The Philippines, Part 1.2: Host Family #1, and Manila’s Public Transport System

At last, after one of the longest days of my entire life, it was time to meet the people I was going to be living with for the next two and a half weeks, go home, and sleep like a baby on Ambien. After looking quite a while for my host family, we finally met up with our host mother. She was not at all the short, dark-complected, Filipino-looking woman I expected to have for a host mother. In fact, she was quite the opposite. The woman who was taking us home was a tall, rather striking German woman by the name of Annette Helbig. We crammed my scooter, our five suitcases and our five bodies into her SUV and started to our new home.

On the way there, we learned that Annette had lived in the Philippines for quite a while and was the director of an organization that was dedicated to help less fortunate Filipinos with family planning issues. Well, actually, if the truth be told, I learned about that stuff because I was in the front seat, and the rest of my roommates were in the back, sawing logs. But who could really blame them? We finally got home and there was a really nice-looking lasagna on the table waiting for all of us. Even though it wasn’t traditional Filipino food, I really didn’t care. It was lasagna, it was hot, and it was delicious.

What really made this host family special to me was that due to lack of sponsorship, we didn’t have a European leg of the trip, and so in my mind this host family reconciled all that. This was my European host family. There were German things on the walls, German magazines in the bathroom, and even tubes of mustard in the refrigerator. I had never seen Katrin so happy as when she first spotted the tube of mustard. In Germany, she explained to me, mustard comes in toothpaste tubes, and that this turn of events started her cravings for tomato sandwiches from back home. For breakfast, I enjoyed Rice Krispies and toast with Nutella. In the evening, it was more really good European cooking. Nothing could be better.

Our first night there, we met Anjuscha, Annette’s daughter, but everyone called her Yushi for short. She was just as striking as her mother, and spoke English like an American. She had a ton of questions for us, and we did the best to try to answer them for her. She told us that she went to the Brent International School, and that she was going to have a birthday party while we were there, so we’d get to meet some of her international friends. Sweet. I always liked something to look forward to, especially if it means cake in some form, and for me foreigners are just icing on that cake. That first night we met Yushi’s brother Tobi, but he wasn’t as talkative as Yushi or Annette.

Annette had planned that the girls would sleep upstairs and that the boys would get the guest house, which happened to have a sauna built in, which would translate later into Colin doing the “let’s see how hot I can get the sauna before we have to open the door in order to breathe,” experiment, and me being an innocent bystander of said experiment. It’s counterintuitive that saunas would help you cool off and give you relief from humidity, but it’s true. I think the trick lies in making the sauna hotter than what is outside, so that after escaping from the sauna, for the rest of the day you’re thankful you’re alive and not suffering from heat stroke. That, however, is another post entirely. The first time I stepped crutch into the guest house, and saw the king-size bed, I think I just flopped on it and went to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The next morning, we got up bright and early in the morning to get ready for our first CI day, and make some kind of plan as to figuring out transportation to get there. Annette told us that she’d take us there so that we could get an idea of where we had to go and what modes of transport we’d need to take.

Luckily for us, there was a veritable pantheon of options from which to choose. The Jeepney, which is a re-purposed Jeep from the era when the United States had a strong military presence there, is Manila’s answer to a public bus system. There are two long, stuffed benches along the side of the Jeepney itself, and the outside is decorated in over-the-top colorful designs. For our purposes, we didn’t ride very much in the Jeepneys, we instead chose the other two forms of transportation.

“What you’ll do in the morning,” Annette instructed us while driving the route to the CI site, “is take a trike from the house to the gate. Then, you have to flag down another trike to take you from the gate to the corner where all the taxis are, and then take a taxi to your meeting spot.” Okay. I know what you’re thinking, You Who Have Never Been to Manila. You’re picturing grown adults riding on little trikes for two-year-olds. Well, you would be sadly, if hilariously, mistaken. Trikes are like motorized rickshaws. It’s a motorcycle that that has a mini-carriage with a big wheel in the front attached to it, and people can sit side-saddle on the motorcycle, on the backseat (if they don’t mind riding backwards and unbelted), or in the middle seat. It’s actually not a bad way to see the city. But, they’re only for short distances.

