The Philippines, Part 1.4: Host Family #2, and the Shows

Due to some logistics things that went on with my first host family, my roommates and I had to be placed in other host families, which is always strange because on the tour, your host family is like your anchor. They are the people that pick you up and ask you how your day went. They’re the ones that feed you a warm supper and provide a warm bed and a sense of normalcy. So, to switch host families in the middle of the week throws a wrench into the qi of on-the-road life, so to speak. And, and as any Uppie can tell you, it’s all about the qi.

The first time I had to switch families, I went from the Fountains to the Elliotts, who welcomed Jochem and I with open arms and were one of my best host families. I was hoping that this would be the case in Manila. Actually, the scene around the host family transition could have been taken from a blockbuster movie. It definitely had that kid of energy attached to it because the day of the transition was also my last day at the GK Euro Village. And right up to that point I had no idea where the team would place me. Right before lunch, Aoife told me a little bit about where I’d be placed, in that quirky, hip Irish brogue that she rocks:

“Hey, Stewie, I have to tell you about the place we’ve found for you. I just need to run this by you to make sure you’re okay with things. The person you’re going to stay with is really, really crazy and really, really gay. He’s kind of out there, but he’s really, really nice, and it would be really cool if you could give it a try.” I had hoped that I had given off an air of open-mindedness and flexibility in the prior five and a half months so people wouldn’t have to ask me such questions, but I guess just like the briefing about the Elliots I got from Jessica before I moved there (“If the little girls want you to play Barbies with them, you’re going to play Barbies with them!”), it was protocol more than anything.

“Sure. Why not?” I replied back. I mean, really. If she had said, “The person we’re putting you with has an obsession with Britney Spears and sleep-yodels all night long,” I may have had them find a new host family. (C’mon! Britney is so 2003.) But crazy and gay? Some of my really good friends fit that description to a T! What’s one more crazy, gay friend? I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I went to a Chinese restaurant and opened up a fortune cookie that said, “You can never have too many crazy gay friends.” Confucius himself probably said that same thing and it’s been lost to History. Tangents are comedy gold. They are also train of thought killers.

Oh. Right. The switch. So, after that interesting briefing from Aoife, I was really interested in what I would find when I got there. At the end of the day, and after all of the goodbye hugs and the standard, “I’ll write!”’s, it was time to go to my new Manila home. As I pulled out of the basketball court with all of the children of the village pressed up against the car like really tiny Beatles fans, the feeling of the unknown had begun. I’ve mentioned this a ridiculous amount of times, but it’s stressful meeting someone for the first time and then having them take you home and feed you. And that feeling is multiplied on an exponential level when you’ve grown up 45 minutes away from Stephen King’s hometown.

Manila is a vast metropolis where it can take quite a while to get from one place to another. I believe the trip from the GK village to the new place was a total of 45 minutes. In a cab. In Manila rush hour traffic. But it was all good, because I got a chance to talk with Johan Verbeek, who oozes Dutchness from every pore, because as far as I can tell he fluently speaks 3 languages. Maybe more. Europeans always kick our asses at some educational level. Seriously. But it’s the Swiss that you have to watch out for in the language department.

We finally pull up to the palatial estate that I would call home for the next 4 days. And I’m not tossing the ‘palatial’ word around willy-nilly here. The house had a garden in the middle of it, and it was at least 3 stories high. Johan went up to the door and I swear I heard him knock in three different languages simultaneously. A man with a pleasant expression opens the door, and immediately rushes to the cab to help Johan with my things. I get out of the cab, and shake the guy’s hand. “Hi. I’m Mahar. I feel like I practically know you because I’ve read your blog! It’s so good to finally meet you!” As soon as his friendliness and superior people skills became apparent, the usual pre-Host Family Meeting jitters disappeared.

We waved vaarwel, adios, and see you later to Johan, and Mahar gave me the tour of the Mangahas compound. I couldn’t help but equate my new living quarters to the homes you would see on Magnum PI. It had a very open feel to it, had a plethora of vegetation, and was extremely inviting. After the tour, Mahar and I just started talking about anything and everything. Mostly it was him asking questions about stuff he had read on the blog and also some of his impressions of the program.

