Thy Father's Son

My youngest sister  Maymay attending to Tatay after we transferred him to to the HRU ..

Ooops! I go beyond the hospital drop off point, I suppose to get off immediately in front of the hospital along the national high way but I fall asleep due to fatigue. I have to hurriedly get a tricycle to bring me back to the hospital clutching the medicines that I have to source outside the hospital pharmacy and travelled to another city just to get these tiny   but prize medicines that my Tatay needs. Tomorrow will be a month that change our lives as siblings, for me personally and being back in town that I left and visited only a few times   that includes my   younger brother and my Nanay (mother) funerals since I was sixteen years old, though the landscape did not change but a lot of things I have to rediscover, almost everything is strange including the societal dynamics.

 After nine beautiful years of serving as an international volunteer where I love and like my work so much helping others, I realized if I do things for others why I cannot do it to the man that I love so much, my father.  As I stroked his graying hairs, I admired his beautiful age lines, age lines that tells many stories of failures, lessons learned and successes, like the work that I did in the development work that span that more than the timeline of my career work that I spend in the mainstream world.

There my man, the cowboy that I admired, my hero, laying in the hospital bed helpless, hooked in the tubes that aid his breathing and reviving him to life, the very tubes that witness to my regrets and angst when I am alone with him.  A lifelong lesson keeps on demonizing that time is precious, and presence and quality time is more that gold, that family is the only thing that you have that some people are too selfish to demand that you have to give them time only when they do not know that other people who needs your attention too and that money counts up to the last centavo.

There are things that we cannot believe that we cannot do but actually we will amaze that we can do it. I cannot believe that I had piggy back him personally passing through the slippery rice paddies that for years never tried to set foot for almost two kilometers to reaching the rescue car considering that I am just allowed to carry not more ten kilograms due to my medical conditions and the confidence to approach friends to help us through the financial obligations to meet meteoric hospital bills that keeps going, but money is not that significant to me anymore, I just wanted to have him.

For weeks he is in the ICU, now in the HRU where I have to  do basically all the health care regiments with the aid of the allied and medical practitioners, where my desire to be a medical doctor was ignited back, every moments counts, making sure that contaminations  will be controlled, everything must be sterilized and the doses of antibiotics will be shots in exact timelines, making sure that  trach care is administered rightly, watching all the vital signs using the  monitoring and  the making sure the devices are well in place, a little error is fatal. He has aneurysm due to the bursting of his blood vessel on the right side of his brain that left his left side of the body paralyze.

Sometimes I am upset, I want everything to be precise and on time, and maintain the highest quality control, it brings me back how I take care of those little, tiny creatures in tissue culture lab, now I am dealing with the life of my own father. Sometimes, I cannot help to be upset and intolerant because of physical fatigue, and then I realized how patience my tatay and nanay when I was a baby, so helpless and so dependent on them when I throw my childish tantrums. If I manage to be tolerant and patience with people who are totally strangers to me why I can’t do it to the man who gives me flesh and blood and complete my being.

Two more days, we will be a month now in our new home address, the hospital. I am hoping things will be normalize, but what is normal to a bionic man? I am facing with plenty of challenges,  my Tatay  will be discharge soon when I signed the waiver to bring him home to continue his medical and  comfort care  there, are we going to finish renovating his  room on time into a home ICU, can I provide him the other machines that we need to prepare before they will allow us to get out, do I still have the resources when  almost the insurances are drain and still working on our loan applications  to take ages to process to sustain his medical needs, how I am going to deals with the hospital billings that is more than my  life saving as a volunteer in the last nine years? And how to deal with the dilemma that if they will not release us, our bills continue to inflate?  Ah, I am hopeful that the universe will align and how about dealing those people who are bitter telling us that is   a bad karma? No, I do not have time and I am not hurt with them, it is actually a good karma, getting rid of those people that makes our lives bitter and uncomfortable. One thing that I treasured and appreciate, I am blessed to have siblings to lean on, few family and trusted friends who bears with me the pain and give us understanding, the joy and the realizations on how to celebrate the beauty of life and to them I am forever grateful and I am super grateful to the Supreme Being who allow me to experience this things, I believe that something more beautiful will happen soon and more blessings to come.  I remain forever grateful to your understanding and trust; we will cross the bridge when we get there.