I love the simplicity with which Annette told us our morning routine. Oh, if it had been only that simple. If only we weren’t looked at by the taxi drivers as dollar signs (or in this case peso signs) needing a ride. It was very rarely that our taxi ride was problem-free. During our first ride to the CI site, our taxi driver didn’t know exactly where he was going, so during the time it took for him to stop at a friend's house to ask him where we were going, the meter was running. That only happened to us once, however. What happened to us more frequently was that they would claim the meter wasn’t working, and ask for twice the normal fare, or because there were five of us and we had to wedge ourselves in the backseat, they charged us an “overload fee,” which wasn't listed anywhere inside or outside the taxi.

But what took the prize for the most frustrating taxi experience came to pass on the last day of our community impact project. Just like the fourteen or so previous days we went to the corner to get a taxi, and offered them 175 pesos, like before. But this time, there was a lot more deliberation happening amongst the taxi drivers. Deliberation in Tagalog, which is not one of the five languages that the members of our party spoke. Arnab, and Colin, (our fearless leaders) repeatedly offered them the standard price, and repeatedly there would be incomprehensible conversations, and a 250-peso offer would be put on the table by the taxi drivers. New taxi drivers would pull in, and as soon as we’d try to offer them the same deal, more deliberation would take place, and the subsequent higher offer would be made. Finally, after nearly 30 minutes of this same scenario being played out, the consensus amongst our group was to admit defeat and pay them the higher rate. The only consolation was that we would never again need their services and we wouldn’t have to do business with them anymore. My advice for any non-Filipino-looking tourist taking advantage of public transportation in Manila is to be firm and up front with the cab drivers, because they will take you to the cleaners if you let your guard down.

With all that being said, I have a message for the cab drivers of the fine city of Manila: The way to get extra money from your fares is to go above and beyond driving people from Point A to Point B. Be friendly to your fares. Open and hold the door for them. Answer questions about the city. Make them feel welcome inside your cab. Help them with their bags. If you do any or all of these things, I can guarantee you that your fares will feel obliged to give you a nice tip above what is shown on the meter.

Okay. Enough of my ranting. Let’s get on to the nicer parts of this particular post: the trike rides. Our first foray into getting to the CI site was interesting to say the least. We all had to figure out how do get ourselves and my scooter onto the trikes and on our way. The first day we tried it out, we broke down the scooter, and each one of us was responsible for taking part of it. Marieke would have the back wheels, and Katrin would take the seat. Arnab and Colin would take the floor and the front wheel, and I would take the battery.

Well, the first time we did this, we thought it would be easier if I just hopped on the back of the trike. Well, in order to give you a better idea of what my first trike ride was like, let me give you a better description of what the back of a trike is like. First of all, all the seats in the public transportation are built for Filipino bodies, not for overweight American bodies, so I could only half-fit onto the seat. Secondly, the footrest/step of the trike was really narrow, and it was hard for me to get any traction so that I could stay on the seat. Luckily, it was made of grating, so I at least managed to wedge my foot in between the slits so that I would not slip. Then, there were tiny metal supports holding up the roof of the cart that I could hold on to, so that helped a little bit, too.

At first, I thought it would be alright but, as I got going, I quickly became cognizant of the fact that if I slipped one micrometer off that seat, I would undergo a tuck and roll of Evel Knievel-sized proportions, but it wouldn’t be as pretty, and I would be in the middle of the roadway. The whole ride would have gone a little better had there not been huge speed bumps every 30 meters or so. I was riding backward, so I could not prepare myself for the impending jolts that may or may not have sent me hurling into UwP oblivion. Luckily Colin, who was on the inside of the trike sensed my fear and informed me ahead of time when a speed bump was imminent, so I could brace myself accordingly. From that period of time onward, it was agreed that I was to take the inside seat of the trike, and people without my level of spasticity would take the outside seat. And that, my friends, is why I am alive today to write this post. But enough about my adventures with the Manila public transportation vehicles.

