Archiv der Kategorie: 2017/2018

2017/2018, Monatsberichte, Naga

Monatsbericht Oktober von Lena

At approximately 23:25 on 2nd of October I arrived in the Philippines for the first time. I can´t even tell how I felt the first hours, because I was so tired from the 23 hours flight. But when we got out of the airport in Manila to look for our hostel driver, we asked some heavily armed security guard for help and I couldn´t help but stare at this big, fat machine-gun he carried as if it was nothing. Well, this is different. People here are armed and it´s nothing special. Welcome to the Philippines.

In the morning of 3rd of October I finally arrived in Naga Airport, which is not quite bigger than ours in ringheim for everyone who knows it. So when my luggage and that of the other fifteen Passengers was brought to us, there was I. A Newbie in the Philippines.

Mareike and Rey fetched me from the airport and I was introduced to the traffic, nature and lifestyle of this magnificent country. With big eyes I stared trough the car window, seeing tricycles, vans, pujaks, jeepneys and sometimes also cars passing by, even though it’s a one-lane street and there is oncoming traffic. During the next 10 minutes of watching, I could spot at least 20 situations where an accident was almost inevitable. The streets are loud, everybody honks at each other, and because everybody is honking, nobody feels addressed and everyone is just doing what he wants to do, because nobody cares anyway. There basically are no rules in traffic here.

Except maybe three:

  1. If you are scared, you´ve lost
  2. Honk ( …because there still is a 1% possibility that out of the other 100 vehicles on the street, the vehicle you want to address hears you; because everyone does; and it’s a nice sound)
  3.  Always plan to drive at least 2 hours longer than you would in Germany, because the fastest speed is around 40 km/h and traffic jams are everywhere

Three weeks later I can say: Yes, it is scary, but it also works somehow. Until now I never saw a serious accident. Just hundreds of almost-accidents.

The nature here is absolutely breath-taking. For someone who never got anywhere near tropical countries, it is marvellous. Palm trees and rain forests everywhere. Tropical fruits and vegetables such as dragonfruit, mango, papaya, buko, malungay and opo are fantastic and certainly a very good reason to stay here. Every food they serve is a little adventure for me that I wouldn’t want to miss.

The lifestyle here is also different. If you google pictures from the Philippines you are most likely to see rainforests with tiny little houses in between. Very sweet, native and kind of original you would say. Nobody tells you, that these people don´t have a solid floor, they don’t have tiles or parquet in their house, it is just dirt, pure soil. In most cases they don’t have clear running water and electricity is way too expensive.  Oh, and I forgot to say that eight humans live in that shack, which is not bigger than my bathroom at home. This is the reality of most Filipinos. And I don’t speak of the very  poor people here, this is basically middle class.

Everything is different – but how could it not.

Apart from all these impressions I also have an aim here. Helping where I can. And I can help at the Joseph Gualandi school for the deaf and mute.  The 45 kids in this school can´t hear, which is why they learn how to lipread and to speak properly. Both is very difficult, but the catholic sisters who run the school, somehow manage to teach it to them. My task is to help cooking for the children in the morning and give extra lessons for three students in lipreading and writing in the evening. The kids are lovely. Mareike and I teach the five year old Catherine, the 6 year old John-Phillip (he has ocean blue eyes and dark skin colour and hair, the most fascinating kid I have ever seen) and the 7 year old Romyr. Every one of them is overwhelmingly sweet and I love teaching them.  I also love the work because I also got to meet the coolest sisters in the world. Young, open-minded, loving, cookie-baking, zumba-dancing sisters, who appreciate us even more than they should and want to show us everything  in their country.  Apart from praying before eating, there is no rule set for us. They give us space. In just the last three weeks we were able to create a Memory game for the kids to practice their memory, they took us to house visits of the poorest children, we learned the song “Perfect” from Ed Sheeran in sign language, we taught children from another school how to sign animals, fruits and numbers, we were baking cookies with the children, ate buko, learned to eat traditionally with our hands and we were even asked to create dance choreographies in ballet, hip hop and kickboxing  for a presentation on the 20th of December.

Of  course – it´s not just fun and rainbows here and I will elaborate on that at another time, but all in all I can say: it was a successful month, I´m glad that I´m given that chance and I´m up for much more.

