Oops

It's been quite awhile since I've updated you.
What's new?

Well, the holidays happened. If you're like me, you might not want to think about the holidays right now, but I will tell you what I did for them anyway. For Christmas, M and I celebrated at my host family's house. We had a great time! The family rented a videoke machine (karaoke plus video, in case you didn't get that) and we sang as much as we possibly could on that thing all day long on Christmas Eve day until about 3:00AM that night. There was also a lot of Matador rum and Filipino style spaghetti consumed by many people... what a dangerously awesome combination.

Then for New Year's we went up to a neat little spot in the province of Camarines Sur. Took us four hours in a minivan to get to the port we needed to get to, then two hours bangka ride around the peninsula to our destination, which was so way out there in the middle of nowhere that there's no road even though it's on the mainland, hence the bangka.

We found ourselves in a very small town (only one place to eat dinner after 6:00, which only served two different dishes and rice, but was a godsend when we were confused and hungry) a couple of miles away from a pretty beach. We visited said beach, and found out that it was possible to go island hopping, so we did that too. There I saw the prettiest beach I have seen so far in my life, with sand that was like powdered sugar. Pictures will be posted soon unless there's another oops.

Anyway, it was an awesome trip except that we got trapped in our tiny town on New Year's Day - no boats were going back around the peninsula, and our little restaurant wasn't open, since it was a holiday, of course. Poor us! We were trapped in our hotel for another day, with no food to eat except for some peanut butter and crackers we were lucky enough to remember to bring. (The fact that the hotel had HBO should not be mentioned because that ruins the survivalist quality of the story.)

We got out the next day and all was well.

Another thing that happened recently is that I helped out with this awesome workshop in Olongapo City, Zambales. (Way far away from where I live, on the coast west of Manila, where the U.S. Subic Naval base used to be.) We put on the workshop alongside members of a local organization called Buklod, which is dedicated to organizing current and former sex workers in the Olongapo area.

During our workshop we did gender sensitivity training, talked about various forms violence can take, and told the participants about various Philippine laws about trafficking and sexual violence. The Buklod members put in a lot of effort to make the sessions fun and interesting and the participants really responded - I think everyone enjoyed themselves and learned something new.

The night before the workshop, we went out to some of the bars in Olongapo that employ sex workers with a kasama (companion) from Buklod. The Buklod members regularly visit these bars to meet sex workers and encourage them to drop by the Buklod center for any information or help they might need. We went in groups of five Volunteers, and we attracted a lot of stares from the clientele, which at each place included at least a few Amerikanos (Western men). People probably thought we were dumb, lost tourists, but really, the discomfort of being stared at was nothing compared to how it made me feel to see what goes on inside those places. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we're seasoned veterans at getting unwanted attention, but visiting the bars showed me something disturbing that I hadn't ever seen before.

We all left feeling upset, but, I think everyone felt it was worth it to have had an experience that would help them connect to the women participating in our workshop. And it worked! Some of the workshop participants had seen us out the night before, and we were able to start up conversations with them that, I think, were more meaningful to both parties than they would have been if we hadn't experienced the bar scene.