When I was nineteen I was part of a program through a church that took a month long trip to Taiwan and the Philippines. This was an experience of epic proportions from the beginning to the end.
The plan ride was so.many.hours.long. It was important to get up and walk every so often so your legs didn't swell and you didn't develop blood clots. It was a fun plane ride though for me as it was with good friends. I liked everyone on my team.
When we arrived the heat, humidity and noise hit me like a ton of bricks. We were loaded into a Jeepney which is a vehicle left over from World War Two days. It was a vehicle with a front driver seat and then two benches in the truck bed with a roof and walls but the walls had slits in it. Where I am from you do not use your horn ever, unless you are angry. In the Philippines you use your horn constantly to communicate to other drivers what you are doing. The roads are teeming with vehicles and there does not seem to be many rules to an untrained eye. Pedestrians have zero right of way. It is so full of pollution and noise and heat. When the traffic stops people come up to try to sell you things and you have to be careful not to have jewelry stolen off of you. We had been flying for hours and to encounter this right off the batt was an assault of the sense to the highest degree. We were overwhelmed. When we arrived at our destination we were relieved. The girls were in a room full of bunk beds and the boys were next door in the same set up.
As we were settling in our room one of the girls let out a shriek as the first cockroach encounter of our lives happened. The boys came in to the rescue and assured us they could not see any more (which was a huge lie to keep up quiet) as the cockroach had run under a bed. Apparently there were many cockroaches under the said bed but we didn't know till later. We then had our first shower experience in the Philippines. There was no hot water and no seats on the toilet. Where we were from every shower was hot and there were seats on every toilet and there was not a single cockroach.
My time in the Philippines was absolutely life changing and incredible. I loved the country.
The open air markets were mind boggling to someone that had only been in quality controlled grocery stores. So many carcasses hanging out covered in flies. So many things to buy at such cheap prices.
The Philippines was covered in litter. The streets were so dirty. Once again I had come from a country where I rarely saw litter on the streets or highways because people were payed to constantly clean and there are high fines for littering. I hope it does not seem like I am being negative or scornful about it. It was just such a vast difference from where I had come from that it stuck out to me,
I saw people defacating in the middle of the streets, and dogs and cats covered in sores. I had also never encountered this in my country. I went to a massive garbage dump where many acres of land was piled mountains high with garbage. In fact the piles were so high that there was an area that had collapsed and killed multiple people. I saw little naked children who lived the outskirts of the dump and who's parents spent their days combing through garbage to find what they could to eke out a living. Once again I had not experienced that here. There are MANY homeless people in my town but none of them are allowed to live at the town garbage dump.
I stayed at a woman's house whose husband was a missionary for most of her marriage in another country. She had four children many years apart because she only saw her husband once every five to seven years and would then get pregnant. The children did not really know their father. Her youngest son had never met him. This woman was one of a few women that we met in the same circumstances. They stayed back and ran businesses to support their husbands. It was a strange concept that we felt was very wrong.
We all split up and stayed in different villages. I stayed with three friends in a little village that was beautiful and where many people had basically nothing. I had never been exposed to such poverty before. I remember standing at the top of a hill and looking down onto hundreds and hundreds of shacks built out of cardboard and tin that people had constructed. It was a whole community with chickens walking down the tiny dirt paths between houses. There was no running water or sanitation but people kept their places immaculately clean. The people we encountered were so deeply kind and sweet. They gave what they could. We made food to share and children came running. We also did crafts with them and taught them what we could about the love of Jesus.
We ate many different foods. I was struck by the fact that bananas have seeds! Since bananas are imported here they never have seeds. Also bananas in their home country are much more yellow inside. They are always white here. A delicacy was chunks of fat floating a broth. When the more picky people on my team refused to eat it the kind Phillipinos just took our bowls and ate what was left. Also a very special meal prepared for us was a whole fish with eyeballs still in in a bowl. We were so young and rude not realizing how much they were sacrificing to feed us these special foods. When they asked us what a staple food was for us we had no idea what that really meant. We were so privileged. We said bread. They made sure to have a loaf of white bread at every meal even though they never ate bread. I am filled with gratefulness at their sacrifice to my unaware, young, privileged self. I hope I can thank them in Heaven.
In the Philippines one night I stayed at a conference that the rest of my team did not stay at. I was asked to stay by the people there and I said yes. That night I slept on the floor on a piece of cardboard that I shared with a three year old. I have never slept on cardboard again but I had a great sleep that night.
Being in the Philippines opened my eyes to a different level of poverty I had never seen before. We met a wealthy lady and went to her house. It was amazing to see all that she had when others so close to her, just down the road, were so hungry and had nothing. She was wealthy because her son worked on a ship and was gone for months at a time but made a good wage. We met his wife who suffered from headaches and what I believe was a lot of anxiety. We met children hungry to learn but who did not have opportunity. We so wished we could rescue the many starving sick animals and help the children who so deserved all the chances we had been given.
We met so many kind people and we ate fresh mangos and hotdogs on sticks poked into pineapple. We shopped in massive malls and in open markets. We swam at a new indoor swimming pool. The ocean was full of garbage and so it was not advised to us to swim. We saw so many different neighborhods and drove in Jeepneys and buses.
One memory I have that is one of the best of them all for me. I have many memories of this trip that are dear, but it was how I felt during this memory that blessed me deeply.
One day it started to rain. I had never experienced a tropical downpour. Every day had been thick with heat and humidity. Our clothes stuck to us and we felt wilted. One day it started to rain and I was in a small village with three friends. We decided to go outside and walk in the rain. The rain was pouring but it was so bright outside, the air was warm, the rain was warm! It was raining so hard that within a very short amount of time the roads were flooded and water was rushing through buildings. The sewers flooded and rats were floating down the road. People were showering with soap in the rain as many did not have running water. I was struck with the thought of the people whom we had served that lived at the bottom of the hill in their cardboard and corrugated metal structures. I knew their places would be decimated. However there was this sense of elation and freedom in the warm pouring rain that felt unique to me. I had felt that once before as a child in warm rain storm with a friend and we had ran outside and rolled on the hot pavement in the rushing water. It was such a fun surprise happening at the time and this felt the same.
We got soaked to the skin and it felt like this beautiful experience. Then the sun shone again, the rain was done and we went back to the place we were staying.
One more thing that I remember clearly from the Philippines ~
The Phillipino culture is very affectionate. Where we were from people rarely touched and were not affectionate. In the Philippines it was common to see men walking down the road with arms around each other. In our country that would mean they were in a romantic relationship. Here it was just what people did. It was normal and lovely. I had grown up with very little touch in my life and the girls on my team knew this. In the Philippines they took the opportunity to lavish me with healthy touch. We would walk down the road holding hands because that was accepted and normal. They would stand with an arm around me because that was normal and it blessed me so deeply.
I spent the last few weeks of my nineteenth year in the Philippines and I am so thankful I did.
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