Behind the Photos of A Volunteer: Volunteer’s Life is like a Nepali Dhal Bhat

The Nepali dhal bhat tharkari

They hate you Juanito! exclaimed one of my closest friends. You live a life that they envy and asked if do you work?  This is one of the things that I always frequently hear after posting some of the   landscape photos in my social media account. Some became curious of what it is to be a volunteer. Almost everybody believes that a volunteer is a hero, others believe that volunteers are stupid, others think we are martyrs but   most forget that first of all we are still earthlings, ordinary earthlings like you.

Children in the southern part of Lake  Tanganyika

Traffic in Katawi  National Park

Sumbawanga Airport in Western  Central Tanzania

In every photos posted in my social media account, there is always a story behind it. Some are stories that makes us laugh, others make us cry, upset and just simply awed. The photos that I posted, others were encouraged to be a volunteer to fulfil their dreams. To fulfil those dreams is to have a photos of children behind us  in tattered clothes, women carrying   a huge and heavy loads, and with men behind bars or with arms shouting “fight for freedom” or carrying a placards to fight stigma against people afflicted with HIV. Hmmp, wrong motivation maybe. Many of us and  I even asked myself why, I am doing these things that I have to wake up early and worked for hours not mentioning all those  terrible roads, bad access to transportations that I have to climb mountains twice higher than the mountains that we have back in the Philippines, missed out communications, or simply celebrating Christmases and New Years alone after posting a photos of  Masais and with me chatting and  dancing, or simply  hiking in a snow-capped Himalayas behind a Gurung village or visiting and having coffee with a Pemban friend in front of the Indian Ocean.

         

My prize of walking to visit and worked in my  project areas, hematoma.

Many times I was asked the reason why I left my country and profession when  in fact I'm needed more back home. This I even asked myself. Others asked me your country is poor but you’re here? Or simply you will be scorned for being a volunteer by some volunteers that they believe only Europeans or Americans have the “rights” to volunteer.  In one of my placement, I was told that  they should not accept me because I am an Asian. They prefer “whites” but  obliged to take me because they will lose the funding from  the organization that sent me. Only to find out later, that having a “white” volunteer is a status symbol in their communities.

Re-fuelling during the monsoon @ Songea Airport

Place where we sleep in  the Masai Villages

          Not only that, we will hear also the “ Miss Beauty Pageant” wannabees that we do volunteering because we have to be like  Angelina Jolie or  feeling like George  Clooney, and post those photos  with captions, "I feel like an angel  or feeling  a salvador del mundo!  The  funny thing we emphasized that we hate the colours of the organization that we represent but will tell or command others to take pictures of us only when we wear the uniform or vest, after the pictorials we will just remove it. But wear it as a badge of status with pride and gusto because  we are happy to be there as a part of the community.

 Natural water heater in Tandala, Tanzania

          If you think that we can change the world by coming to the field as an expert and have all the innovations and sophisticated designs for development, think twice. The people that we might be working with in the field have better academic and experiential portfolio than we thought.  Sometimes we  are double standard, to make a Mother Theresa  appeal, we will introduced themselves ,  I am not an expert but when we signed the log books which is a common thing in some countries, we will write in big letters, IVE – International Volunteer Expert!  Our part as volunteers is to facilitate or simply be a helping hand to recognize the concerns that the  community is facing and how can we help realize to find a solution for it. We have to remember, that their situation is much better than us but only the question is who will guide them to lead in making a solution to their concerns. This made me remember the YouTube clip, on “who wants to be a volunteer” or an article, WE DO NOT WANT A DUMB VOLUNTEER IN AFRICA. 

 Many lives perished in  car accidents in Africa.

