On governance and weather patterns

(most fascinating post title EVER huh?  two really, really sexy topics, i know).

So the pace of my research has slowed down a bit now that I'm traveling all around - I mean, I still have days where I'll interview 6 activists in a day, but they're far rarer than they were in Manila, and every now and again i wind up not interviewing any - I go to offices, chat with staff or directors, send emails and make calls, but end up at the end of the day with no new interviews recorded.  I have to remind myself, after the breakneck pace of Manila, that it's okay to have days like that, as long as they aren't ALL like that.  And they aren't, of course - I got another dozen interviews in the last week or so.

One thing that really came through in my interviews in the South was the importance of local governments.  Of course, activists talked about this in Manila, too, but visiting Davao kind of drives it home.  Davao is a big, progressive city in the south-east corner of Mindanao, which prides itself (seriously, every taxi driver was boasting) on being the cleanest, safest city in the Philippines... or so they claim.  Fascinatingly, smoking is pretty much banned there - not allowed in ANY public spaces, with fierce fines if a cop catches you, and huge billboards everywhere reminding you that it's "BECAUSE WE CARE" (their caps).  If this doesn't sound that fascinating to you, then pay a visit to Manila... because EVERYBODY smokes EVERYWHERE.  Except on the light rail, I think.  But everywhere else!

Anyway, Davao's father-and-daughter mayoral team (they just switch place between mayor and vice mayor.  It's weird.  Clan politics are weird.  Wow, that was a nuanced and culturally sensitive comment, huh?) are very strong supporters of women's issues, and a few years back Davao passed a Women Development Code.  It mandated the creation of a Integrated Gender and Development Office (still just a department now, but they're working on it) and also:
- Banned beauty pageants that involved any skimpy outfits, nudity or degrading acts
- Banned billboards degrading to women
- Mandated that all city employees be trained in gender sensitivity
- Required that all business provide reproductive health services to employees or risk losing their business license
- Mandated maternity leave of 6 months for women working for any employer
- Set up tax benefits for companies that provide child care
- Defines the feminist principles officials and police should follow when helping battered women.  (First line: "Feminists maintain that violence and abuse are never appropriate in an intimate relationship.")
- and it keeps going!  special sections for indigenous women and women with disabilities, recognition of the rights of lesbians, ways to improve access to education for older women, etc, etc.  I was reading this thing and my jaw literally dropped and I said, "and this PASSED!?"  It reads like a (second-wave?) feminist's pipedream.   But it passed - and it appears, in many ways, to be fulfilling its stated goals.

I seriously could not believe that they managed to ban bikini contests, though.  Can you imagine trying that back home?  The libertarians would all have heart attacks.

Anyway, everybody I interviewed mentioned the fact that the local government provided a lot of support, including financially, to woman's organizations and woman's issues - and that if the smaller units of government (barangays) were resistant to, say, dedicating money for a Women and Children's Protection Desk (where battered wives and abused children can seek help at any time), the mayor's office will put pressure on them to comply with the law.  In fact, the mayors here appear to be kind of despotic - rule with an iron fist and all - but they're despotic in favor of women, which frankly is a phrase I never expected to write.

Despotism aside, is it encouraging or discouraging that local governments can make so much of a difference?   Little of both... it means that even if the national government doesn't pass, say, a reproductive health bill, communities can elect leaders who care about the issue and will make the absence of the national bill downright irrelevant.  But on the other hand, it means that even if the nation has passed, say, a bill banning VAW (which they did - Republic Act 9262, 2004) the enforcement rests squarely on the local level, and a mayor or barangay captain who doesnt' care can make the presence of a national bill... downright irrelevant.

On the travel note, I kind of like the rainy season!  Okay, there's one thing I don't like: My clothes NEVER DRY.  NEVER.  OMG.  So that's annoying.

But the thunderstorms are so dramatic!  And as long as I can find shelter, so much fun to watch!  And they cool down the temperature, and add variety, and chase away the crowds.  Friends, the rainy season is sweet!

