Planting trees in the watershed

Today marks the start of the the Marikina Watershed Initiative’s regular Saturday tree planting sessions.

That’s a panoramic view.  The Marikina watershed is sort of North-East of Marikina, and mostly in Antipolo.  It’s the source of the Marikina-Pasig river system that runs through different parts of Metro Manila.  What is a watershed?  Here’s an excerpt from the watershed explanation on howstuffworks

What Is a Watershed?

­A watershed is an area of land that feeds all the water running under it and draining off of it into a body of water. It combines with other watersheds to form a network of rivers and streams that progressively drain into larger water areas.

After Ondoy it was identified that 55% of the volume of water that flooded Metro Manila came from the overflows of the Marikina-Pasig rivers, and that water came down from the Marikina Watershed.  Because of deforestation of the watershed, the water ran straight into rivers (carrying soil with it), overwhelming them and flooding low land areas.  Thus, the Marikina Watershed Initiative was formed – targeting to restore the 20% forest cover of the 28,000 hectare watershed to a more sustainable 50%.

Manila Water, Smart, and Meralco were the first companies to take on the cause, followed soon by Accenture (who are in the watershed today… planting away).  I joined the first troupe two weeks ago, taking a couple of friends with me.  A quick post on facebook yielded some lightning responses, and a handful of us left Manila just as dawn crept over the horizon with a borrowed pickup and some take away McDo.

The views were absolutely breathtaking…

…this photo may not do much for the message that the watershed is being ravaged by illegal logging activities and charcoal/firewood production, but I just had to share… in any case it shows the beauty we need to preserve.  The watershed provides reprieve from the city (less than an hour away from Ortigas Centre), but it is also our most important safeguard against excessive flooding.  A fact that belies the stunning vistas to be savoured..

We started with a supposed 30 minute hike that stretched out a little longer.  The reassurance that “we’re almost there” lost any meaning due to overuse.  At the top the air was fresh and crisp and the views panoramic i.e. there were no trees.  I once trekked through old growth rain forest in Negros, and had to adjust to the absolutely still and intensely thick and damp air under the canopy – with no views extending beyond the thick tree trunks, ferns, and forest vines around me.  We set to work on the grassy, but otherwise bare hillsides.

There were bamboo stakes in the ground to match each seedling site.  The bagged seedlings had already been brought up and the holes already dug – all we had to do was remove the seedling form the bag, place it in the hole and cover with soil.  Voila – a planted seedling!  Getting the community to do the land preparation is part of the livelihood generation aspect of the program – that way companies not only contribute to the reforestation but the income of the communities in the area.  Besides, office workers don’t make very good diggers.  Or sometimes hikers, for that matter, so our partners at the Foundation for the Philippine Environment have devised a difficulty grading system – if volunteers can’t manage steep climbs they can help plant seedling in lower hillside area, or even help out at the nursery which is accessible by car.

Here however is a shot of an exemplary volunteer braving the treacherous slopes of Mount Puro for the sake of the safety of millions of Metro Manilenos …

How heroic! God bless such selfless souls!! Not to mention the local village people who saunter up the mountain everyday to pre-dig all the planting sites for everyone’s convenience!!

Anyway, it’s the thought that counts

Next week our fearless mountain goat takes to lower grounds to gather wildlings with community…stay tuned!  Add the Initiative’s Facebook page to keep track of the latest news…

My fellow lowlanders

We are dwellers of plains and riversides, you and I.  Lowlanders.  Our ancient predecessors carved out a life between the lapping (or crashing, at times) waves of the ocean and the impenetrable forest, thriving each year on the heavy rains of the monsoon.  Rivers were born in the highlands and descended towards the sea, creating plains and nurturing life on them, only to take it all away when the heavy rains came again.  We live on little slivers of land really, bargained from river banks and flood plains, beach heads and bays.