I found out that two of my castmates had stayed there for the whole time we were in Manila. Ben, from Colorado, and Eduardo from Venezuela. And I quickly found out how crazy it was having Mahar as a host brother. Throughout our time in Manila, Mahar had become very adept in making Ben blush by giving him over the top compliments and making fun of Ben’s geekiness. Within minutes of walking through the door, it already felt like home.

Ben had been fighting something for a couple of days, so we left him alone, and Mahar suggested that he and I go out on the town for dinner to just hang out and get to know each other a little better. We went to a shopping complex with the word, “green” in the title, something like Green Belt, I can’t remember what it was, but it was really funny, because I realized that Mahar had absolutely no experience assembling George Michael, or operating him for that matter. Whenever I am on my scooter, I turn up the speed as high as it can go so that I am in control of how fast I go. Most people who use my scooter for the first time always floor the lever so that it takes off like a rocket. Let’s just say that it took Mahar about 10 minutes to put GM together, and then had his life flash before him at least 3 times within a span of as many minutes trying to operate it. But once I got out of the car, and into my scooter, we found a nice place to eat.

This was the first time on the tour that I had this much 1-on-1 time with someone from my host family. It was great. A couple of times in my life, I have met people with this undefinable quality that mixes intelligence, wit, worldliness, intuition, and people skills. These qualities make them so easy to talk to, and it’s something I try to emulate with everyone I meet. Mahar is definitely one of those people. Within the first half-hour of us talking about the program and about the cast in general I got a glimpse into how much he knew about our cast dynamics, and how we functioned as a group. After that I talked about a lot of the challenges I had to face on the road and how I dealt with them. He told me that the blog I kept along the way was a huge part of the reason why he decided to become involved with the program as much as he did. It is so cool for me to know that what I was writing had had an impact on how people saw the program, and how it was inspiring people to get involved.

Before we knew it, it was already 10:30, and so we got back into the car, Mahar wrestled with George Michael again, and we sped off home. Wiped out from the day, I got straight into bed and slept as well as I could as an overweight American sharing a queen-size bed with a husky Venezuelan.

But the next day, the cold I had been fighting throughout the week decided to come on full force, because I had pushed myself really hard, wanting to spend as much time as possible with my GK friends. Everything had just caught up with me. My head was pounding, and other stuff not appropriate for travel blogs started happening. When I told Mahar that I was going to call in sick, his face went from pale to pasty. “What?! You’re sick now, too? Being Florence Nightingale was not in the host brother job description!” Yep. Ben and I were both sick. But it was great, because Mahar’s idea of Florence Nightingale was Nutella sandwiches and watching YouTube videos all day with us. Interspersed with sessions of making Ben blush, of course. 

  

The shows in Manila were really interesting because it was not feasible for us to pack our scenery up and fly it across the Pacific. So, we had to make do with the set that our venue had provided us, which as close as possible to the regular dimensions of the set that we were used to.

What made the show really special was that all of the people we helped out in CI were invited to see our show. It's always special to look out into the audience and see the faces of the people you lived with and worked with looking back at you and congratulating you afterwards. But that special feeling was magnified a hundredfold because some of the people we were really close to from the GK Euro village were in the audience.

There were 2 shows in Manila. The first one was for the general public and our guests from the various CI sites we were on. The second show was a little more nerve-wracking because this was the show for our sponsors. The sponsors are some of the most important people on the tour because without them, there literally would be no tour. And in order to insure we can come back to whatever city we’re in, the sponsors have to think we’re a worthwhile investment.

The first part of the show went of without a hitch. I hadn’t messed up the words to my spoken word poem like I had in Arizona in front of the VIPs. The first act and the first part of the second act went off without a hitch. It wasn't until the part of the second act where I had to get up on mic groups at the end of the International Medley that it happened. One of those famous ‘actor’s nightmares’ you read about. Because the set dimensions were slightly different, instead of putting my right foot down on the back of the mic group risers, I instead put my right foot down on nothing, and landed flat on my back.

