T-12 Days: The Info Session

For the whole rehearsal process and the subsequent performances, it really hadn’t sunk in that I was going to Japan. Even though Japan has always been a part of the production, what with the Japanese-themed set and the little prep things here and there, it was just not in my mind that I was actually going. Maybe it was because I wanted to focus on the American show and make sure I did my best for the American audiences and if my brain was in Japan freak-out mode, it would have not been as good. But as we were sitting there at Old Chicago, looking through our packets, and Bryce Alexander, Phamaly’s Artistic Director and the director of our show said, “Welcome to Phamaly’s first international tour,” that’s when it all sank in. Holy wow! I’m going to Japan! And I’m going with people I love and respect and who have my back just as much as I have theirs, which is the best thing in the world.

We learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. For instance: apparently, Japan is one of the cleanest—if not the cleanest—country in the world. I think everyone knows that you have to take your shoes off when you go into anyone’s house over there, but did you know that there are regular inside slippers and toilet inside slippers? So you have to wear a separate pair of shoes in the bathroom like than you would in the rest of the house. And as the conversation about footwear wore on, I had a sudden realization: I’m going to have to wear socks! 

Now, the people who know me the most know how much I think socks are the scourge of the earth. Not only are they super hard for me to put on, but my feet like to breathe, not be confined to a stretch cotton prison all day. But then I remembered that I had to dig out my ambassador hat and show that I am flexible and adaptable and I’ll just have to have someone help me put on my feet prisons—I mean socks. No biggie. And plus, I’ve been told that my feet are nightmare material, so I should wear them anyway, lest I create an international incident.

But then we got into the nitty gritty of what is planned over there. This is going to be one of the most accessible shows in the world: they are pulling 300 seats for the bewheeled folk, and there will be a team of Japanese interpreters (who have already began to study a tape of our performance to get their interpretation as accurate as possible), and some Japanese sign language interpreters, and audio description (I think)… It’s just going to be tremendous.

But before we do all that, we’re going to be conducting workshops for both people with and without a disability, and we’re going to work with them closely to get a final product that we’ll perform when it is all over. It’s going to be interesting because there will be a couple deaf people participating in the workshop, and so they’re going to sign to the sign language interpreters who will interpret what they say into Japanese, and then the Japanese interpreters are going to translate that into English. It’ll be like a game of telephone. And for a language geek like me, it’s like I’ll be in heaven, if any of the deaf people are put in my group, that is.

Now the only thing is to go shopping for an adapter, some pants, some *gulp!* socks, and figure out a gift to give people in my workshop group and anyone else I’ll be interacting with. I don’t know when the next post will come. Maybe I’ll live blog the 12-hour plane ride! Okay. Maybe not. 

Until next time! 

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.

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...

US, Part 2.7: Sioux Falls, SD

When you come from the east coast, you don’t get the chance to appreciate wide-open expanses of land that seem to stretch out forever. I had no idea that there was this much un-fooled-around-with land out there, all tranquil and serene. To get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, from Aberdeen you have to pass through some pretty interesting cities. Riding along in the tour bus, I would see places like, “Arrowhead, Population 12.” and 30 minutes down the road you’d see another sign: “Custerville, Population 4.” Right afterwards you’d see two or three random houses, side by side. Then you’d come to the realization that in that split second you’d seen the entire town of Arrowhead or Custerville pass by the window, and that would make your head hurt a little, because you'd try to wrap your brain around questions like, “Where does the state get all that money to replace the sign every time someone either moves away from, or is born in Arrowhead, South Dakota?” and, “If you live in Custerville, and your house is on fire, how long does it take for the fire department to show up?” and even more perplexing: “If there are 4 residents in the town, and two of those residents are under the age of 18, and the other two residents are married, how do you choose a mayor?”

The day we reached Sioux Falls was one of the busiest travel days we had on the tour. After Marv and The Other Guy That Particular Week parked the buses, we all piled in to a gym connected to a church, and were instructed to sit in the middle of the floor. After we went through the week’s schedule and found out that we were sponsored by Burger King, they told us that this was the week of the Hometeam Olympics. Every cast is divided up into hometeams who get together periodically and do group activities or discuss things going on that week. So, we split up into hometeams and were informed of the events that we would be competing in: Musical Chairs, Tug of War, Pictionary, an alphabet game whose name escapes me, a statistical quiz about the numbers involved in the tour, and a special outdoor activity that would decide the ultimate winners. They passed us the quiz and told us to fill it out during the course of the game.

First up, it was Tug of War. The organizers of the hometeam olympics thought that just regular rope would withstand the force of teams with a combined total of 24 people pulling on it in opposite directions for a long period of time. Well, the rope stood up for the first round. The second round was off to a good start when all of a sudden we heard a big snap, and both of the teams went down with a thud. Little did we know afterwards that when Kirk hit the floor, he landed wrong and ended up breaking his finger. I think next time they had a better rope.