Seaside and riverside settlements were able to expand, while in the mountains villages remained relatively small and constrained by the topography – relying on sustenance farming while their lowland brethren expanded into trade.  Quiet villages became towns with marketplaces, and then bustling trading ports.  The lowlanders prospered and their populations swelled, and thus the very beginning of ‘urban sprawl’.  The ancient, once impervious forests that once hemmed in settlements now fed their growth, and conceded territory.  The two could not prosper side by side.

A little more than halfway through the twentieth century this struggle came to an end.  There was no more forested land left, at least not any good for settling on.  The forests clung to high mountain ranges too unstable for development.  The Philippines was declared to have only 35% forest cover, less than the required level for biodiversity and local ecosystems to prosper, or at least survive.  Environmentalists took on the cause and action was taken in the attempt to curb logging and forest degradation due to agriculture and development.  The forest cover continued to drop to about 20% in the 1980s, and between 11-15% at the end of the century.  Even mountains became bare.  Deforestation in the Philippines became an international environmental crisis.

But another crisis was looming, and its root lay in the Southwestern Monsoon – the reason why the forests had thrived as they did over the ages.  The monsoon that brings rain, lots of it.  That sends water down the mountains and swells rivers.  In a previous age much of this water fed multi-tiered forests, whose roots thirstily soaked it up, as well as anchored the soil around it.  Rivers still spilled into flood plains, on which grasses and small shrubs grew.  It was a natural cycle.  The story today however, is different.  There is too much water coming down from the mountains, and there are too many people:

During Ondoy, Angono's roads became rivers.

Rivers have reclaimed land.

Thus where we are today.  Flood control measures are necessary, but without a comprehensive, sustainable plan to reforest the watershed, we lowlanders will be fighting off more and more water each year.

Press button to speak

I just had a read through some of my old blog entries and the Red Cross memory packet was unearthed in my mind .  It all seems so long ago, and far removed from the new role I’ve had since February 1.

On February 1 I joined the Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation, (check out www.pdrf.org and here is our facebook, and twitter for more frequent updates and news) – which was set up to aid the public sector in recovery and reconstruction efforts since Ondoy.  The idea was that private sector funds (foundations, CSR budgets, even individuals and small organisations e.g. home owners associations, schools,) should be channeled to an orchestrated recovery effort with planned projects.  It was a great idea actually, and coming from Red Cross the need for coordinated recovery work and long term development plans had been made very clear.

So I swapped our beloved 60 year old Red Cross Rizal Chapter office for a cubicle in the PLDT Ramon Cojuangco Building, right in the heart of the Makati CBD (and too close to Red Mango for comfort… a frozen yogurt habit is EXPENSIVE).  As you may have seen from the PDRF website, the foundation has a lot of programs and I was excited to get cracking.

The first 2 weeks were a barrage of high level meetings with the PDRF board, the Asian Development Bank, the Worldbank, and the Special National Reconstruction Commission – our public sector counterpart chaired by Secretary of the Department of Finance.  We were scheduled to meet weekly at the Development Bank of the Philippine’s executive board room, and though it was to be my first meeting my boss asked me to give a short update.  No huge task, except you had to speak into a microphone – one of those with the red lights around that you see on the news at the senate or UN or something like that… and that was enough to intimidate me.  My engagements with microphones usually involved a song list and decent amount of booze – not an audience of cabinet secretaries and a mic with a red light around it.  Kulang lang yung Absolute bottle on the table in front of me.

The room itself was a conference hall with oil paintings hanging on the dark wood paneled walls.  I had stood up to use the bathroom and was directed through a secret door, flush with the wall panels, that led to a private ante room and adjoining bathroom.  The hand drier looked like it was out of the Jetsons – ‘space age’ as perceived in the 1950s or 60s – the manufacturing date on it preceded my birth date by about 25 years and the thing probably had more horsepower than a Vios.