All of a sudden, during the show, I was staring at the ceiling and at the people who I was supposed to be sharing the mic group risers with were bent over looking down at me. Luckily we had some strong guys on our cast that quickly got me to my feet and let me to the side of the stage before the next song even started. I heard later on that only half the audience saw what had happened. I'm glad that that was thing that happened and not going over one of the makeshift stages in Mexico and falling 10 feet. That would have been catastrophic.

I have to say that because of all the wonderful people I met in Manila and all of the experiences the city opened my eyes to, I will never forget the time I had there, and one of these days I’ll be back and see everyone that let us into their lives for those two and a half weeks. 

The Philippines, Part 1.3: Gawad Kalinga’s European Village

When I ask several members of my cast what the most meaningful Community Impact Project they took part in throughout our whole tour, the overwhelming response is: our CI in Manila, and I, without a doubt, agree. I think this is the case for several reasons. The most obvious reason is that we practically lived at each of our sites. It was there that we spent the overwhelming majority of our time. But going deeper than that, it was at our CI sites in Manila where we made the most well-rounded impact. We didn’t just go into a school and paint the cafeteria, or refurbish a water feature. We were in people’s homes playing games with them, talking with them, making friends with them, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them in building their homes to make sure they, and future generations of their family, ultimately had a better quality of life.

To most of you reading this post, the words, “Gawad Kalinga” mean absolutely nothing to you. Some of you might even think that it’s a new brand of laundry detergent. But for the members of my Community Impact team, those words mean so much. In Filipino, Gawad Kalinga means “to give care,” and that is exactly what this organization does. Their aim is going into the most impoverished areas of the Philippines and digging those people out of poverty, assisting in building homes for them and teaching them the necessary skills (e.g. business skills, trades, and regular education) to become productive members of the Filipino, and global, societies.

Each individual section of apartments get a certain name to distinguish it from other Gawad Kalinga villages, and since I was living with a host family that I considered to by my European family, I thought it à propos that the CI site we were assigned to was called the European Village. How perfect was that? But what made the experience really great was our CI team, which consisted of myself, Savannah from Colorado, Jenny from Texas, Maggie from Connecticut, Molly from Ohio, Veronika from Sweden, Milou from the Netherlands, Bárbara from Mexico, Franziska from Switzerland, Colin from Texas, Arnab from Bangladesh, and from time to time Johan from the Netherlands would peek in and see how everything was running.

Then there were the people at the Euro Village that took excellent care of us and treated us like a family. At the Gawad Kalinga sites, there was more than just work going on. One of my best memories of our GK site was sitting around the table and singing Beatles songs and other songs from the ‘60s. Other days, the staff at the GK site set up challenges for us to get us working together as a team to reach a common goal.

One of these team-building challenges hinged upon the fact that none of us were native Filipinos. So, the staff got together and set up what they called a “delicacy relay” à la Survivor. We had heard about this particular challenge almost from the very beginning so, we had a little bit of preparation time. What happened was we were split up into two relay teams and stood face to face on either side of a long conference room type table on which were placed ice cream serving cups with plastic lids on top to conceal what was lurking inside. The vegetarian contingent of our group was breathing a sigh of relief at first, but that relief turned into horror when it was revealed that there would be vegetarian-friendly menu items. And that horror turned into terror when they found out that they would be starting the relay off.

The relay itself was quite a scene. It seemed as though the entire village showed up for this international showdown of intestinal fortitude. What am I thinking? The entire village probably did turn up for this event. It was like the Harlem Globetrotters had shown up at the European GK Village in Manila. There was so much shouting going on that it was hard to hear when the competition was going to start.

On the word, “go,” the vegetarians opened up their container and found therein things that might as well have been cultivated on Mars. To me it looked like a bunch of sea vegetation, and by the looks of “what the hell am I eating?” on the faces of my veggie compatriots, I got nervous about what would be staring me in the face when I opened that container. After the veggies were finished and everything was swallowed, the person two people down from me went. This time, it was the world-famous Filipino delicacy balut. Balut is a duck embryo that is a few weeks from being a full-fledged duck. And it’s still in its shell when you eat it. Some of my friends that were brave enough to try this said that they actually could taste some feathers and stuff. So, I am so glad that I didn’t have to endure that kind of test, because I don’t think I would have been able to do it.

