Hygiene Vs. Sanitation

Once again, with the passage of time, things get easier.  Good for me, sad for my memoirs.


First, I really have started to get used to life without a refrigerator.  Eating habits have been altered, desire for cold water chipped away at, portions downsized to ensure there are no leftovers, and tablespoon after tablespoon of green drink powder consumed in lieu of proper vegetables. I've even come up with all kinds of new ways to eat my box of care-package Crispix without milk.  They've been mosaic-ed onto the top of bread with Nutella (or rather, one of the many off-brand Nutella-imitators I've been trying out after my care-packaged real Nutella reminded me how utterly awesome it is), and used as breadcrumbs in veggie patties.  After a month like this, the fact of not having a fridge seems entirely less dramatic and awful than I thought it would be looking forward.

Which is not to say I'm merrily forsaking the fridge, embracing this new way of life and considering swearing off chilled/sanitary food altogether.  No way. I still have fridge envy. It's just that now I'm spending less time curled up in a ball in my living room, rocking back and forth and thinking about butter, cucumbers, or anything with a "refrigerate after opening" label.  People adapt, I'm adapting, and it's all not that dramatic after all.

Then there's water, a similar story.

I can easily tell you the date and location of every shower I've had in the the last year.  Which is amusing, even to me, but mostly just amusing because I know it is. If that makes any sense.  The bucket shower, or "taking a bucket" as I like to say, hardly seems like a newsworthy challenge the way it did a year ago when I was writing home and saying "Oh my gawd guys! I like totally have to dump cold water on myself to take a shower! And it doesn't even come out of the wall over your head, you just fill up a bucket like you were going to water the plants, but that's your shower! Can you believe it! This Peace Corps thing is like, so hardcore!"

Well, that got normal pretty fast.

Then there was that whole issue in Lila were every time it rained my water turned rusty brown, and I had to fill up the bucket, then wait for hours for some of the sediment to settle to the bottom before gingerly scooping the slightly less dirty water off the top and bathing with that.  That also lost all of its third world charm pretty quickly, and was reassigned to the realm of the ordinary.

Here in Clarin it's a different story altogether.  The water never turns brown when it rains.  In fact, the water doesn't usually turn on  if it's not raining.  And when there is running water, it stays on just long enough for you to think that whole dry spell was just a phase we are now out of for good.  Then it stops, right when your bucket is empty and you've got dishes to do and a body to wash.

So this is my conundrum today.  It rained for a while last night and I managed to fill up one glorious bucket.  But now I don't know what to do with it.  I really need to wash my dishes. It's too hot in the Philippines to keep dirty dishes lying around, and that's just not good form no matter where you are.  I also really need to shower/bucket.  The same reasons you don't want to leave dirty dishes out apply to your person as well.  Oh, and flushing the toilet is another nice thing you use water for.

So for now, the bucket just sits.  I am completely undecided.  How do you choose between hygiene and sanitation?  Eventually, this too won't seem like a big deal. I'll get used to the scarcity and find ways to deal with it.  And anyway, my situation is temporary and self-inflicted.  Ultimately I am just 14 months and one  plane ride away from ten minute hot showers, over-watered lawns, and enormous refrigerators.  The 3 billion people I am emulating right now in my little water crisis are not so fortunate.

But I guess it's that very fact that takes the sting out of all the challenges we write home about as Peace Corps Volunteers isn't it?  Sure, we do live this.  We do see and experience these challenges first hand and our minds, bodies and routines are affected by them.  But ultimately, we're just visitors here, exalting in our own hardships until we eventually realize that there's very little that is abnormal about this after all.

And now, if you're so inclined, some fun and informative water-related infografics from GOOD:

 

Drum roll please...

And the official moving day is....Monday!!!!

That's right, THIS Monday. That means starting next week, I'll call Clarin, Bohol, home.

And just in time too.

Though I've managed to keep myself in good spirits since The Break In - distracted by endless episodes of House, one incredible book about the Amazon, and my wonderful friends - this week has worn on me a bit. While not actively paranoid or scared, something, almost subconsciously, has me on edge. The first night it was a dream that someone was in my house, but I couldn't find them. I kept running from room to room (in real life there are only two, but in the dream I had about eighteen more dark, creaky, full-of-hiding-places rooms), where it was clear someone had been moving things, but no one was there. I started rushing around, growling, increasingly panicked, trying to act tough, and proclaiming out loud that they better show themselves...or else. When I finally saw a human form hiding under an old blanket, I woke up. Lovely, right?

That morning, pouring myself some cornflakes, I noticed a match and a needle lying together in perfect parallel directly between the four legs of a chair in my kitchen. Though they had obviously rolled off the table on their own (though I don't know how the match wiggled from its box first), and there were no signs of someone having gotten in through the door or windows, and everything was telling me that would be a ridiculous thing for someone to do if they had been in my kitchen in the middle of the night, there you have it. The hairs on the back of my neck just don't listen to reason, no matter how hard I try explaining things to them.