When you have spent close to five months on the road like we had done by the time we had gotten to Manila, and you live at different houses every week, it becomes increasingly easier to fall into a routine. The routine my roommates had found at the Helbig’s didn’t take long to establish itself. After getting home from a long day at the CI site, we’d go home, get cleaned up and then sit outside on the porch and use the internet while the lizards watched us. There were so many lizards, in fact, that Katrin and I had started naming them after all of our castmates. I don’t think we got all the through our cast, but we came darn close. Although I have the sneaking suspicion that we named the same lizard more than once. Then, when the sun was starting to go down, and we had dinner, we went back into our respective rooms and guest house and started to wind down for the night.

There was an exception to this routine however. One day after a particularly active day at our CI site, Annette announced to us that she had called the home massage service. Don’t check your computer monitors. There really is a home massage service where masseuses would come to your house and perform full-body massages on you for only US$4. She asked us if that would be alright with us, and we totally didn’t have any objection with that at all.

So, instead of getting out our laptops like usual, we all jumped in the pool for a little bit and got some pre-relaxing in before the masseuses showed up. The masseuses finally showed up, and we went to our sleeping quarters. They didn’t speak very much English; just enough to get them by. “Soft, medium, or deep tissue?” were all the words my masseuse said to me, and fearing how gelatinous I would feel if I said, “deep,” I went with the medium-strength massage. Now, when I say these were full-body massages, I mean they were FULL-body massages, well at least the full back side. It was definitely not what I was used to back home, especially the part when she started working my glutes. But when she was done, and I paid her her 200 pesos plus a little extra, I went inside where a nice piping-hot dinner and a very relaxed Marieke was waiting for me. I think for that entire meal, we hardly spoke to each other because we were so relaxed that the kitchen chairs were the only things holding us up. It was not a problem going to sleep that night.

Towards the end of our stay at the Helbigs’, our host sister was having a birthday, and so she invited some friends over from her school, the Brent International School. It was great that night because after everyone showed up, we had a little mini United Nations going on. The Uppies included a Bangladeshi, a Dutchwoman, a German and 2 Americans, and the Brent International School people included a Korean, a couple of Americans, a couple of Swiss people, and 2 South Africans. When Marieke heard that these South Africans spoke Afrikaans, she wondered (as I had) how close Dutch was to Afrikaans, since they pretty much started out as the same language. It turns out that the two languages are different enough that when the guys spoke Afrikaans to Marieke, she couldn’t understand them. It’s so fascinating to me how languages can change that much in such a short period of time.

After a few hours of socializing, a couple of people started setting up the lawn furniture for drinking games and general debauchery. And seeing as though we had pretty much signed anti-drinking game and anti-debauchery contracts before traveling with Up with People, that was our cue to call it a night. Plus, we had another early morning ahead of us, and we wanted to be fresh as possible for our CI, and for the morning commute.

I hope you have enjoyed this installment of my time in Manila. The next post is going to talk about our CI site, and how none of us were the same after we finished working with that group of people.

The Philippines, Part 1.1: First Impressions of Manila

After two meals, four in-flight movies and fourteen hours in the air, we had made it to the Philippines. What was once in my mind just a splotch of white in the middle of an expanse of blue on world maps was made instantly real as soon as I stepped off that plane. I took in the sights, the smells, the humidity, the friendliness of the people—everything. The wheelchair guy almost wheeled me past the cast, and I had to tell him a couple of times that this was the group I was supposed to be with. He was almost in shock at this discovery, but he wheeled me over to the cast, and I was immediately lei’d by a lovely Filipino woman. I don’t think they call them leis in the Philippines, but I have no other word to call it.

It’s so interesting to get on a plane and whisked off to a place that is so different from where you came from. When we were in Denver, we needed our jackets and hoodies to stay warm; in the Philippines, if there hadn’t been indecency laws in place the entire cast would have stripped down to our underthings, and even then we would have been overheated. After we all got our luggage together and our passports were handed to our logistics coordinator to go to the State Department for visa extensions, it was time to load onto the buses. The Filipino buses were not a thing like the American buses, and I had a hard time getting up into them, so I rode with the staff in the staff van. The Filipino drivers asked me if I needed help, and I think they would have tried to pick me up and put me in the van if Ellen Enebo and I hadn’t told them that I needed minimal help.