Anyway back in the conference hall I was sitting clearing my throat as our segment drew closer.  My boss was to go through our presentation and I was only to give a short quip about one of our programs – housing.  And so his segue went:

“something about a flood warning system, and about the newest member of the team MIA, WHO WILL GIVE A SHORT SUMMARY ON OUR HOUSING ACTIVITIES”

I leaned in to speak and caught sight of the sign in front of me “Press button to speak”.  For some reason I understood this as “Keep button pressed to speak” rather than the intended “Press button once to speak (and then press it again to turn off)”… clearly not my fault.  But anyway, no use now.  What happened was that I kept my finger on the button as I spoke, which had the microphone turning on and off continuously, and it sounded something like this:

THANK YOU garbled speech WEEK WE WERE more garble garble ESTABLISHED A TASK garble garble MULTI SECTOR garble VULNERABLE mumble RIVER mumble RECOMMENDATIONS garble THANK YOU.

The commission looked back at me with blank expressions very similar to those seen on TV and so I took that as a good sign.  It was only later when my boss spoke again that I noticed he didn’t keep his finger on the button.  You live, you learn.

I looked forward to more valuable insights my work at the PDRF would unearth.

Que Lastima!

That means “What a shame!” in the language of the reigning football champions. What a shame. What a shame that I stopped posting when I joined the Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation in February! After 3 months with the Red Cross I decided to try working on more developmental projects, and found a place at the newly formed PDRF (Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation… check out www.pdrf.org). Without trips to Customs and Talim Island to write about anymore, I stopped sharing my volunteer experience, it had morphed into a 9 to 5 office type job. A friend asked what was happening with abituntogether.wordpress.com and I replied “what am I going to write about, my favourite transition effect on Powerpoint Vista? My trip to National Bookstore and our new filing system?”. But really, there has been a lot to write about… and a lot of learning.

We’ve had meetings with government where I’ve gained some new insight about how the great machine of bureaucracy turns; sessions with NGOs that have presented on the state of our environment, the poor, and the causes of Ondoy; and also meetings with international aid organisations that have followed up our presentations with sermons about how Filipinos are doing it all wrong. Pardon my french but ‘tangina nyo (more on that later). So here… a commitment to write about my top, let’s say 3 experiences at the PDRF. In no particular order:

1. My first meeting at with the Special Public Reconstruction Commission: held at the executive board room of the Development Bank of the Philippines: a wood paneled, cavernous room with portraits of (mostly dead) dignitaries, and those mics with the red lights around them to show that they’re on.

2. The Delta Plan workshop that heads of the Worldbank, other multilaterals, and the Laguna Lake Authority attended, along with representatives from the MMDA, PAGASA, DPWH, and also Architect Jun Palafox.

3. A last minute invitation to discuss our projects with representatives from Ausaid, USaid, The European Commission, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and also Korean International Cooperation Agency.

4. Oh yeah tree planting in the Marikina Watershed. Make that 4.

5. And also one more – riding in a security back up car! Make that 5!

So it’s 5. Just to make sure that I do this, I’m going to set my self a timeline. 1 every 2 or 3 days so, 2-3 weeks at most. And this counts as an entry so next one to be done on the weekend. Waha, aren’t I clever.

abitmoreuntogertherness

Monday, and we’re back in the city.

The weekend was spent in the Bicol region, between Albay and the province formerly known as Camarines Sur, to feel out that livelihood project (quickly introduced in the last blog entry) a bit more.  It has been 3 months since the project first took on a tangible form, and after a lot of interviewing, reading, strategizing, and soul searching, two thirds of our team was back to really see whether our ideas could fly.  We had 3 objectives: 1) Check out raw material supply and costs,  2) Understand our technical partner’s (a local producer) operations a bit more, and 3) Gauge the willingness and skill level of the ladies in the village that we set out to start  livelihood project for.

