This is John describing the team's experiences in Ormoc on Friday. It was a very full day and particularly revealing to a Rotarian. That's why I am taking the lead on this post, with notes recorded by Stacey and insights from Nicole. Truly a team effort.
Today we were the guests of the Rotary Cub of Ormoc Bay. We are grateful to past president and past assistant governor Clem van den Bersselaer for organizing a most stimulating day. (By the way, I was fascinated by Clem's story. A civil engineer from Holland, he spent his career around the world building bridges and other large facilities. At one point, he was assigned to work on a large construction project in the Philippines. He fell so in love with the country that when his company tried to reassign him, Clem simply retired and decided to live in Ormoc.)
In the morning, the GSE team toured three projects sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ormoc Bay.
We were taken to three villages where the Rotary Club funded the construction of three deep water wells with a manual pump. It's difficult for those of us who have running water to appreciate how meaningful such wells are to the residents of these villages. Without such access to drinking water, Filipinos often have to walk miles lugging plastic jugs of water. On our travels, we frequently encountered children as young as 6 or 7 carrying water for miles on dirt roads.
The water wells cost about $1,000 to dig. The Club raises funds for these wells with a very popular 5K fun run.
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l to r: Nicole, Luz Escalon, Clem van den Bersselaer, Twinkle Chu, Lalaine Jimenea, Ivy van den Bersselaer, Warren Chu, Stacey, John
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A few miles away, we visited a community called Gawad Kalinga. To understand the significance of this project, a little history is required. In 1991, Ormoc suffered a flash flood that resulted in the loss of 8,000 lives and devastated much of Ormoc City. This event is still the most destructive in recent Philippine history. The Rotary Club, with other groups, working on a model that Habitat for Humanity has used so successfully, has constructed 76 modest but very livable houses for those displaced by the flood. Rotarians raise funds for construction materials, and the residents themselves provide the sweat equity. The residents (not "beneficiaries") receive a certificate of occupancy, and while they don't own their houses, they are treated as if they do.
We were invited into the home of the president of the community association. It is a concrete block structure with poured cement floor Few houses are made of wood because termites quickly attack wood. There is a common room dominated by a big entertainment center with a TV. On the right there is a small kitchen with a refrigerator and small propane stove. Three small (about 5x8 feet) bedrooms are curtained off. This represents a real step up for many poor Filipino families who often raise 3-6 children in one room.
We were then greeted warmly and in sign language by the 75 students who attend a school-within-a-school for the hearing impaired. The Rotary Club of Ormoc Bay has constructed a classroom and dormitory addition for these students. The latest contribution is a propane stove that the students use in home economics. The students are taught to sign and lip read in English. The students just loved to be photographed with the visitors from Pennsylvania. Though no words were spoken, it was no problem to articulate the bonds of friendship.
For me, our next stop was the most emotional encounter. We visited the Hayag Receiving and Child Care Home, a facility to care for abandoned babies up to age 4. Every week, the Rotary Club raises funds in a version of "Happy Dollars" to buy diapers for the children. When we arrived, the ten children in residence were just rousing from their naps. They ranged in age from 9 months to 3 years. All the children were in individual iron cribs. The facility was well-staffed, supervised by a Catholic sister who was dedicated to the children who come into her care. The funding for this home comes from a variety of private sources from the US and Japan.
The good news is that healthy infants have a 90% adoption rate. The sister expressed confidence that every one of the ten children in her care would find adoptive homes. If they don't, the prospects for the children quickly deteriorate. They are sent to state facilities that care for and theoretically school the children until age 18. Foster care as we know it in the US is not practiced widely in the Philippines. Parents have a right to reclaim their children if they have not been legally adopted and if the parents can demonstrate financial responsibility.
For a relatively small club, Ormoc Bay has been astonishingly effective. We visited a children's park with slides and swings that the club built and maintains. We were invited inside a City Health Department District Health Center that Rotarian Dr. Jerry Chiong volunteers at. The clinic offers preventive care and maternity services for indigent residents. Dr. Chiong says he has personally delivered over 600 babies with the help of a number of midwives.
After visiting these projects, I was momentarily perplexed. My club, the Lewisburg Sunset Rotary Club, has more members than Ormoc Bay and commands more financial resources. But if a GSE team came to Lewisburg and asked me to show them my club's projects, what would I show them? But then I reflected that the comparison is not fair. My club does a lot of good work but we rarely build infrastructure because the infrastructure in Lewisburg is mature. Everyone has running water. The state takes care of abandoned children. Of course there are holes in the social safety net, and Rotarians try to fill those holes when we see them, but the results are often not easy to photograph.
The day ended on a somber note. We asked to see the City of Ormoc garbage dump. Most big cities in Asia have developed communities that exist on these dumps to sort recyclables that are thrown away. In Manilla, there is the infamous "Smoky Mountain," a 10-story garbage dump that has been on fire for decades and on which generations of people live and die. The Ormoc dump is much more modest. It covers an area of several acres and is about 50 feet high. We saw a number of adults on top of the pile and children on the periphery working. Segregated materials (plastics, aluminum, paper) were tied into bundles for the waiting trucks that would take them away to be repurposed into other products. In the Philippines nothing is wasted. The workers make a modest but honest living sorting and extracting value out of garbage.
I decided to climb the garbage pile. The smell was very strong. Flies were everywhere. I was afraid of making a wrong step. But in fact it was just garbage of the kind that I personally generate too much of. I decided to be more conscious of what I throw away. I was moved by the pages of a notebook flapping in the breeze. It obviously belonged to a student taking geometry because in a clear hand of a student the pages had definitions for geometric terms such as perpendicular, parallel, congruent, etc. How did the notebook, with most of the pages unfilled, get to be at the top of a garbage pile? I didn't want to be on the pile anymore. For the first time I felt I was intruding.
The day wasn't all work. One of the members of the Ormoc Bay club owns a day spa and treated us to massages. For the very last piece before dinner, we stopped at a sugar cane field where workers were loading the crops onto large trucks. A worker brought over a length of freshly cut cane for our dessert. Nicole and Stacey gamely got into gnawing at the cane. It's a treat that eludes me.
The day ended with a wonderful meal prepared by my host family, DGE Peter Rodriguez and his wife Rina and their four children. Joining us was Rotarian Rex Tan, who hosted Nicole and Stacey, as well as Rotarian Anna Bumagat and her husband Troy, an officer in Philippines Navy. The meal included the largest lobsters I've ever seen, broiled and then sliced lengthwise into two equal sections so there's none of the shell cracking required to eat a whole lobster. It was the best lobster I ever ate. Earlier in the day I met the chicken that was destined for soup that evening. The soup had the richest chicken flavor I've ever tasted, and that's saying a lot for a guy who thought that Jews had the corner on chicken soup.
Then it was back to Rex Tan's home which has a karaoke room. We rocked our last night in Ormoc, belting out one tune after another. We took turns singing tunes in English and Tagalog. Drinks flowed and by the end the language of the songs were sometimes hard to distinguish. So it goes in Ormoc City. There are no words to express the appreciation we have for the Rotarians of Ormoc, the good work they do, and the hospitality they showed the GSE team from Pennsylvania.
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