Once I got situated, the long trek across the city and to our meeting area began. Immediately, I was struck by the poverty that I saw around me. Every time the van stopped at a traffic light, seeming scores of people peddling homemade necklaces and jewelry swamped our van asking us if we wanted to buy anything. The next thing that struck me was all the billboards—some of which had to have been at least a couple stories high—advertising perfume, Gucci and Guess jeans. All of this towered over the streets that were dirty and in disrepair. All of the images I was seeing around me couldn’t have summed up better the microcosm of humanity that I spoke about in my spoken word pieces during the show: everywhere you looked, the stark contrast of the haves and the have-nots made itself all too apparent.

Then, through my jet-lagged stupor, the realization of my not being in the United States anymore started to reveal itself to me in increasingly vivid detail. I saw whole pigs, gutted, and cleaned hung up by their snouts on meat hooks displayed proudly in several storefronts; flashy old Jeeps that I would come to learn were called Jeepneys and motorcycle/rickshaw hybrids which zoomed past us on the left and the right; signs written in a language I had never seen before—all of it was almost too much to take in all at once.

After a good forty-five minutes of traversing the city, we finally made it to Elbow Room, meeting place for the cast briefing and allocation meeting by day, bustling night club by night. It was so good to just sit and decompress from the humungous sensory overload, get our schedules and allocations, and just chill. I got my schedule and learned that my roommates for the next two and a half weeks were Colin from Texas, Marieke from the Netherlands, Katrin from Germany, and Arnab from Bangladesh. I always loved big allocations like this because it was always great to have huge meals, and we could really delve into really interesting topics. We also found out that this portion of our tour was sponsored by Zesto, which is the Philippine’s answer to drinks like V8 Splash, and Gatorade, and as such we had as much free Zesto as we could get our hands on, which was great because the heat was getting more and more intense as the day progressed. This was also the day that I discovered Filipino iced tea. For those of you who know me, you know that when I make iced tea, I make it as strong and as sweet as possible. Well, this iced tea is better than all of the powered iced teas in the United States hands down. And the best part of it is that it is served in place of water in some restaurants. It’s one of the things I crave from time to time. If you ever have the chance to go to the Philippines, if you never enjoy a tall glass of iced tea over there, consider your trip a failure. Seriously.

After several futile attempts to find free internet connections, we all got together in our CI groups to find out what we would be doing for the next two and a half weeks. I found out that we would be working for an organization called Gawad Kalinga, which is an organization that is dedicated to ending poverty and improving the lives of every Filipino. To do this, it goes into areas hardest hit by poverty and tells show them that there are alternatives to violence and looting. That through hard work, you too can enter into a life that is more fulfilling and healthy. It’s really kind of impossible to explain everything in a short amount of space here. But we had a great CI group and all of couldn’t wait to start working with these incredible people.

Towards the end of the day, we all were dead tired as most of us hadn’t seen decent sleep since 48 hours prior, and we couldn’t wait to get home to our host families. It was pretty late in the day that they came to take us home, so unfortunately we didn’t really have a lot of time to get to know them at all before we all crashed. It had been an overwhelming day for all of us, and we couldn’t wait to crash and wake up in the morning to start our Community Impact day.

US, Part 2.8: North Platte, NE

This week was a particularly interesting week in that it was a week that kind of punched us in the gut that this magical journey that we were on was not going to last forever, and that in another 5 weeks’ time, we all were going to have to say goodbye to the family that we all had created within the past months. North Platte marked the last city on the US tour for us, and it also marked the end of the road for three of our castmates who had decided not to continue on to the Philippines with us. I can’t, of course, speak for everyone on our trip, but I personally wanted to put all of those thoughts out of my mind because we did have four good weeks of the tour left, and it would not be fair to the people of North Platte if we did not put our best foot forward and share with them our spirit.

This was also a special week, like the week we had in Arizona, since for one of our own, it was a homecoming. Laura Lynn grew up in this town, and for the past couple of weeks, she had been telling us stories about North Platte. One of her favorite things to talk about was the two-headed stuffed cow that was one of the tourist attractions there. One thing I have missed about being in UwP is the ways that people welcome us into their communities. In Tepic, we were pop stars who were center stage in a parade/fashion show inside a shopping mall, and now in North Platte we were rolling into town with a full police escort. When we got to our main meeting place and put all of our belongings in the hallway, and sat down, we were treated with a routine by the local cheerleading squad. A couple of months after getting off tour, it was a really hard adjustment for me not to have that kind of treatment every time I crossed over a city limits.