I am happy to report that we accomplished all 3, but I think we also uncovered a longer list of questions and stumbling blocks we would need to sort through.  ubitmoreuntogetherness.  But!  That’s OK!  We have definitely, definitely, crossed some major milestones.

Kim, Sam, and I started down this path about 6 months ago.  Well Kim and I first, to be correct.  A landscape architect and urban planner, Kim has practically lived on every continent, gathering ideas and contacts on her way.  She got me on Skype, bubbling with ideas: “I have contacts and resources, I want to use them for a better purpose”, and her exact words… “I know this may sound ridiculous, but I want to change the world!”.  For anyone who would scoff at this, I’d say let’s take this outside.  First, Kim is a dear friend so I wouldn’t stand for it, and second… I’d argue that ideals do have a place in this world.  They give people hope, they allow people to believe that they can make a difference, and enables them to work for the change they long to see.  And lastly if you can’t be idealistic and honest in the company of good friends, then where else.  Anyway.  After a couple more Skype hours, we narrowed down our scope to the fields of design, art, and culture.  Those were where she had most of her connections, and that’s where she wanted to affect positive change.  Design and culture are areas where I have always been interested, so i was happily strung along.  “We could promote urban art and artists!  Design competitions, exhibits, concerts, fashion shows!” she’d proclaim.  “Oh and a custom bike design contest!”, I would add.  We had fun going on about this idea and that.

More emails and airplane rides later, and we were finally in the same time zone on the wake of the Western new year.  Kim had connected with Sam, an ex project manager from the fashion industry, a little worn out from it all, but invigorated by the wider horizons her new life had in store.  We talked about past experiences, ideas that excited us, and a little bit about motivations.  Creativity, cottage trades and crafts, design and global markets were themes that emerged and we discovered we were on parallel, if not exact same wave lengths.  The first concept that resonated with all three of us was bringing international design sense and consumer understanding together with local crafts and skills, and elevating  rich but limited local heritagse to the global stage.  Such a direction had impact at the grassroots level but also appealed to our common interest in design and similar cross-continental backgrounds.

I had proposed to Kim that she visit me in Manila so I could take her on a relief mission, bring her to a urban poor collective, and show her some local crafts.  We mentioned the ‘exposure trip’ to Sam and she responded with a telling “hmmmm”.  Three days later she had a ticket to Manila, and so it was that all three of us spent a week in the Philippines, sounding off ideas and musing about where this venture would take us.  With the help of a friend and some ultra lucky timing, we managed to get on board a Gawad Kalinga tour of the Naga area (in Camsur) with the organisation’s founder Tito Tony Meloto.  We visited GK villages and listened to Tito Tony talk about his vision for GK, financial sustainability, and how he and his team built the GK brand.  It was inspiring.  We started to think about maybe starting a livelihood program within the GK framework, as they provided a crucial link to the kind of communities we wanted to work with.  Our ideas started to take on some vague form…

to be cont’d. this entry is looking long.

Volver!

I have been less than excellent in updating this blog.  Quite evident from the month lapse since my last entry, ok 2 month lapse.  The biking took up much of my free time, but it was not so much that as the changes and rethinking that’s been going on.  A process that I’ve been reluctant to open up and write about because it would reveal a bit of uncertainty, shiftiness, and untogetherness…

But wait!  If you can decipher the URL of this blog (which many people can’t, as a friend pointed out), it reads www. A BIT UNTOGETHER . com,  taken from an article in Prospect Magazine on climate change.  The article discussed how the proponents of fossil fuel dependence have actual facts and historical experience to draw from, whereas those taking climate change seriously seem “a bit untogether” with their ‘radical’ visions of the future.  Yet, it is they who are being more pragmatic in their longer and more honest view of things.  Thus the merits of acknowledging weak points and moving forward, whether or not it is in an entirely confident way or not.

Yet here I am with 2 months missing in my blog, wherein some important realizations occurred but remained unreported.  Still a bit of that pride, security dependence, corporate I-must-know-where-I’m-going kind of cocktail in there.  Even now I have to be wary of trying to post rationalize ias I write this, but the story goes….