The next item on the menu was chicken brain. It just so happened that chicken brain is a popular snack in Bangladesh, and Arnab happened to be the person to get chicken brain, which was good for our opponents. He expertly cracked the skull open and went to town eating the whole thing while Savannah had a hard time with hers. So, I had to eat whatever came next to save our team.

Savannah passed me my ice cream dish, and I was really afraid of what it could be. I lifted the lid up ever so slowly and much to my delight found two very orange chicken feet laying side by side. I was so relived to see what was basically the Philippines’ answer to buffalo wings. I found out later that chicken feet are usually grilled and served on long skewers, kind of like a shish-kebab or a corn dog.

I enjoyed my tasty treat as fast as I could, and when I finished, I looked at the next person in line, who shall remain anonymous, and they looked as white as a sheet. “I can’t do it. I just can’t,” they squeaked out.

“C’mon,” I said, “this will be a story for the grandkids! You’ll regret it if you don’t.” After a couple more flat refusals and a, “HURRY UP!” from the rest of the team, I decided to be the pinch eater for that round. The chicken feet weren’t that bad, how bad could this be? I opened up the container and saw two long, serpentine… things coiled up in the dish. “Intestines. I can’t believe I am about to eat intestines.” But I psyched myself up by telling myself that sausages are oftentimes cased in pig or goat intestine, and I love sausages, so this can’t be as bad as that. I popped the first one in my mouth, and at first was relieved when it wasn’t that bad.

And then, I bit down. As soon as I did, I felt this gamey, earthy paste ooze out of the intestine and discovered that for this particular delicacy, they take the intestines straight from the chicken and immediately put them into the boiling pot. Lovely. I looked at the person next to me and said, “You better love me for this.” It took me a good five minutes to choke both intestines down, and when I did, I noticed that Franziska was still working on hers. Savannah patted me on the back and handed me a bottle of RC Cola, which I drank in under 30 seconds. Never in my life did RC Cola taste to frickin’ good. My host brother Mahar later told me that it was called isaw, (pronounced ‘e-female pig’) and that he didn’t really care that much for it, either.

When all was said and done, I think the whole thing ended in a tie, and we all just stood there and wondered what the heck just happened. All of us except Arnab, that is.

In between the Survivor-esque challenges and the Beatles songs, real work was actually getting done. Some of us plastered walls and some of us bent steel rebar, and some of us made tiny little steel AIDS ribbons that would serve as metal ties for the rebar to provide structure to the concrete walls. That was my job. I think by the end of the 2 and a half weeks, I bent close to 7,000 steel wire rods into AIDS ribbons. But I loved my job, because I could talk to a lot of the villagers and all of the kids that hung around the construction site.

In many ways, my most special memories that come from the GK village are of the people who call the village home. The adults grew up with no running water, a very tenuous roof over their head, and hardly any clothes on their back, yet they were among the most genuine and down-to-earth people I ever met on the whole tour. They all smiled and gave me a big hug when I saw them each and every day, and they were very impressed when I flexed my Tagalog muscles for them. My favorite word that I would use often for them was masarap, which means, “delicious.” But the most useful phrase that they taught me was, ano pangalan mo? ‘Ano’ is ‘what,’ ‘pangalan’ is ‘name,’ and, ‘mo’ is ‘you.’ So, ‘ano pangalan mo’ is Tagalog for, ‘What’s your name?’ This came in handy for me every day I was there. A lot of people would just look at me, because they hadn’t really seen anyone with a disability before who rode on an electric scooter. So, I would just say, “Ano pangalan mo?” and they would smile and tell me their name, and the ice would be broken. Language is such an important tool for breaking down barriers.

Every day I would be bending my steel AIDS ribbons, and there would be a steady influx of kids with their big, curiosity-filled brown eyes staring up at me. I would demonstrate how one goes about bending steel AIDS ribbons, and they would dutifully help me for a half-hour or so, and then would run off to learn a new hand game from either Barbie, Veronika, Molly, Colin, or Marieke, whom they all called Hannah.