Ever since the industrial revolution settled in and changed the landscape of our globe, North Platte was a major hub for the American railroad system. Nearly every transnational train would have to pass through North Platte. And it is for that reason that a lot of American GIs would pass through North Platte on their way back from Europe after fighting in the Second World War. The citizens of North Platte knew they had to fill a need for the soldiers who had seen so much. So the citizens gathered together and made sure the the GIs passing through would have a warm meal and even warmer hospitality when they got off those trains. All of the GIs that passed through were treated to banquets and feasts that were thrown in their honor. It was the first home-cooked meal that they had had since they shipped out. This tradition lasted for years, and has come to be known as the Canteen.

For our regional learning, we watched a PBS documentary on the canteen, and to our surprise, all of our staff (and Laura Lynn) were dressed in WWII-era costumes and everyone from town made us a full-on feast, midwestern style. Never before have I seen that many casseroles of all different types laid out before me in delicious splendor like that. Apparently, in the Midwest, it shouldn’t be called a “pot luck,” it should be called “Corningware luck.” There was not a pot out there to be seen. But the food was excellent, and the music was even excellenter. I know that’s not a word, but I don’t really care right now. There was a piano in the gymnasium of the church where the cast gathered every day, and for the duration of the meal we were treated by the piano stylings of an older couple who could play just about any song we requested. It was great to gather a round the piano, and just let the good music and good company wash over you. It turned out that this little feast was UwP’s idea of giving the American students some semblance of Thanksgiving, since we were going to be in the Philippines for the holiday. For us it was always nice to have downtime and just talk to each other and to the local people, and share good food with good people.

I really loved the host family that I stayed with, especially my host dad who happened to have his own full-fledged karaoke system in his garage, with around 5,000 songs to chose from. I was like, are you serious right now? My host dad is as much of a karaoke freak as I am? One night, he invited me into his garage and we took turns singing our karaoke signatures. His specialty was ‘40s-era tunes like Mac the Knife and New York, New York. This was a really good opportunity for me to increase my repertoire and see what I could do within my range. We had so much fun that we decided to invite all of the host families to another Thanksgiving celebration at the American Legion Hall and have karaoke be the focal point. So, not only did I feel very karaoke’d, I felt extremely Thanksgivinged as well.

After that whole thing, it was time to go back home and get packed up for the medium bus ride to Denver for the flight to LAX, the 12-hour layover in the airport, and finally the 14-hour flight to Manila. This was the time for all of us to wrap up the US tour by writing down all the memories we had in the various cities. It’s so interesting when you look back on things like this knowing that you did so much in such a short period of time, and hearing other people sharing their stories just reinforced for me the idea that we were a family. You don’t travel 5 months with somebody and not form a really strong bond with them.

That’s why it was especially hard to say goodbye to 3 of our family members that weren’t going to be with us for the final leg of our journey. Gwen, from Switzerland whose light and energy inspired me every day on the tour; Cathrine, my language buddy who was just one of the most amazing people I had ever met, and Kirk who was so awesome to me the first part of the tour were all leaving us and going to go back to their lives.

It was especially hard for me to part with Gwen, because she and I had really nice bond that began when she finally got the knot out of my neck Breckenridge so that I could finally turn my head to the right, and continued throughout the tour. One of the last face-to-face exchanges we had was when she noticed my Up with People hat I was wearing.

“Oh my God!” Gwen exclaimed, “I wanted to by an Up with People cap for myself, but I never did it.”

“Well, it would mean a whole lot to me if you had my hat.” I said, getting a bit teary-eyed.

“We can trade. I’ll give you my Swiss flag hat, and you can give me your UwP hat, and then the next time we see each other, we’ll both be wearing each other’s hats.” That was the best idea I heard throughout the whole tour. So, we switched our hats, gave each other huge hugs, and said, “See you very soon.”

When it was time to pack up the bus and say goodbye to our host families, we prepared ourselves for the longest travel day on the whole tour...