Arrival, first impressions, orientation of daily things

After a long journey we arrived here at the Fatima Centre on October the first. The Fatima Centre is a foundation for human development and integrates a  farm school. Here we stay only in October. After that we go to Naga and work there in a school too. When we arrived at the Fatima everybody wanted to help us. The children showed us our rooms and brought our luggage there.  Everybody was very helpful and cordial. After a little rest we asked them to show us the area of the Fatima Centre. My impression was that they were happy with this. So we go around with approximately ten children and see the different places like the school and the farm. We see lots of plants which we haven’t in Germany like bananas or pomelos. The children wanted to share a pomelo with us. It was just a small one but everybody gets a little piece of it. In the following weeks I see the same again and again. It doesn’t matter how small a fruit or something else is, the things are shared with the others. In my opinion in Germany everybody wants the biggest piece and don’t care about the others. So my impression is that the people here are not that selfish like in Germany.

Another different point to Germany is the food here in the Philippines. The people eat to every meal rice normally with cooked meat. Mostly after the meal we eat here different fruits. The fruits are very delicious. For example the bananas. They are very sweet here and I haven’t known that so many different kinds of bananas exist. And also I haven’t known that you can cook with them. My impression is everywhere we put in potatoes the Philippinos use bananas. I think it is a very special taste. At breakfast here they often eat scrambled eggs, smoked fish, roast sausage and fish. I mean it is very solid. When we have here in the Philippines some bread, it is toast bread only. This is very sweet. Also cake is sweeter than in Germany. In this point you can see the influence of the American colonial times.

In kitchen are often ants. All the food is in receptacles. No insects can touch the food but for me it isn’t normal that insects are in the kitchen.

Here in the Philippines they pay with Philippino pesso. One Euro is nearly 50 pesso. The first days when we make little trips I always had not enough money by me side because it was hard to think 50 or 100 isn’t a lot of money. In Germany I would never take 100€ when I go to the supermarket only because I need toilet paper and a cleaning agent for the bathroom. But with the time I get used to the other currency. The most things here are cheaper than in Germany for example food, clothes or eating in a fast food restaurant. We bought some cocoa powder (Milo) for the Fatima Centre. This is one thing which is expensive (one kilo cost around 5€) because they have no or only less (very expensive) cow’s milk  here in the Philippines. If the people want to drink milk they normally use milk powder.

The climate here in the Philippines is different. There it has around 25°C and a high humidity of the air. The first days I was sweating the whole time. I think now after one month I’m dealing a bit better with this but I’m still sweating more than in Germany. It rains nearly every day because till November here is the rain period. The rain doesn’t cold the earth that much as in Germany. Sometimes the plenty rain results in power failure.

For washing our clothes the rain is a problem. We can’t hang up them outside and inside there isn’t that much space and because of the high humidity the clothes are not that dry as we are used from Germany but this is OK.

Washing is in general different then in Germany because we have no washing machine. We have to do it by our hands. The children show us how to do it right and which soap is the best. It takes a long time to clean your clothes by hand because first of all you have to clean all with clean water, after that you have to soap und brush every piece extra and at last all pieces again with water. In the end you have to spin the laundry like in a washing machine. The machine does all the same steps and also needs around two hours but I haven’t recognised it because in the mid time you do something else. And another different is that the washing machine in Germany uses warm water and here we normally wash with cold water.

Taking a shower here is different too. You have bucket with cold water then you use a creator take water and put it all over your skin. After a few days it was normal for me taking a shower in this way. To use cold water isn’t a problem because it is always warm outside and in the morning I’m awake after the shower.

We had the luck that we have a toilet with flash. It is typical that the toilet has no flash. In this case you put water im the toilet instead. Philippinos don’t use toilet paper. They clean with water. Luckily you can buy toilet paper so we use it.  Sometimes there is no toilet only a whole in the ground. This I seen one time when we stayed at a resort.

Everywhere we go the people look at us. The most time I can ignore it but sometimes it is a bit annoying because in my opinion we are all people. The only different is our skin colour. Some people ask where we are from and what we are doing here in the Philippines. I like this way of acting because German people normally won’t do it and we recognise the staring anyway.

The traffic here in the Philippines is slower than in Germany. Most of the people drive with Tricycles. A Tricycle is a motorcycle with assessor. My impression is that here no traffic rules or most of the people ignore the rules. For example only a few people stop at a zebra crossing. In Germany nearly everybody would do it.

We had a special experience when we wanted to buy a normal shower gel. It wasn’t easy to find one. The most shower gels are whitening ones. In Germany everybody wants to get a browner skin and here it is the other way round.

The first month passed off really fast and I enjoyed it.