2017/2018, Monatsberichte, Naga

Monatsbericht Oktober von Mareike

Another month filled with amazing experiences is over and I wish I could go back to the beginning just so I could live through all of them once again.
I left Fatima Center in Iriga on the first of October and now moved to Naga City for good.
My new work here is at the Joseph Gualandi school for hearing impared children together with Lena Kolb, who arrived in here October 3rd . Working with Lena and working itself fills me with so much joy every single day. Getting up early in the morning is so much easier knowing that I will get to go to work at this amazing place and actually do something that will change lives for the good.
Our task at Gualandi is helping the sisters cook snacks and lunch for the approx. 45 children. We also help them when it comes to eating since a lot of the children are still very young or just simply don’t know how to use spoon and fork for eating. It is not that their parents never taught them how to use spoon and fork because they are savages, which one might think just by looking at them behaving, but rather because they just can’t afford buying silverwear. I was wondering why the children don’t know simple tasks like that but once the sisters shared with me how poor most of the families are a lot of things became clear to me. They also offered Lena and me to join them for house visits to the poorest of the poorest families. The sisters at Gualandi try to visit the families of the students as regular as possible. When doing so, they bring them groceries and look at the current situation that the family is in. They help as much as they can and even if they only have very little themselves, they share it.
Another task that Lena and I are sharing at Gualandi is teaching 3 students who need special attention when it comes to lipreading, speaking, writing and solving simple math problems. I really enjoy teaching those children. They are full of joy and appriciate everything we do for them. When we noticed that they have small problems with their short term memory we decided to make a memory-game for them. We went to a bookstore, bought old books and crafted a game by cutting out pictures from the books and sticking them on cardboard. Both, the kids as well as the sisters, loved our idea and enjoyed playing the game. By now we can already see them advancing at playing the game.
It was also 2 of our 3 students that we got to visit when we went out for the house visits. All in all we visited 8 families. 5 of them are living in the Naga area, 1 in Pili and for the other 3 we had to drive further into the middle of nowhere. Visiting them, Lena and I brought them homemade cookies and the Gualandi sisters shared some groceries and rice with them.
It is very hard to find the right words to describe the feelings I had while visiting the families. The poorest of them lived in Balatas, right by the dumpside. The student is in 4th grade and her parents are collecting trash and selling it for a living. The mother is currently pregnant with their 8th child and their house is just a hut build out of cardboard boxes and trash, not bigger than our pantry back home in Germany. I did not feel bad seeing them and I was not scared of being there as some people might would have been. I took everything in and tried to understand that these people might be very poor and live in bad conditions but they are still happy. The kids eyes where still bright and even the pregnant mother had a big smile on her face when we gave her our homemade cookies.
Other families that we visited invited us inside of their house. With Lena, Sister Nora, Sister Sheryl and me, the house was already crowded. Most of them had only one bed for the whole family, usually a big bamboo plank that is used for sitting on during the day, eating on for breakfast, lunch and dinner and sleeping at night. The houses where build out of bamboo, wood, leaves and cardboard. When entering, almost everyone appologized for not having chairs for us to sit on and everytime it seemed so totally out of places for them to worry about us not sitting. I felt very welcomed at every family and instead of feeling ashamed for being poor and needing help from us, they openly showed their appriciation for our help and that felt amazing.
Some of the families shared their stories with Sister Nora and Sheryl, who then translated those stories into english for us. One of our student’s father is a fisherman. On a good day he catches one kilogram of fish, which he then gets to sell for 100 pesos at the market. 100 pesos are not even 2 Euros. 2 Euros a day for a family of 4, on a good day, is not enough by far.
Sister Nora shared with us that most of the families don’t pay for their childrens tuition just because they can’t afford it, yet the sisters believe that everybody deserves and needs education and therefor still make sure that the children are able to visit Gualandi.
It was really an amazing opportunity for us to visit those families, see their homes, their way of living and get to know the mentallity. Poverty is always present in this country and we see it whenever we leave the apartment but actually being invited into the houses and learning more about the stories of the families really hit me in a deep way. I am glad that I am able to do my best to help those children learn, help educate them and therefor help them secure a better future for themselves and their children.

Attached are pictures of giving out snacks and drinks to deaf and mute children in Tigaon where Lena and I taught sign language as well as  a picture of me trying to figure out their names by having them write it on the blackboard, of cooking at Gualandi and with a student of ours .

2017/2018, Monatsberichte, Naga

Monatsbericht September von Felix

Have faith – the church, its influence and cultural importance

When it comes to the matter of religion, the Philippines certainly stand out from the rest of the entirety of Asia. According to statistics, 86% of all Filipinos are Roman Catholic and 8% of the population belongs to other Christian denominations, including Lutheran churches (source: asiasociety.org).There is no other Asian country with a higher percentage of Christians among its people.

Historically, this can be explained by the long-lasting occupation of the Filipino archipelago by the Spanish, who first began Christianization in 1565, which continued for more than 300 years. But what influence does this have on the culture today? And how can it be perceived in everyday life?