The next morning it was an origami flower, which had previously sat on a shelf next to the Virgin Mary, lying all to deliberately on the living room floor. It is not hard to dislodge a paper flower from its perch - any passing breeze could do it - but onto the list it goes: Perfectly harmless things that would hardly have caught my attention a week ago, now intent on driving me mad.

The paradox is that I either have nothing to worry about, or I'm dealing with an absolute lunatic who can walk through walls and has a very sick and subtle sense of humor.

Waking up the other morning to a chasm violently splitting open in my bedroom wall was less subtle. Though I almost immediately saw that a pair of stray cats fighting on the roof had just knocked a board down, the fragment of a moment just before that realization was enough time for my just-waking mind to form the though, "Oh great, now they're really trying to kill me."

Plus, now there's a hole in the wall of the room where I sleep. That same day I spent a significant amount of time turning imaginary skulls and pelvises around in my mind, trying to wedge them through, before concluding nothing but an infant could really make it. And I'm pretty sure I could take an infant.

Though I'm quite certain I'm not in any danger of the Butterfinger Bandit's return, my own mind might just do me in.

So for many reasons on top of the reasons I already had for making a site transfer, this move to Clarin is a welcome and wonderful change. Bring it.

Butterfinger Blues

Please excuse me while I take a break from a very slow-moving recounting of my now not-so-recent trip to Taiwan. Suffice it to say in the meantime that the trip was wonderful and beautiful, and pulling up all the pictures again from this current state actually leaves me feeling a bit...icky.

I haven't been blogging much because life seems to be dragging its feet as of late. It's now no secret that I'm in the middle of transferring to a new town, and have been for what feels like a lifetime. Finally in the very very very last stage - waiting for some signatures from an outside volunteer coordinating agency, the thing having already been approved by the entirety of Peace Corps Philippines right down to the housing in my new town - my current town of Lila seems intent on getting in a few more sucker punches before it spits me out into my next assignment.

The latest is a particularly cruel incident involving a disappearing Butterfinger.

Now, to fully appreciate the magnitude of this tragedy, it helps to know just how valuable American junk food is to those living long stretches without it. Something as simple as a Butterfinger, by virtue of its sudden scarcity, takes on a whole new meaning. Covetous feelings abound. So when, last week, a few of us PCVs found ourselves suddenly awash in American chocolate bars after the visit of a very thoughtful member of the Faces of Tomorrow team (four bars each!!!), our bug-eyed selves had a hard time not devouring them all on the spot. I immediately ate a Babe Ruth and through great personal strength tucked the other three into my refrigerator. This was Thursday, and I managed to eat only one more bar before the weekend arrived. So far so good.

The weekend came and went. It was a typical, fun weekend with good friends, but the Butterfinger remained staunchly in the back of my mind. Which is why yesterday, returning home mid-afternoon, I walked straight to the fridge before even setting down my bag. The door swung open, a cloud of cold air rolling out over me and into the sweltering Philippine heat, and the Butterfinger was...gone! My brow furrowed, and mind racing, I pushed all the other items around, searching. But both my intended snack and its companion had disappeared.

Despite being the only person with keys to the locks I had installed, I texted the caretaker to ask if she or anyone else had been in my house while I was away. Perhaps she had come in for some reason, brought her kids, and they had helped themselves to my fridge while their mom was busy upstairs. But while I was waiting for her reply, I began to notice the other signs: the contents of my backpack pulled out onto a chair, another bag lying in the middle of the floor, my favorite Gerber knife absent from its usual spot on the coffee table, and, in an odd and petty twist, every single chocolate item in the house - gone.

Ugh. Both oddly and luckily, nothing of real value was taken. Though my computer and kindle were with me in Tagbilaran, my cameras were at home and still in their bag where I left them. My passport, strategically buried in a box of odds and ends, remained unmolested. Though I suppose that was smart. A gorgeous, bright orange underwater camera might raise some eyebrows if it suddenly appeared in town, but chocolate is easily disposed of. The curious thing, of course, was how they - whoever they are - got in. The lock still intact on the front door means the only other obvious point of entry is an upstairs window. The window can be prevented from opening by inserting a nail into a hole in track on which the window slides, but with the Philippines' humidity, neither wood nor nail maintain their integrity forever. With enough force, Butterfinger.

The whole thing has me feeling a bit morose, but if the break in had happened six months ago it would have likely been the last straw. At this point, it comes on the tail of many other invasive events: peeping toms, drunken men leaning over the fence, finding someone else's pictures on my computer back when I was still living with a host family... In a society that already has very few inclinations toward privacy or the notion of personal space, being a tall, white, female foreigner in a town completely unaccustomed to such apparitions is something of a perfect storm. I come home feeling completely overexposed, and I come home to hide. Which is why finding someone has eaten the Butterfinger right out of my fridge is almost, ALMOST, funny.