And even cloudy days can be absolutely beautiful... for instance, when we visited Lake Cebu, it was a cloudy, rainy day - and I got mud all over myself to prove it, at one point - but it was also gorgeous.  Amazingly gorgeous.

so little time

i gots lots to say... what should I say first?

ya'll want political or personal? practical or purely useless?  short or incredibly long?  research update, or travel observations?  thoughtful and philosophical, or... not?  pictures?  prose?

or more talking about food?  i could definitely do more food.

see, even before the writing happens, there's this question - WHAT to write?  and it always seems like there's too few choices or way, way too many.

Guimaras island and a bad resort

So today I decided to take a vacation.  I had to really talk myself into it... I mean, I'm not here for vacation!  I'm here for research!  And EVERY DAY there's something I could be doing!

But as of last night, my best-case scenario schedule for today involved touring a coal-fired power plant and interviewing a disaster-relief activist... neither of which, you will note, is really related to my research subject.  And I was tired.  And stressed out.  And, apparently, emotionally drained or something.  And Guimaras Island was 15 minutes away, and there was a beach resort highly recommended by my guidebook that cost exactly 2 dollars more than my cheap downtown hotel, so what other excuses did I have, huh?  huh?

And after that antagonist exchange with myself I packed my bags, boarded a boat, and went on a beautiful tricycle ride through the mango-growing, rainforested island of Guimaras. (Maybe this would be a good time to note that tricycles are motorcycles with passenger-carrying attachments... like sidecars on steroids.  Not, actually, little red trikes for kids.  Just to clarify).

So I arrived at this resort - a collection of individual bamboo cottages on an idyllic cove - to find it was empty.  Almost completely empty... me, two staff members, a cat, a dog, and a bunch of chickens comprised the entire guest list.  Furthermore, what my Lonely Planet described as a "warm, friendly, family-run" resort was looking kind of like a poorly-maintained, poorly-managed dump.  A dump, I will note, on an absolutely BEAUTIFUL patch of real estate.  I reminded myself of this after finding bird shit on my bed, and discovering that the resort's sole (!) snorkel mask was leaky, and that they no longer had sailboats to rent out, and that even the hammocks were old and absurdly uncomfortable.  Also, it was raining.  I am really good at taking vacations, friends.  Anyway, I told myself, look at the turquoise water!  And the sandy beach!  The rocky cliffside, the view from your balcony, the rainforest!

And the food is delicious - fresh fish and shrimp and crabs, cooked by some guy who for some reason won't put on anything but boxer shorts but is, whatever his attire, a hell of a chef.  So, as you can imagine, that has cheered me up enormously.

Tonight at dinner - oh man am I bad at eating crabs, in case you were wondering, they are like tiny scraps of deliciousness trapped in STEEL SAFES - I learned the reasoning behind the resort's failing condition.  It turns out it is not just that Lonely Planet sucks... this is, in fact, what happens to a warm family-run operation when the marriage at the heart of that family falls apart.  In a country where divorce is illegal.

My dinner companions (who eventually arrived to break the scary silence of a resort with only me in it) were a charming Spainard, his friendly Filipina girlfriend and her two sisters.  Side note - this is a really discombobulated post, sorry for my lack of structure, I'M ON VACATION - I got to practice my spanish!  His English seemed about as good - which is to say as weak - as my Spanish, so either we talked in English and he pretended to understand, or we talked in Spanish and I pretended to understand, and I think I was a better faker.  Have you ever tried to have a discussion about the current economy of China and the reasons behind the American embargo on Cuba... in Spanish?  Have you??  It is hard.  Now you know.

His girlfriend, of course, showed us both up by being fluent in English and Spanish.  And Ilonggo.  And, I presume, Tagalog.  Oh, and working on Chinese.  And also she was beautiful and clearly brilliant.  God damn.

ANYWAY, he is filthy rich or something because he said he has been trying to talk the owners into selling the place to him, but there's lots of legal complications what with them being separated at all.  And suddenly it all made more sense - why guests were avoiding it, why the place was falling apart (because why invest in something you aren't sure if you'll own for much longer, and when if you sell, you'll only get 50% of the value?) and why the owners weren't there and even some weird parts about the text-versation i'd had to reserve my room.

