Summing it up: impossible

So it's 9:30 pm and we are on our last load of laundry. All other clothing is rolled and ziplocked into my backpack and I am ready to go. Money belt will be on at 4:30 am as we depart for the airport for our first flight to Manila and then from Manila onto Bangkok where Lindsay and I will meet up with Kor, our close friend from Santa Clara who will be our tour guide for two weeks in Thailand.

All day today I was ready to go. I was ready to be out of this country and wanted nothing more to do with it. It poured rain, lightening shot through the sky and the thunder was deafening. The power went out three separate times today and Lindsay and I felt like we wasted our day packing, waiting for the DSL man to come to Hilary and David's and then waiting for him to fix the computer for another three hours. I was done with Filipino time, Filipino food, traffic and power outages. Without Hilary and David here to tell us funny stories about how crazy things are or help us take everything in stride we were feeling more ready to go.

How do I even sum up this past month? I can start by saying that two years ago I did a very similar month (6 weeks) in El Salvador at the National Maternity Hospital. I had a lot of the same roller coaster emotions, was frustrated with the same issues, and saw them same poverty. What struck me most was the parallels between El Salvador and Cebu City. They are so far from each other yet both share a few common characteristics that have made them so similar.

Primarily, they are both countries with a strong (if not overpowering) catholic/christian theocratic government. This allows for people who have nothing to still have profound faith. It also allows the church to mandate rules about women's reproductive rights and makes for the fertility rate to be through the roof. This has a large ripple effect throughout all populations leading to women who are not able to work or pursue education due to the five or six children on their hips and men who feel that their power and domination is inherent and are able to be the primary decision makers while often times not bringing in any income.

Secondly, both countries have been passed around by different world powers and had little time to form their own identities. The Filipino cuisine is a prime example of this lost identity. What is Filipino food? Well, it's basically Asian food that is fried and turned into an American/bad Asian restaurant. The lack of a cultural identity in the Philippines makes it hard to want to stay and identify with your people. The fact that most educated Filipinos speak English also gives an easy out to the US or other foreign countries for work. This exodus of Filipinos to the US (and Salvadorans as well) is visible in any unskilled work force or housekeeping company. It's not so much that Filipinos (or Salvadorans) have given up on their economies rather their governments have failed to provide jobs and industries to sustain the population. Lindsay and I met three men while here. The father and his two sons are all trained as engineers. In the US, engineering students are almost always guaranteed to find jobs and generally lucrative ones at that. In the Philippines these three men are able to make a much better living as caterers. Engineering has no value or market even in a booming city like Cebu.

Lastly, there is no out here- at least not one that is worth dreaming about at night. Foundations, institutions and initiatives set up in the US to help undeserved communities don't exist her because the entire population is undeserved. In the US we like to think that the poor kids from the ghetto can still make it to college or into the big leagues. We have reasons to believe these things, citing Obama as our biggest story yet. In the Philippines these types of opportunities are not realistic and not dreamed about. The kids at the dump will remain at the dump and the girls in Kamagayan will still be there for the next group of visitors. Father Heinz assured me of these suspicions without me even asking. Even though the dump we visited has since partially burnt down, the families will simply relocate to another part of the same dump site or onto the next one and remain. The medical check ups that Father Heinz administers are merely enough to keep these people afloat but no where near enough to get them out of their mess (literally).

So, if nothing can change here and the government makes pointless laws and the women are constantly being pushed down, why even come at all? I have asked myself this question regarding both my time here in Cebu and in El Salvador. Is it really worth it to endure the pain of seeing all of this and helping such a small amount only to know that when I leave it will still be the same desperate place it is now?
The answer is I don't know. For me, it has been eye opening a second time around and helped me draw parallels between some of the dangerous effects of the Catholic church's divide and conquer methods of the past. It was also yet another opportunity for me to challenge myself with the living conditions, cultural norms, heat and the discomfort of leaving my comfortable home. I think I know what I have gotten out of the experience but I still have yet to decide if the Philippines got anything out of having me around. One of the reasons I see myself (and Linds) as small beacons of hope is through using Hilary as an example. Hilary came to the Philippines nine years ago as a young and fresh midwife right out of school. She probably endured some of our same struggles (and far worse) and must have contemplated why she was here in the first place. But within three years of her arrival she was able to set up a clinic and now has delivered nearly 2,000 babies. That is real progress that you can feel. She has plans to go to medical school, open a larger clinic and expand the areas of expertise. If I can even say that I contributed to her vision in the slightest than I am satisfied with my time here.