Then the break chime would sound and Annie and the other cooks would bring out different traditional Filipino snacks for the group to enjoy. One of my favorites, even though I am not too keen on bananas, were the fried, caramelized plantains on a stick, or puto, a sweet kind of cake made out of rice. There wasn’t one thing that we ate that was not masarap. Sometimes I thought something was so masarap that I ate what my castmates didn’t finish. And it was great because it indirectly helped the cooks so they wouldn’t have had as many dishes to do afterwards.

Out of everything, though, my most cherished memories will be of my lunch family. At the beginning of our time with GK, they assigned to each of the people in our group a family for whom an apartment had already been constructed. GK would provide the protein part of the meal, and the families would provide the rice.

On the first day, I pulled up to my family’s apartment, and Charisse and my lunch mother helped me in to the apartment where a huge bowl of rice was waiting for me. Charisse left and my lunch mother and I got acquainted with each other. When I sat down at the table, she said, “Don’t be shy. Eat!” Then she sprang out of her chair and went to her fridge. “You should drink something. What do you want?” I asked her what she had, and she listed off a variety of things, Coke, water, Sprite, and some other things. Thinking that a Sprite would be refreshing, I chose that, and as soon as I had made my selection, the refrigerator door was shut, and she was out the door in hot pursuit of Sprite. If I knew that she didn’t have Sprite in her fridge, I would have asked for something else. I told her this, and she said. “Don’t worry. You are a guest in my house. If you want Sprite, I give you Sprite.” If that doesn’t just pull at your heartstrings, you’re one cold— well, you can finish that sentence in your free time. But every day after that, she’d help me in, and there waiting for me on the coffee table was a whole paddy’s worth of rice and a liter bottle of Sprite.

Then, on the final days of eating in my lunch family’s home I finally met my lunch sister, who was actually right around my age. We talked about a lot of things, but the one thing that sticks out in my mind was when she told me about her financial situation. She had a husband and two small children. Every day, her husband worked outside of the village and earned 6 Philippine pesos per week. If you figure that US$1 equal 50 PP, 1 PP would equal 2¢. So therefore, her husband was bringing home 12¢ a week, and food for the kids cost 20¢. But she was so grateful for her mother who had weekly reflexology clients, which helped them make ends meet.

After telling me that, she looked straight at me and asked me, “Is your bathroom the size of our house?” The forwardness of her question kind of surprised me, and it knocked me out of myself a little bit, because for the first time in a conversation, I was the so-called “rich” person. I looked around the 10 × 10 apartment, and said that my bathroom was about a quarter of the size of their apartment. Then, I told them that my bedroom was about half the size of their apartment. Then to kind of have them relate to me better, I told them about UwP’s fees and how hard I work fundraising the money. I told them it was really difficult to come up with the money to travel, but that I had tremendous community support and was, in the end, able to come up with the money. I told them that I knew what it was like to live from week to week.

Then Savannah came and told me that it was time to go back to work, and so I give my lunch family a huge hug, had Savannah take a picture of us, and we were on or way. What I think was the most special about my time with my lunch family was that I learned that even though we came from two quite different socioeconomic backgrounds, we could still connect with each other and share our humanity. And that’s an awesome thing.

On the last day in the GK Euro Village, the whole community organized a huge festival with all sorts of dishes and music, and dancing. One of the moments I probably won't ever forget as long as I live is when all the kids perfomed “O Alele” for us, which was one of the hand games we taught to them. It was in that moment that I realized that we weren't there just to help them out with the labor it required to build apartments. We were also there to reach out to them and show them that we, as people who had come from literally around the planet, cared about them and that we were willing to go there and share our humanity and compassion with them. And that I something I will always carry around with me proudly.

But then, the most wonderful thing happened. After the whole festival had ended and I was back to bending my AIDS ribbons, I see a woman carrying two pots with her. It only took me a couple of milliseconds to realize that it was my lunch mother carrying with her the usual kilogram of rice and chicken soup. She sat down next to me at the table, opened up the pots, took out a bottle of Sprite from her bag and said, “Don't be shy. Eat!” And even though I was stuffed to the gills with all that wonderful Filipino food from the festival laid out before me, this woman whom I had shared several lunches with took the time and money to cook me a meal, for the road. So, I ate, and we talked, and before she left to go back to her apartment, we hugged one last time.