Then, it was Musical Chairs:





Let’s have a moment of silence for the three folding chairs that perished during the course of the game... It turns out that 107 people shouting at the same time can get pretty loud. I think they could hear us screaming all the way in Arrowhead.

After all of that, the third event was Pictionary, which was interesting, because instead of playing one word at a time, we played it like the end game of Win, Lose, or Draw, where you have a certain amount of time to draw ten words, and the team that ended up with the most words guessed moved on to the next round where the winner would be determined. Naturally, the team who was lucky enough to have Chihiro, the graphic designer from Japan, ended up winning. It was really interesting to see how much talent this cast had when it came to visual arts. And it was also interesting to see how some people just have absolutely no talent whatsoever. But we love them, anyway!

The next game we played was something I’d never seen before. I am not sure what they called the game, but the object was to be the first team to make formations of certain letters and numbers on the gym floor without talking. I’m not sure if I was an advantage or disadvantage to my team. Even though we were pretty darn quick, there always seemed to be a team that was slightly quicker than we were, and it always seemed to be the team closest to the head judge... Anyway, our team lost, and all we had to do was find out what the outdoor challenge would have in store for us.

Because I have only so much space, and this activity is really hard to explain, I’ll just post a video of what we had to do, and showcase the speed with which my hometeam won this particular activity.





After everything was tallied up, and scored, it was a hometeam that I wasn’t a part of that won. Oh well... the games were fun, and a wonderful change of pace from the normal day to day activities on the tour.

Then we were told to clean up and get into our number 2s for a press conference and host family pick up. Up with People has a special dress code that dictates what we wear. Number 5s are the crappiest clothes that we own that we usually wear when we’re out painting walls in exotic locations. As the numbers get smaller, our clothes get nicer. So, therefore, number 1s are our nicest clothes that we wear when we meet really important people like governors and mayors. Whenever we’d get off the bus, we’d have to be dressed in our number 2s so that we would look presentable to our host families and to any kind of media and paparazzi that happened to be there as we got off the bus. I remember one time Angela forgot to put her number 2 in her backpack for our trip to Albuquerque, and had to wait on the bus until the news crew had left, because she was in a number 3. I have no idea why I went on this little tangent. Apparently I have a lot to say about our dress code. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah... the press conference.

The press conference was a time for the cast to get oriented on what significance of the week was and what we were going to be doing, and to meet our host families. First, we found out that we had the potential of having the biggest US audience since Up with People was reformed, since our show facility had a capacity of 2,000 seats. So we needed to do as much as possible to get the word out there and raise money for our sponsors. Then a couple of people spoke about the history of Sioux Falls, including the mayor, and he told us that having so many young people from all around the world in Sioux Falls was a momentous occasion and he welcomed us all.

Then it was time to meet our host families. This city was unique in that instead of host codes, we had differently shaped keys that would only fit in our host families’ locks. This was good because we kind of got to meet everyone else’s host family before we met our own. My roommate that week, Colin Duckett from Texas, searched frantically for our host family, trying everybody’s lock. Finally, we saw a woman on the other side of the room that looked like her lock colors matched our key. Sure enough, it was a match. We were to be staying with the Roberts family, Judie, her husband, and their son and daughter, Sarah and Andrew. This was a unique family in that Sarah used a mobility scooter like mine, and so I had no problems getting around the house. What I particularly liked about this family is that every night after dinner we each would have an ice cream sundae with whatever topping we wanted on it. I would naturally drown mine in butterscotch and hot fudge to the point where that’s all you’d taste. Another cool thing about this family was that there was a old fashioned player piano in the basement that Mr. Roberts played for us. I had never before actually seen a player piano play all by itself. Colin and I spent at least 2 hours down in the basement listening to Mr. Roberts play. When you live an itinerant life, and you go from place to place, and live with a whole bunch of people from a varied array of lifestyles, you have no idea what is going to happen from one week to the next.

And that is no truer than when you are traveling in Up with People. If someone had asked me if I thought the cast would be performing during halftime at a high school football game in 15˚ weather, I would have responded by asking them if they were on psychotropic drugs. But I would have been wrong... So painfully, awkwardly, wrong. You see, it turns out that in order to promote the show that week, we were asked to perform a couple of songs for an O’Gorman High School football game. In sub-freezing temperatures. In our thin show costumes. And we had to act like we were enjoying ourselves, and not at all pre-hypothermic. I hope you know where I’m heading with this, because I could continue if you really want me to. I have never been that cold in all my life, and I’m from Maine. Luckily we were only doing three songs, so it took all of 15 minutes to perform. However, 15 minutes is a long time when the vitreous humor in your eyeballs is freezing solid. Did I mention it was cold? Anyway... all of the South Dakotans in the stands certainly understood our plight, and cheered us on, and waved signs at us. And it was kind of cool, because the scoreboard had a mini-Jumbotron (a Minitron?) on it, and I was told later that during a whole chorus of Up with People, I was on the Minitron, frozen eyeballs and all. It was probably my first and last time on anything with “tron” in its name... After all of that, my host family’s house had never looked better, or warmer.