But a failed marriage cannot make Guimaras less beautiful, I am pleased to report, nor can it make fresh seafood less inherently delicious, nor the sound of the waves less relaxing.  So the report from the Philippines today is, if not an unqualified and enthusiastic shout for joy, at least a peaceful sigh.

a taxi ride

I had just finished chewing out my taxi driver for the high price of a ride from the airport - which was a mistake, it wasn't his fault, the company set the standard price, i knew it and i know, i know, i shouldn't have.  I blame my hunger and my intense lack of sleep - I hadn't slept a wink the whole night, in bed or on the plane, and my head hurt like hell, and traveling wasn't feeling very fun any more.  In fact, I blame my lack of sleep for the whole business.

After a lengthy and not-particularly-amicable silence from me, the taxi driver spoke up.  "From Manila, ma'am?"

"No, Davao."  Another grumpy silence, and he tried again.

"Your first time in Iloilo?"

"Yes," I said, and paused.  "But my grandfather is from the area."

"Ah, whereabouts?"

I faltered.  "I... I don't actually know."  Another pause, and I blurted out, "He's dying."

I fell back into silence, now more shocked than sullen, completely surprised by myself.

"Are you coming back for the funeral?"

"No," I said, and swallowed.  "He's back home in the states.  And I'm here," I said, and laughed a little, except suddenly I was crying, too, and that was another surprise.

And I was still talking and I didn't know why.  "He's back in America and I'm here and I'm worried," I choked out, "I'm worried I won't get to say goodbye," and suddenly I was sobbing.  The driver didn't say a word, but he might have given me a sympathetic glance or something, I don't know, because I wasn't looking.  I was staring down at the plush red seats and saying to myself, "Breathe, Camila, breathe.  This isn't productive at all."  And crying.  Still crying.

8 am, Friday morning, my first day in Iloilo.

o green world, o gray world

This country has so many kinds of beauty - the wild mountains of Mindanao with their waterfalls and coconut plantations, the endless, even rice terraces of Luzon, the underwater landscapes and white-sand beaches circling it all.   But I've spent most of my time far away from that beauty, firmly ensconced in the centers of cities.

I've taken dozens of interviews, all in big cities, most with people born in big cities, raised with smog in their lungs and a busy world outside their windows.  But I've also talked to transplants from the provinces, born in the far-flung rural regions of the nation who moved to the cities for a continued education, a better job, an upwardly mobile life.

There's a common thread in those interviews, the ones with the children of the countryside.  When they speak of their hometowns - with fondness, pity, regret, hope - they end with the same expression of longing.  "It's so beautiful," they say - they all say, in a room in a building on a block in an endless metropolis.  They describe their home island, or mountain, or beach, and say, "I wish you could visit - you should see it.  Just gorgeous."

It's hard to explain just how different these worlds seem - the rural, green, growing, stunningly beautiful and the harsh and dirty ultra-urban.  I've criss-crossed the States and seen a dozen cities and a hundred rural landscapes, but somehow I've never thought this hard about the contrast - maybe since I live somewhere between the two, in a city embraced by the mountains, with the city far smaller and less painful than the cities here, and the mountains - i confess it - less beautiful.

But here, with the distinction so pronounced, I find a strange question in my mind - is one world more real than the other?  It's irrational, I know, but as I travel on buses and boats and planes, crossing the imaginary lines between the two "worlds," they seem like they can't coexist - not equally.  Is the idyllically-beautiful country setting more authentic than the fume-filled, concrete-covered megalopolis?  Are the big business deals, momentous government decisions, the millions of intertwined lives in the cities more important than the isolated families out here?

And who suffers more - the fishermen in nipa huts, or the pedicab drivers in iron-and-plywood huts?

How can I possibly compare the two?  And yet, how can I not?

blargh

I've been having trouble motivating myself to get out and do tourist-y things... I know I should.  I mean, as long as I'm here, right???

