads – only a few motorbikes but mostly there are pedalcabs that are not made for big people like us. We had to really cram in to fit on our way in from the port. Mostly we just walked everywhere.

A real highlight of our time was renting bicycles and exploring other parts of the island outside of Santa Fe. We took a main road out of town about 10 km before we saw a sign to a beach resort. We turned off and after biking on some smaller dirt roads another 3 km or so we found the resort which was perfect b/c we really needed a break. We stopped and had mango shakes, french fries, and a little rest before heading back. On the return trip we decided to take a different route and ended up going through the coolest little fishing villages right in the middle of a palm tree forest. It was shady and cool and almost everyone who saw us pass greeted us (this is true of pretty much everywhere we went actually). Among the greetings were (especially yelled loudly from little kids), “Hey!” “Hello!” “Good Afternoon!” “Hey Joe!” “Hey where are you going?” “Where are you?”(our favorite) “Hi!” and there were lots of smiles and laughs. That was really fun actually. In addition to all the kind greetings of the locals we were greeted by roosters, pigs, cows, goats and I even saw rams! The rams didn’t greet us but seriously every other animal either snorted or crowed or mooed as we passed. It was wild! We were thankful that unlike Thailand, there were no wild dogs to chase us or bark at as.

Another fantastic element was the weather. It was perfect! This might not sound strange but since it is rainy season and it has been raining almost daily for the past 2-3 weeks, we were shocked to have had 4 perfectly sunny, hot days. And the beach was probably the nicest we’ve seen in the Philippines so far. We’ve been to two beaches in Cebu, one natural, one man-made and a different beach on another island and none of them were substantial enough to go for a walk for more than 5-15 minutes. But this beach was lined much of one side of the island and we were able to walk quite a ways end to end.

So our anniversary was very memorable. We plan to take any future visitors with us to experience Bantayan as well. We’ll be back.

Bus trip to Bantayan...

Road-side scenes during the bus trip...



Arriving at the ferry terminal - look at all the "trikes"
Arriving on Bantayan - taking a pedalcab to the beach cottage
This picture was taken from the deck outside our cottage - that's all that was between us and the ocean! :)
The beach cottage


White Sands restaurant during the day

White Sands restaurant at night
Kind man grilling the fresh fish we just ordered



Our twice daily walk to White Sands...

More White Sands restaurant (we were obsessed!)


Fishing village in a palm tree forest we passed through on our bike ride

Our last evening...
Road-side scenes from the bus trip back to Cebu...

Anniversary Dinner

We had a WONDERFUL evening last night. We enjoyed a fabulous dinner at a very nice restaurant. I was so excited because braised lamb shank was on the menu which just so happens to be one of my favorite things. I don't usually order lamb very often unless its a special occassion, which last night was, so I had no problem making up my mind as to what I was going to order. We had a cocktail with some of the most delicious bread, then salad, then lamb for me and veal pasta for Andrey (we were eating all the baby animals offered on the menu!), yummy red wine, a delightful lemon cheesecake and an espresso macchiato for Andrey to finish off the meal. The restaurant is open air and the weather was cool(ish) and breezy. How lovely! It was a real treat.

Five Years!

Today is our 5th wedding anniversary. We both are excited about celebrating such a milestone. Being married for 5 years is kind of like turning 30. When I was in my early 20s, I saw being 30 as a long way off and quite old whereas now, being 32 I don't feel that way at all. So it goes with this anniversary. 5 years is a big deal and before you get married 5 or 10 years of marriage seems so far off - you're really just concerned about getting married and enjoying the excitement that comes along with it. Now that we've been married for 5 years, it doesn't feel like its been all that long. It still feels like we're just getting started. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that we have no children, we don't own a house and we've moved around a bit. Who knows? All I know is that being married to Andrey is better than I could have ever imagined it would be. There's no one on this earth I'd rather spend time with.
Tonight we'll be celebrating by going to a nice restaurant overlooking the ocean. Next weekend we are going away for 3 nights to a nearby island to stay in a simple cottage on a quiet, white sand beach. Ooh, I love an excuse to drink champagne. Maybe this is one of them.

Is it humid in Cebu?

Just ask my hair.
Too bad it isn't 1986.

Random Cebu City Photos

Somebody Else's Home

For those of you who'd like to see, here are the shots of the home we are living in. We are house-sitting for a year for an American missionary couple who is in the US raising money. Having the opportunity to stay in this home is a huge blessing actually. It is very comfortable with all the amenities (except central A/C) and it is cheap. Don't worry, we do have A/C in the huge master bedroom. Really, we must never complain. The house also comes with 2 full time staff (maids) and 1 part time gardener. They don't live in but they are here Monday through Friday 8 to 5. I haven't done one load of laundry since we moved here! I must say though that the decorative style certainly does not match out own - but that's how it goes when you live in someone else's house.

Photos!!! Finally!

Here are a few shots from our first two weeks here and of the back yard of the home we are living in for the first year. We enjoyed two weekends with successfully smoked meats - first chicken, then fish. We'd never used a smoker before and Andrey did a great job!