Well… To be honest, that is a difficult question to answer. Due to the short period of time I stayed in this country and my personal cultural connotations (both positive and negative), my overview of the local culture, its unique habits, traditions and beliefs is still very limited. I can only recount my impressions from within these boundaries. Thus, it is important to remember that the following report consists of observations from my personal point of view.

In my experience, the church, especially the Roman Catholic institutions, have a great influence on this society. First of all, churches are omnipresent. Often small independent Christian communities share buildings with cafes, shops and restaurants, where they maintain chapels and other facilities. Also, gigantic churches can be found in Naga city, for instance, the large, dark-brown and gold Cathedral in downtown Naga and the big white and blue Basilica, located a little more outside of town. Furthermore, opposite of the Cathedral, very close to where we volunteers live, one can find the enormous, segregated complex of the archdiocese of Caceres, where the current archbishop R. TIrona resides. In my opinion, these status symbols perfectly portray the importance of the church in this city and – presumably – likewise in the rest of the country.
Furthermore, there is an abundance of religious institutions, dedicated to serve a specific social purpose, which (in Germany) people would usually expect to be run by a government. Yet in the Philippines Christian organizations take that kind of social responsibility in many cases. After all, all of our current partners are run by religious people. The Missionaries of the Poor, whom I work with, are after all the Missionaries of the Poor. The Fatima Center Integrated Farming School and orphanage is run by nuns. Our newest partner, the J. Gualandi School for the Hearing Impaired, a school for deaf and mute children, is equally facilitated by an order of Christian sisters. And we already encountered or heard of various other religious groups operating other social institutions such as a public school, a hospital or a residential home for sexually abused children. Moreover, these facilities do not only co-exist. As I have experienced, religious groups know of one another and maintain strong connections and friendships among its members. They certainly also support each other’s work but how in particular, I do not know. In any case, these organizations are closely connected and form some sort of social network which the members of all social levels are constantly aware of. One day, a woman came to the Missionaries of the Poor apostolate and asked for food because her husband was sick and could not work. She was not sent away and I was assured this happens a lot. My impression is that acts of kindness like these are one reason why the church plays such an enormous role in the social life of so many people. They help and many people appreciate that.
On top of that regions in the Philippines have their own Christian patron saint, whom they idolize. Here in the Bicol region this would be Mary, the mother of Jesus, or – as she is referred to here – “nuestra senora de Penafrancia” or simply “Ina”, which means as much as “mother”.

Every year in the beginning of September, the Penafrancia Festival is celebrated in Naga city, which means a time of prayer to the patron saint lasting for nine days, a so called “novena”, is being held. A small statue, about 50 cm in height, triangular in silver and gold, represents the patron saint Ina herself. Literally millions of people from all over the Philippines come to the Bicol region, to Naga, in order to pray and honor Ina. Every day at every full hour different preachers hold masses in the downtown Cathedral, where the image is displayed. But the two highlights of the celebrations are two parades in the beginning and at the end of the novena. The first one, the “Translacion procession” traditionally takes place on a Friday. On that day a cheerful, colorful, musical but also praying crowd accompanies the image of Ina from the Basilica to the Cathedral. The second one, the “Fluvial procession” consequently happens nine days later on a Saturday afternoon, where Ina is placed on a large boat on the Naga River – alongside countless colorful boats full of young men – and shipped back to the Basilica while thousands upon thousands of people on either side of the river are cheering and singing. We were part of the crowds at both parades and attended church during the novena. I have to say, it was one of the most fascinating, intimidating and astonishing experiences of my entire life.
At last, I would like to include some of my personal thoughts about this topic. When I was invited to the 37th birthday party of the superior of the Missionaries of the Poor, it turned out that quite a number of local politicians were present as well, among them the mayor of Naga city. He held a speech, was thankful and happy. The friendship between the mayor and the superior of MoP made me think about the connection between church and politics. And I asked myself this question: What chances of success would an atheist or a member of another religion have if he or she was a candidate running for a political office, such as the mayor’s, in this society?

Now this is my personal opinion: I believe that these people would not go very far in their political career, if at all they had one. Why? The members of a democratic society want their politicians to represent their beliefs and if 96% of a society is Christian, the answer to the question which candidate this vast majority would prefer is quite clear. To be honest, there is nothing wrong with that, I think. We, also desire our German democracy to be representative. Apparently, this includes 12,5% of blown-up nationalism but that is another story. The Christian and Catholic church pervades the Filipino culture like veins and arteries pervade the human body. Whether it represents the heart, too, I am not sure. But what I do know is this: The largest chunk of Filipino society is Christian and many, many people express their beliefs actively by attending church services, supporting/donating to religious institutions, praying as they begin or end a meal or a long journey or simply by wearing jewelry with religious symbols. This matters to the people here and it is clearly visible every day.