Our theme in Sioux Falls was poverty in the world. This one we really understood, because we had had a taste of extreme poverty in Cabo. To really drive the point home, we had a couple of things planned. The whole cast was split up into small groups, and had to do various activities. I was in a group of 6 people and we were told that we were a family in Africa and then we were given 5 or 6 cardboard boxes and told to build a structure under which all of us could sleep at night, and this is the finished product:





After that was all said and done, we went back into the gym where there was a makeshift museum set up along the walls where there were pictures of what extreme poverty looked like, one of the pictures showed an african boy that was so starved that his stomach was distended and you could see his ribs, and it was plainly obvious that he hadn’t had water in days, or even months. It really hit home to me that I could have just as easily been that African child, and really all it comes down to is where you are born and who you are born to. There were other pictures of people scraping by on $1 or less a day. Then I thought of some of the very generous people who donated money so that I could go on this trip, the people like you and me who can afford simple luxuries like clean drinking water, or decent-quality fresh food and the oven or stove or microwave to cook it in, or a flushing toilet, or a bed... And I think of all of the frivolous things that the people who have an overabundance of money spend their fortunes on. The $10,000 pieces of jewelry that walk out of my Cabo host brothers’ store, the yachts, the big flat-screen HD TVs, and I think of how much of a better life all of these people in the pictures could have if they could get some of this money.

After the museum, we sat down to dinner. As far as the tour went, this was a very out-of-the-ordinary dinner. Earlier in the day, the poverty committee tossed a bunch of coins in the air, for people to catch. There were people who caught a whole bunch of coins, there were people who caught a couple of coins, and there were people who didn’t catch any coins at all. The people who caught a whole bunch of the coins became the Upper Class; the ones who caught a couple of coins became the Middle Class, and the rest of us were under the poverty line.

Dinner that night had three things on the menu: for the Upper Class diners it was a full 4-course meal, complete with a salad course, a bread course, an entrée, and a desert course, with a selection of carbonated beverages. For the middle class it was rice, beans, and a jug of water. For the poor people it was half-cooked rice and a glass bottle of water, that turned out to be salt water. I was in the group of people living under the poverty line. Here’s the set up of the gym floor:



The middle class were on the far left, and had the circle of folding chairs and the plastic table. The poor people sat in the middle of everything, and only had cardboard; the upper class on the far right had two tables with tablecloths and centerpieces and all of that stuff. They also had a staff of people taking their orders and serving them food. On either side of the low class people, there were blue jump ropes that signified oceans, and whenever one of the poor people’s feet would accidentally touch the rope, a member of the upper class wait staff would curtly bark out, “You are disturbing or guests! Move your foot!” This happened so often that the wait staff decided to stand tables on their sides between them and the poor people so that the upper class wouldn’t be disturbed. That was fine with me, because it somewhat blocked the delicious smell of the food that I wouldn’t be eating that night.

A couple of moments later, I saw the very environment-savvy, non-wasteful Ellen Enebo slide the garbage can in full sight of the middle and lower classes, and very purposefully scrape all of the food that the upper class people didn’t end up eating into the trash. The worst was when the garlic bread all went in the garbage can. I think at that moment, my heart did a reverse Grinch and actually shrank two sizes. I looked down at my bowl of undercooked rice, and finished the last of it, trying to forget the gruesome image that I had just bore witness to. But, one very cool thing happened during the hunger banquet:





When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!

After the whole hunger banquet had ended we all sat down as a cast and processed the events of the day. What began as a discussion turned into an outpouring of emotion as people started sharing their personal stories of the poverty they had witnessed in their own countries. That is when some things started to click for me: I was so lucky that I was born where I was born and that I had two loving, fairly well-off families that could support me if I needed it. I am from one of the richest countries in the world, and would never face living in a cardboard box, and looking around the room I realized how fortunate the whole cast was to be able to have this experience of traveling the world and actually going out there to help the people that most desperately needed it.

When they announced at the end that our host families were given explicit instructions not to feed us that night, my stomach started doing flips, and my mouth got a little dry as it wasn’t going to be enjoying an ice cream sundae that night. But hey, despite the extremely loud protests from my digestive tract, for the first time I had a clear picture economically of where my place was in this world, and I knew that I’d have a good breakfast in the morning.

The show that week was amazing. We reached our goal of 2,000 people, and the gym that we performed in was packed! It’s so great to look out into the audience before the show and not see one empty chair, and know that they all came to see us entertain them. It’s also great to look out in the audience and see some of the friends you had made that week and get their reactions after the show, and know that you added a little something to their lives.

Sioux Falls was definitely one of the most memorable cities of the tour, and this was particularly poignant as it would be our last travel day completely within US borders, and soon we’d be in the tropics.

As Marv and The New Other Guy That Week pulled the buses out of the driveway, we all waved to our host families, and thought of what North Platte, Nebraska might bring us.