Most believe also that being a volunteer, we are receiving heaps of money. Some even think that we are in their country to take their money and their opportunities for employment. Sadly, I say no. In some circumstances, we have to subsidize our volunteer living allowances. So, if we are thinking that there is money in volunteering think twice before coming. Others also believe that as a volunteer we are the ambassador of WORLD BANK – IMF and that we are mucho dinero and throw money in the air! They failed to know that not everything is money and we do not come as funders and if we think so, we will be frustrated.

         

Millets growing in the terraces 

And again,   some of our co-volunteers especially think that we come to volunteer for the allowance because we cannot find work at home. Some questions our credibility, and even academic qualifications on how and why we are accepted as volunteers, thinking again that since they come from “developed” countries they are much better especially if you came from “south to south” volunteering countries.  All must realize that in volunteering, we need not to be very smart nor to be gorgeous but not to be a dumb too. What matters most is our intentions of doing our work with passion and commitment and on how we can integrates in the community dynamics in order for us to be a better partner to development.

Dam for hydroelectric plant in Lamjung

          But as volunteers, we learn a lot things to share and celebrate with the community,  the cultures of accountability, transparency, and  sustainability are the best thing that we can offer but  requires a lot of humility,  commitment,  and passion, always. Like any other vocation and profession, things will come out best if it comes from the heart.

         

With the monks inside Patan Square

The reason why I post only nice if not beautiful photos, it is because I would like that each one of us will look forward to things that will inspires us more to do what is better for children to be better global citizens to make the world a better place to live rather than having better world for the children to be live better. A place that everyone will be respected and appreciated.  We do not have to post photos   to gained sympathy, we do not have to prostitute issues to gain attention or simply to ask an appeal.  I tried to post more photos that will inspire us more and that is the reason why I love to do what I do now. We  do not have to be a full pledge volunteer always, even in our little ways we can do something better, what if all of us will volunteer for a wrong reason or all of us are volunteers?   Think twice  about the photos, it is not only simply beautiful, think that behind those scenes are stories of  triumphs, desperation, betrayals and celebrations  that will make us appreciate better life, like the Nepali dhal bhat, it contains everything to appreciate and savour the flavour, that is a volunteer’s life!

Blackie and me during tihar in Kathmandu

Curried chicken with Raksi, the local wine made from millet

Children waiting for the turn for kerosine ration

Sunrise from my flat in Besishahar

My  Gurung hosts in Karapu Village

ORDINARY , EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Dutchs Beyond Tulips, Windmills, and Cheese

The  cheese is always associated with the Dutch

As a child  all I know  about Holland, it is a land of cheeses, with large gardens that only tulips grows,  and windmills to avoid flooding! Thanks to my elementary grade teachers, and of course the venerable old encyclopedia that  I inherited from my Laki  Merto, my great grandfather who brought it back to the Philippines from United States of  America. But as I grew up, I always hear that Dutch are straight forwardly rude, miser, and almost every Dutch that I meet, I ask them the most dreaded question, do you eat tulip bulbs?

The Grieps, in the southern highlands of Tanzania.
 Photo courtesy of Victoria Barrowcliff

But what is it that  that I cannot run away from the Dutch, is it because I wanted to be tall, to compensate my Filipino height, sorry for the mestizo Filipinos who will raising their eyebrows! Or simply, they have blue eyes?  But  contrary to what many perceived,  the Dutch are one of the most brutally honest people, open minded,  and of course the most caring and loving earthlings that sometimes people will find them cheesy but that makes them Dutch, lovable Dutch.If Pia Wurtzbach have Miss Bulgaria, I have the Dutchies ( not politically correct, but it is my term of endearment for the Dutchs). 

