Lists and Lines

It's March 1st. This means I have been here six and a half months, and also, in a few more days, my service is one quarter completed. I promised myself when I first got here that I wouldn't do this - that I wouldn't keep track and count down and otherwise treat this time as some kind of diversion from my normal life, something to be gotten through, finished, accomplished. No, I wanted this to be a simple continuation of life. This is just what I am doing now, I am here, and I'm not going to spend any time pondering some vague event at some arbitrary point in November of 2012.

Ha. Yeah right.

I think about points on this timeline all the time. I think about November 2012. I wonder about other dates and numbers too. For instance, last night when I was lying on my bed under my mosquito net and I realized that over six months have passed and that meant I was one quarter finished, I started wondering how many other things I have finished too.

How many pairs of shoes molded? Four

How many books read? Eight and four halves - all but one of those in the last three months

How many mosquito bites sustained? About seven a day for the last six and a half months...too many

How many mosquitoes killed? Clearly not enough. I will get them ALL.

How many IEC presentations given? Eighteen

How many fisherfolk and community members reached? Six hundred ten

How many Bantay Dagat members acquired since my arrival? Four

How many small children high-fived? Two dozen

How many ants consumed? One bajillion

How much do I miss my family, friends, and Teebs? Incalculable

And of course, how much time left to go? Twenty and a half months

Photo stolen shamelessly from Kate.

Around the house - February 28, 2011

My wall. Look closely and you may see yourself.

Oh my oh my. This is where I try to shower.

Hanging out with one of my roommates

Going crazy...

Yesterday evening I was reading in my bedroom when I started to smell gasoline. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, so naturally I decided someone was trying to murder me by burning the house down. I had already started to plan my pajamaed escape across the rooftops, mentally making note of what to bring and how far down the road I would have to run before being in a safe spot to call for help, when I realized the new 13 year old my family has acquired was just polishing the floors with some awful, pungent chemical.

Faces of Rabies Day

A couple days ago I accompanied my counterpart Bebie, Lila's Agriculture Technologist, out on her visit to the barangay La Fortura to administer rabies vaccinations to its furry residents.

Lila is dog-crazy - but that doesn't always translate to the kind of loving and responsible pet ownership that we expect, and have laws to support, back home. Most dogs here live in cages like hamsters, or on the end of heavy chains.

This is Sniper, my neighbor, and the only dog I've seen in the Philippines who actually lives inside a house, though still on a rope. She's very demure for a puppy, and I have to coax her to want to play with me.

Unlike dogs you meet on the streets of California, which are as likely to run toward you and nuzzle your crotch as anything, street dogs here go out of their way to avoid people, skirting in large circles around you, eyes warily on your legs and feet.

It was good to see people bringing their dogs out for vaccinations on rabies day, but most of the dogs looked like they hadn't been out in quite a while - nervous, shy, and over-excited.

Well hello there!

You are what you eat

Where the Wild Things Are

A typical Philippine home is full of wild little surprises.

I almost stepped on this fellow during a late night Nalgene fill-up in the kitchen. In the dark I thought it was a pile of poop (you never know) but it turned out to be a hermit crab the size of a baseball. I paparazzi-ed it until it dragged itself under the fridge.

Then I went upstairs and spent 20 minutes holding my camera over my head trying to get a good picture of on of my ceiling geckos. On lonely days I like to think of them as pets.

Then I was distracted by this pretty, snowy moth, also on the ceiling.

But someone else found it too.

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.