But when I don't have interviews scheduled, I mostly find myself floundering, or getting online, or working on my budget, or something dull like that.  Take this afternoon, for instance. I had a morning interview, which I finished at 11, and then - freedom!  I could have gone to the beach!  Or the eagle conservation place!  Or the volcano!  Or the islands!  Or the pineapple plantations!

So many possibilities, right?

And yet here I am, in a cafe, reading feminist blogs and catching up on the news.  What a waste, eh?  I could wait to do this until I get home, but I can't see Philippine eagles at home!

I think it has something to do with being alone... hanging out at the beach by myself, or going to visit the volcano by myself, just isn't that appealing.  If I was here with friends, I think I would be all about getting out and seeing things - maybe even to an annoying degree - but by myself, I am FAILING at it.

yet another post about food...

i know i know i know.  but the thing is i like food, like, a LOT.  so i think about it a lot.  seriously, sometimes I stop and think about how much of my brainspace is spent thinking about food, and I despair, and then I remember that it could be full of trivia about 80s cartoons or something, and I recover a little bit... but only a little bit.  anyway what I'm saying is I'm sorry that I think so much about food that even my blog about travel is mostly about food.

but anyway, TODAY, at a classy little japanese seafood place, while I floundered (ha!) my way around the massive menu, I was thinking about how great it is that food here is so cheap.  (Note: when I say cheap, I mean for me, with my American dollars.  on a semi-regular basis food prices in the Philippines rise to a point that puts serious pressure on the poorer classes of society, so even though the Philippines produces enough food to feed its own population, and foreigners find food prices extremely low, i'm not comfortable calling food cheap without this qualifying note.  i mean even with the qualifying note i'm kind of uncomfortable talking about how cheap things are for me here but... well... here i go.)

so there's the obvious benefit, which is the same as the housing being relatively cheap, which is - duh - that my trip is way cheaper than if I were, say, traveling around Australia interviewing activists or something.  but there is an unexpected benefit to food being cheap - I don't have to decide what to eat on my own!

Because here's the thing.  In my normal life, I am a vegetarian, which usually makes it way easier to pick what to eat at restaurants - find the three or four vegetarian options, choose the least-lame-sounding, done!  But here, since I am eating all manner of animals, it's completely overwhelming.  The menus are pages and pages of possibilities, half of them completely unknown to me, and I don't know what to do.  But I figured it out!  I have a strategy!  I ask the waiter, "What's best?"  And I order that!

Novel, right?  Completely astonishing?   for me... yes!  And totally liberating!  Especially since they almost always pick things I would never have chosen myself.  Sometimes they pick things not even listed on menus or specialty boards.

Of course, they also almost always pick one of the more expensive items the restaurant serves.  But (and i get back to my point) food here is so cheap that, after hemming and hawing, I stop and tell myself, "You know, Camila, you can probably afford to spend $7 on dinner instead of $2."  (And yes, I have had really amazing meals here for $2.  Not just good - amazing).  And while I love me some greasy, grungy low-budget restaurants - and have had some great dinners at those places - I don't just have to stick to the obviously cheap locations, because an expensive meal - i'll say it again - seven dollars.  Seriously, as long as I avoid the restaurants catering to foreigners and go where the locals say to eat, I can buy anything on the menu and not even blink.

what I'm saying is that, because food here is absurdly cheap, I can afford to eat out every night.  I can afford to eat out every night at the best restaurants in town.  I can afford to go to the best restaurants in town and order whatever my waiter identifies as the best dish they make - every. single.  night.  and despite those pages of menus, i don't have to decide a dang thing, and i always get something amazing.

is... is this what life is like for the filthy rich?  because let me tell you what, my life right now is DELICIOUS.

(oh, and at the japanese place?  i got some kind of sushi... couldn't tell you what it was except that part of it was purple and the sushimaster dude said something about a shell and that it was "so fresh, ma'am, so fresh."  and daaaaang was it good.  and then local-catch sashimi.  life by the sea!)