Volunteer for the Visayans Projects

Now that you know what I do during the week, I feel like I should write about some of the adventures we have gotten to have on the weekends.

Our first Saturday here we had an excursion through Volunteer for the Visayans, so everyone met at the center at 9:00 am. (Everyone includes Mackenzie and I; Albert, a medical student volunteer from the UK who is Chinese with a British accent which really threw Mackenzie and I off for a while; Tanya, a volunteer in the orphanage from the UK who is one of those people you just look at and say "wow". She's a dancer; Nicki, also a volunteer at the orphanage, but from Australia who was pretty quiet; Gabby, Nicki's friend from Australia, who is also working in the orphanage, but who is the most easy going, fun loving, go with the flow person. I really liked her; Eugene, the volunteer coordinator who is pretty much our go-to guy whenever we need anything, and DaVina, Eugene's assistant in training who used to be really quiet, but we are getting her to open up.)

From the center we got in a private Jeepeney that Eugene had rented for the day (and the driver was the dad of one of the sponsor kids) and we visited several of the projects that Volunteer for the Visayans works with as well as the touristy parts of Tacloban. First we went to the home of one of their build-a-home projects where they take an extremely run down house and remodel it for about $1000 so that it has a solid floor, roof, and walls, is raised to prevent flooding, and has electricity. As we were walking through the mud up to the house, 5 kids from another very run down house posed for pictures and we all kind of realized the circumstances some people have to live with here. Up until then we hadn't seen a really poor area. This place made our neighborhood look fancy. The gentleman who owned the remolded house welcomed us inside and told us about his 3 children and 2 grandchildren who live with him. He is a pedicab driver (basically a bicycle with a sidecar attached) and he makes about 200 pisos a day (roughly 4 dollars) but has to pay 50 pisos a day to rent his pedicab. Therefore, he makes roughly 3 dollars a day and his wife has sporadic work when she can get jobs washing clothes. It just amazes me how welcoming and loving these people are when they have so little. When we left his kids smiled and waved as if we weren't people who throw away the amount of money their dad makes in a day on coffee or a candy bar.

From there we went to the site of the new headquarters of Volunteer for the Visayans because their organization is getting too big for the current site. Right now they only have the money to buy the land, but they are very optimistic that they will be able to begin building soon. It was supposed to cost 6,000,000 pisos ($120,000) to build the new center, but they got an architect to agree to build it for 2,000,000 pisos ($40,000). Right now the site just looks like more of the tropical jungle with tons of coconut trees and giant flowers, but everyone is so excited for the new center.

After that we went to the two tourist spots in Tacloban, the Santo Nino Shire/Marcos Museum, and the San Juanico Bridge. When you walk into the shrine you see a cross made of tiny lights and everything else is dark. The rest of the building (around the shrine) is a museum dedicated to Ferdinand Marcos, the 10th president of the Philippines who is known partially for how much money his wife spent. Her 3,000 pairs of shoes are now on display in a museum in Manila. We walked through each of their guest bedrooms, their bedrooms (separate because males and females couldn't share rooms), their children's rooms, the kitchen, the ballroom, and my personal favorite, the Alitaptap room (firefly room). In this room there were tiny twinkling lights is swirling patterns across the ceiling. I could only think that this would be a wonderful way to decorate any little girls room. While everything in the museum was absolutely beautiful it didn't fit with anything else we had seen or witnessed in the Philippines. Therefore, it was probably my least favorite stop of the day.

From there we drove to the San Juanico bridge, the longest bridge in the Philippines, that connects the islands of Leyte and Samar. Because we had a private Jeepeney we could stop in the middle of the bridge to get off and take pictures while he crossed the bridge to turn around. We probably looked ridiculously silly taking a million pictures of ourselves and the landscape and the bridge, but the landscapes are so beautiful that we couldn't help ourselves. We also got some really great pictures of our group.

Our last stop of the day was Rafael's Farm, probably the nicest restaurant in Tacloban. The restaurant is an open air, very quiet restaurant with fountains and aquariums like you would see in a resort in Hawaii. It is also surrounded my acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and ponds. If this place was in the US, its where I would get married. We took a million pictures because it was so beautiful and I know that I keep saying everything was beautiful, but I can't even begin to describe how everything looks. I need to get some pictures up so that you can see the perfect green color of everything, the giant flowers, and the millions of palm trees. Lunch there was also amazing because I had ribs (but they still didn't compare to yours Mom!)

On our way back home, the Jeepeney driver let the girls ride on the back of the Jeepeney (which is normally not something that girls are allowed to do because men are supposed to give up their seats in the Jeepeney for women if it is full). However, we were all so excited that he let us. So there we were, 4 white girls (two from the US, one from the UK, and one from Australia) smiling like crazy as we rode down the street. Everyone who saw us either smiled, laughed, and waved, or looked at us with that very confused, tilt-of-the-head look that means this is something they have never seen before. It was probably the most fun ride I've had in the Philippines, especially with how many people we made smile.

Even though we only got to visit a few of the projects of Volunteer for the Visayans, Eugene got to tell us about the others as well. In addition to the volunteers, the build-a-home project, and the center (where they hold tutoring, dance classes, assistance for single moms, and feedings for local kids), they also have the adopt-a-school project where they provide school supplies to poor schools (because the government only provides a small stipend for supplies and teachers have to pay for everything else), a Home for Girls and Home for Boys where children who have had trouble at home, are homeless, or who have gotten in trouble with the law can live, and the Sponsor a Child project which is very similar to WorldVision where for $25 a month ($300 per year) they can provide food, a stipend to help with housing payments, uniforms for school, and annual dental and medical checkups for a child. Many of the students in our class and kids we tutor at the center are sponsor kids. It still amazes me just how much this organization helps its community. I feel so blessed to get to be a small part of it.

Oh and P.S. Mackenzie finally started her blog today, so if you would like even more info about our lives here, visit her blog Adventures in Cangumbang.