The lesson here: When live gives you four candy bars, eat them all at once.

Changes

What a week.

It began with travelling to Negros for the first time since training for language camp, encompassed a heavy does of emotional chaos, and ended with a spontaneous trip to Bindoy and two of my best friends' return to America.

One thing about this lifestyle is that even though my fellow PCVs and I spend a good deal of time remarking about the often plodding nature of our days here, when things do change those changes are abrupt and complete.

It was hard to focus on Cebuano with all the other turmoil, and I was glad for the week to be over when it was. Still, the thought of returning to an empty Bohol wasn't entirely appealing either, so Todd, Kate and I headed up to Bindoy with Andrea for the opening events of their town fiesta. I had left my camera on Bohol, but managed to snap a few pictures of carabao (water buffalo) racing, a very bloody cock fight, and other events with Andrea's camera.

It took the better part of a day to get myself back to Lila last Sunday, and on the cramped, after-dark final leg of my journey home I experienced something completely new: the desire to get back to Lila, shake off the week, and resume the plod.

Run buffalo, run!

Climbing a very tall, very greased bamboo pole

The bloody aftermath of a cockfight.

Todd and I climbing a few of the old remaining mangroves on the Bindoy coast. Easier said than done - under the trees their exposed root systems make for hazardous scrambling, especially with waves rolling in.

Thanks for the photos Andrea!

Bugs On Your Face, two ways

Today was my host mom's 75th birthday party in Tagbilaran. Kate was nice enough to agree to come with me, and after a late breakfast we made our way to City East, where we were discovered by two nieces and led to the correct house. Everyone had already eaten lunch, but we were ushered to a still set table and encouraged to load up on cold pancit, lumpia, lechon manok, and birthday cake. As we sat there next to each other, and trying to look like we were eating more than we really were, we started talking about Kate's new apartment.

"Margie was pulling her pants down, about to pee in the bathroom, and I kept saying 'No Margie there's no water!'" Kate is saying.

"Why is there no water?" I ask, and as Kate starts to respond, I look up from my plate and turn toward her.

"Well they turned it off because...gguuughh!" The sentence drops incomplete out of her mouth and she lefts forth a primitive sound, her face falling into a look of disgust. My eyes barely have time to widen as she swiftly reaches up and knocks something off my cheek. A large, cream colored spider falls softly onto my stomach.

"That was on your face!" she cries in alarm. I look down, jerk my arms back, and say "Flick it farther!" She flicks, and it sails onto the equally cream colored tile of the floor. It's not a small

spider, about the size of a nickel. I squirm in my chair, suddenly itching all over, and brush at

imaginary spider webs on my face.

I hadn't even felt it. I eye the beast warily from my seat and when it starts - very deliberately I think - crawling back up the leg of my chair we retreat to the living room.

This is the best photo I could commit to. It looked like it might be a jumper.

Though I want to think of having a jungle spider on my face while sitting down for birthday lunch as an isolated incident, my mind instantly goes back to an evening the week before, when I was getting ready for bed. I was starting my nightly grooming routine up in my bedroom - something I do to minimize the amount of time I spend in the somewhat less than sanitary bathroom - and had just popped my toothbrush into my mouth and was putting on a headband when I felt something like webs on my face. What the... My first thought was that a spider had taken up residence on my headband and I had just stretched its house across my forehead. But reaching up to brush it away I found several tiny ants instead. Then I noticed them all over my hand and forearm. "Oh no" I slur aloud, a mouth full of toothpaste. I yanked my toothbrush out of my mouth and looked at it in horror, then ran to my trash bag and started spitting frantically into it. There were ants ground into the bristles and smashed onto the plastic.

Lila's ants, it seemed, had finally acknowledged the overwhelming appeal of a nice toothpastey toothbrush, and in feeding frenzy that should have spurred someone to contact the Poison Control Center, were stuffing themselves with Aquafresh.

That I had failed to notice them even as I put the toothpaste on my brush can only be a testament to the awesome power of daydreams about grilled cheese sandwiches, vanilla soy lattes, hot showers, and HBO.

Six months here, and I still don't have a taste for ants. They show up almost daily in my meals, either roving through the rice or in suicidal flotillas on the surface of ramen, and though I know consumption is inevitable and have occasionally just turned a blind eye, I still find the notion of ants in my mouth...icky. Now I was sure I'd be flossing them out for days.

So last week the ants and today the spider. I might still be striving to achieve acceptance from my Filipino neighbors and coworkers, but it seems the Philippine bugs just love me.