The Long Walk Home

For those who don’t know, we’ve moved. Our old house was in an area of ill repute, and Peace Corps thought that it would be better for all parties involved if we were to move. It was hard for us—the house was beautiful. Facing the ocean we could cook dinner and watch the sunset every night if we wanted. We also had privacy, something that can be rare in a country that stresses family, community and interdependence. However, we didn’t really have many friends in the community over the age of 12 and it was a long commute into town. To make a long story short, we moved closer to town into a house that is part of a “compound.” The compound is actually just 4 houses that a few brothers own and live in with their families. It’s a brother of one of my close friends and co-teachers at school.

It’s great here!

We have our own space if we need to get away from the world for a while, but at the same time, we are part of a wonderful community of families that enjoy hanging out with us and looking out for us. It’s still on the beach but it’s closer to town. We are happy living here.


Now…There are three ways you can get to our house from my school. The first is to hire a private tricycle (a motorcycle with a covered sidecar) and fork out 15 Pesos for about an 8 minute ride. We really only take a private tricycle if we’re in a hurry or if we want to get home quickly. Wait, that’s the same thing. We also take one if we don’t want to have 3 people sitting on our lap. It’s a luxury that we can afford once in a while not to be squished. Another way is to get home from my school is to walk to the terminal where the tricycles gather. This is usually the way I go home. Getting to the terminal is a journey in itself. Not in distance, but rather in fortitude. Usually between 40-60 tricycles gather at the terminal, each having its own distinct color indicating the barangay it is traveling to. It’s pretty loud at the terminal. Not jet-blast loud, but loud enough to not be comfortable. The constant clamor of revving 4 stroke engines is matched by the chatter of people waiting for their tricycle to fill up (they won’t leave until there are 8 people who are willing to shell out 5 Pesos each for the privilege of cramming themselves into a vehicle designed to hold 4 comfortably). There are also the ubiquitous vendors chanting out the necessity of purchasing their particular products. Peanuts, bread, barbecue, banana-que, various forms of sticky and sweet rice, water, juice, fruit, and for the more courageous, balut, that delicacy of hard boiled, embryonic duck egg that has yet to tickle my palate. The balut vendors are my favorite because their calls of “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalut!” are followed by the squawk of a bicycle horn. I guess the vendors aren’t really my favorite. Just the horn. And just sometimes. Other times I want to shove the horn down their throat and punch them in the stomach to make it toot. I wish I knew how to type the sound it makes. The best I can do is to compare it to the Honkers from Sesame Street.




Click here to hear the sound I mean

http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=27882

After rigorous training I now can weave through the ruckus with a lowered head and a quick first step and can find my particular tricycle rather quickly. Most of the time between entering the terminal and finding my tricycle I only get shouted at, pointed at, laughed at and made fun of for whatever reason about 643 times. On a Good Day I can ignore it. On a Not So Good Day I utter expletives not fit for a blog my Grandma reads.

The guys that drive our tricycles all know us (our alien whiteness and gargantuan height tend to make us stick out) and love to chat before the tricycle leaves. So far I’ve explained to them how I can’t have a Filipino wife because I’m married (“Yes you can, just have a few other wives on the side”), tried to convey that we want to wait until after Peace Corps to have children (“Well you should have one that is ‘Made in the Philippines.’”) and doled out personal financial information as requested (“How much do you make? How much do you pay in rent? How much did your bike cost? How much is a ticket to the US? Will you buy me a ticket to the US?”). On a Good Day I enjoy the fact that these guys know my name. On a Not So Good Day I just want to be shoved into the tricycle with everyone else and be driven past the shouts of onlookers. Either way I save 10 Pesos (about $0.20).

Yesterday, I walked home. I’ll make it known right off the bat that I don’t do this every day. I had to mentally prepare myself for a good 3 hours before setting off for home. It’s probably a less than 2km (a little over a mile). It took me almost an hour. It was quite an experience. To get to the ‘goal’ of home (I had to make the walk like a game, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it), I have to walk through two communities before I reach our barangay. The road is, for the most part, unpaved and strewn with potholes. Where there are strips of pavement, speed bumps reward tall passengers of fast moving tricycle drivers with a bruised head. The street hugs the shoreline and the houses, food stands and people literally spill onto it. At around 4:30, when I was on my way home, the thing for everyone to do was to hang out and watch me. I actually think a memo was passed out to all residents along my intended route for them to come out at the appropriate time and just watch. The path is long and straight, and my bobbing blond hair could be seen from quite a ways away.

I know we’ve written this before, but I believe it needs reiteration. The first phrase we learned in Kinaray-a was “Di-in kaw ma’agto, haw?” (Where are you going, really?). Even if I’m not walking, I hear that about 2,340 times between school and home. That’s about once every 3 feet. The proper response, “Ma-uli rin lang takon” (I’m just going home), brings about a smile and a nod from the Inquisitor (notice the capital “I” in “Inquisitor.” Like the Spanish Inquisition. It can be that rough sometimes). On a Not So Good Day, I tell them out loud where I’m going while in my head I tell them where they should go. I think the familiarity of knowing where it is I’m going makes them happy. Sometimes I just tell people that I walk past that I’m going home, even if they didn’t ask and sometimes if they’re not even looking at me (wait…that has never happened once here. Everyone is always looking at me).

For the people who don’t know where I’m going or where I’m coming from, I tell them. I work at school. Yes, I’m a teacher there. Yes, I’m married. No, not to a Filipina. No, we don’t have children yet. Yes, I live over there in that barangay (which I point to with my lips). Usually, that satisfies most people, and I tromp off towards the next cluster of eager eyes of all ages, awaiting news as to the exact destination of my current journey. Surprisingly my destination doesn’t change in the 5 feet I cover to get to them. In the course of my walk yesterday I chatted with some boys taking their pigeons to the beach (after giving them a polite yet firm reminder that my name is, indeed, ‘Scott’ and not ‘Hey ‘Kano (Ameri-kano…get it?...clever, eh?) or how they like to pronounce it
‘HEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY KAAANNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO’), learned that one of the grilled banana sellers lost in the recent local elections, got invited to drink coconut wine with a group of men who had been at it fervently for at least 10 hours (I politely declined), got dance lessons from a man who had drunk too much coconut wine in the past 10 hours (I think he may have been waiting for me to return after he saw me leave for school at 7 a.m.) and had ice cream with a barbecue vendor (it was her brother-in-laws birthday), whom I love and adore because she knows my name and uses it when she addresses me. Then I got home.


I don’t have the gumption to do that everyday. On one hand it’s nice to be in a community and to get to know the people here. On the other hand, I am only 1 and they are multiplying at a disturbingly rapid pace (Erin’s work in Reproductive Health may help to stem that…). Obviously there are more of them than there are of me and I can only take so much. Some days are harder than others and I just want to get home and grouse and complain to Erin. I don’t want to put the effort into walking and chatting with everyone. But I do love our new community. I’m so glad that we moved. And I’m glad that I walked home yesterday.
:-)








I rode a tricycle home today, in case you wondered.
:-)
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