Sanne de Korte with Sahim in Pemba Island

My early days in Africa, was a rough one but  it was because of the encouragement of Sandra Bemelmans, that I stayed in Pemba. She give me courage to stay there longer and believe in myself that I can finish my placement in this small island, which eventually I overstayed and considers it a home! How can I forget her thoughtfulness, that I myself forget that it was my birthday one June morning when she just flew in from the mainland and surprised me in my house and told me " lets celebrate your  birthday breakfast", ah don't you thinks she is not thoughtful? The beautiful dada Lisenka  Beetstra who always  make sure that I have  the nicest place  to stay when I am in  Unguja whether is for  work or just simply stranded in the island. The iconic Andre Slomp, who cannot forget his big blue bag on the top of the bus in Wete!  We shared  our bloopers together as both of us non-native  English speakers, Hmmp. buddy  how we laughed out hearts together when you said, buddy  you are always smelling, when  you mean smiling! And literally, I shared room and even bed with Dutchies women!  Yeah, sans your dirty thoughts. Sanne de Korte, remember  when we  travelled to Dar Es Salaam in the early days and there  is only Room 512 in the legendary Econolodge that we ended up sleeping in the couch in the lounge area! Ah, the hottest room we ever had! One  of the most and enduring volunteer doctors in the Island of Pemba

Sjoerd van Setten in Misali Island

The truth will set you free  and know what you want, this is what I learned from Dr. Sjoerd van Setten. Let go of  things that is not meant for you. But  you teach me to enjoy life as it is similar to your flip flaps stuck in the muds or cooking the cassava leaves gifted to us in one of our field trips.As they say kaka, now matter what, the show must go on.

But my relationship with the Dutch does not end when they finish their tour  of duty as volunteers, it transcend  even beyond distance and time, Fredrik Knoeff and Liesbeth Kanis are alway providing me with encouragement no matter  where they are in world. Ah, thanks you  and I am more than happy we are having a lot of common friends now all over. Nobody  can replicate your thoughtfulness and kindness.

Post marathon in Arusha with  Liesbeth Kanis and Fredrik Knoeff

The Dutch are angels too! Irma Baltes, you are exceedingly extra beautiful inside and out, and from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda and  more other countries , you always give inspiration for giving quality health care but you work with compassion  and passion  and that makes you a standout! You are always in  heart, thanks for caring and  for everything Zazu. You are always my  Zazu, who always cheers me up but manage also to remind me of what is bad...hahahaha! bad food, ehe! Thanks for reminding me always  slow down that you are the only angel who can will remove my plate when I am eating and say, slowly dear!

the Zazu of my life, Irma Baltes

They are family oriented too. Thanks to Wim  and Carla Grieps, the  Southern Highlands gives me the opportunity to be showered by your love and concern. Our work becomes lighter, and happier!  I always cherished those moments when  bus drivers will offload us in the middle of nowhere but our laughter will echoes! Your taught me patience, hmmp  losing your video camera holders, hearing my rants, yes, I rant. LOL!  Wim, I will not wonder if you will become a saint, you are always saint Wilhelmus for me. Carla, ah simply amazing and I cannot say more, the hugs and words of encouragement, and even the silence, your presence alone makes me stronger in the mids of adversities!

Annelies Wissink in Wete

All Hail to the Queen, Sjoerd van Setten and Annelies Wissink  in Dar es  Salaam

Annelies Wissink, you are rolled into one! I can always sleep like a rose,   I shared a house with her, and even clothes! You hear it right, clothes! It was one of the Kilimanjaro cold  trips that she provided me her warmers. and Pembans cannot marry her,  with her catch phrase, ask my kaka first! You have your gold bars and I  have my rice leftovers for breakfast, Deal is done. She is an epitome of empowered woman! Her smiles and caring nature is abysmal but strong enough. How can I forget, how you manage to be on my sides  not only one  but countless time just to be there  to make sure I am safe. You are always my dada. You fight for me in my battles too.

Now, I do not have any reasons to visit one day, the land of cheese, windmills, tulips and here is more than that,  you are not only wonderful people but destiny weave us together  for me to learn more. Looking forward to see you in one table, with good food, and laughter but as my dada Judith Kok said in out of our meetings, you are more than a Dutch, you are pretty straight forward. Now, to all of you, Dutchies,  i will not say dank je wel  but, hartelijk bedankt!