Thursday, October 20, 2005

6 months?

Can anyone believe it has been 6 months that we’ve been here in the Philippines? I surely can’t. We’re on another high about being here – probably because we have Matt and Tash coming to visit from Canberra and we will be heading down to Bohol for a nice trip away from Manila!

We’re half way through and we are now the old-timers! The new batch of AYADs arrived in the Philippines early last week. There's only 4 of them which is a pretty significant reduction from the 9 of us that arrived here in April. Like us they had a busy first week schedule - they've been doing in-country training in Manila and spending most evenings out with all of us. Reggie is the only Manila based AYAD this time around - he'll be working with an Environmental Advocacy NGO. He's from Brisbane, was born in the Philippines and lived here until he was 11. Elizabeth if from Sydney/Canberra (how long do you have to be living in Canberra for before you say you are from Canberra?) and will be based in Bacolod, the capital of the island Negros in the Visayas. She'll be working with the Local Government Unit trying to assist them in improving their statistics and statistical reporting. Cho is from Canberra too and is heading down to Bohol to work with some Environmental NGOs. Pearce is from Melbourne and has an assignment that he describes as being half Dan Brown/half Indiana Jones type adventure. He is a linguist who will be working with a local indigenous community in documenting their language I think. It is a pretty unknown language group and there are some interesting theories about whether it is a real language or not!

Last week at work NCRFW our division in particular hosted a forum ‘Constitutional Reforms: Are Women In?’. It was a pretty big event and everyone here worked pretty hard on it. At the moment there is a lot of talk around reforming the constitution and out of the 49 –odd Consultative Commission that was appointed to discuss and put forward recommendations, only 8 were women. Pretty bad really. So the forum tried to raise the issue of women and women’s concerns in this important process. This week we are working pretty hard to produce some outputs – something that is pretty hard to do without a finalized Strategic Agency Plan . . . but the women here in PDD are pretty good and are soldiering away.

On the weekend Neil and I ventured out to Intramuros – the ‘old’ city of Manila to a Spanish Verbesa – or fiesta type thing. It turned out to be really good as they had Spanish food; yummy paella and sangria in a beautiful garden setting set against and old Manila fort. The Verbesa rounded off a whole month of Spanish movies and culture in Manila. The one thing about Manila is that there is actually heaps of stuff to do in terms of events and live music. The Embassies always seem to be hosting one thing or another, Filipinos are really fond of movie festivals, and the local music scene is pretty decent once you find out about it. Anyway, at the Spanish festival a great latin band played (unfortunately it was early in the night and no one was up dancing) followed by the Filipino band Pinikpikan (see my previous post)! It was a bit of a surprise that they were playing – but they were great! They have fantastic drum beats all through their songs and were great with the crowd. It was a fun night that finished with fireworks!

And finally on Monday we restarted Tagalog lessons – with a great teacher! About time. So I’m getting a bit more motivated again with the language. Who knows, by the time I leave I might actually be able to have a conversation in Tagalog! Let’s hope. . .