Medical and relief missions were moving along OK, but honestly after 2 months I started looking for something more (maybe also getting a bit bored).  People were still in evacuation centers, still receiving dole-outs, I started to wonder how to help them move on, beyond giving them food good for 2 days or so.  Also a conversation with a friend shed some light on what I was feeling.  He said “you need to figure out what your cause is, what it is that you’re really passionate about, so that you stay committed to whatever it is your doing.  After you figure that out you can start to look for the right organization and role”.  Made sense…I did kind of crash the party without any plan.

Enter some counter-productive soul searching, and my apologies to some colleagues at Red Cross who may have noticed a level of slack setting in.  Shame.  Wise words from Dad – “it’s seems hard to do cause-related work, it’s like it’s immoral to be lazy!”.  Sigh. Luckily the soul searching yielded some realizations: I’d be better utilizing my skills and experiences in project based, longer term, developmental work as opposed to aid and relief work.  Also there was architecture!  I had made the decision to take a break from it, but I started realizing that the spaces and environmentin which people work, play, rest, LIVE, are what I am really, really into.

Add a brand new custom made bicycle to the mix and there is me cycling around Manila with lofty ideas fluffing up in my mind.  Inspiration from old buildings, vibrant street scenes, and architectural gems hiding in plain sight.  Also some nifty ideas for bike accessories but more on that later   Some chance encounters, revived ideas with good friends, and some brainstorming land me on a trip to Naga with 2 friends from out of town.  Buzzing with ideas and high on inspiration the three of us visit Gawad Kalinga villages in the area with a cool, design-oriented livelihood project slowly forming in our minds.

More on that to come!

PS..ooh the reason the world “Volver” was at the top of my mind: I love these clips!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lp4i4IzaIc



In other news

Volunteering is on hold as I have a new bicycle.

I thought I might write a bit about biking around Manila.  So far I’ve gone around some villages – Dasmarinas and North Forbes with their wonderfully-easy-on-the-rump smooth asphalt roads, and also Ayala Alabang with it’s less than ideal roads but it’s just so huge.  Yesterday a friend and I biked across Makati – San Lorenzo Village to Makati Med and through Legaspi area.  Lots of smoke but some pretty clear streets in between busy intersections and having to go down dela Rosa etc.  In short, we survived despite our messy dismounts (OK, _my_ messy dismounts) and questionable timing on intersections.  Advice – get a bell on your handle bars.

Uncool

Dear Sir,

You are really uncool.  First you tell me I won’t be able to get a shipment released without a broker and a lawyer – but turns out I just needed to show up with the right documents (which I got without your help) and we were able to secure the shipment in 2 days.  Next I unfortunately need to ask for your help with something else (you can be sure I had no choice) and you brush me off saying it’s not your job, leaving me to work things out with my broker.  A week later you then berate me for having done it all wrong, and then with all the righteous fanfare befitting a martyr like yourself, you swoop in and heroically take everything on yourself.  You are really, really uncool.  I have half a mind to write the donors and ask them to complain about how long it has taken us to secure the shipment.  The lack of urgency in which all of us have acted will surely be shameful in a more public light – the containers have been sitting in the port area for 2 months now.  I have my share of blame but I’d be all too happy to bow out, as long as somehow you get yours too.

Talim Island

At 5:10am last Friday morning I leapt into my car and drove to Red Cross, Shaw Blvd. in 12 minutes (from Dasmarinas Village in Makati) – I was late for a relief goods deployment to Talim Island area in Laguna de Bay!  I arrived at the Chapter to find everyone waiting and we quickly crammed the 8 of us into the trusty FX which spluttered to life in the pre-sunrise darkness.

Our first stop was to pick up Ate Maggy, a staff member from the East Rizal branch.  She squished in and was greeted by feeble good mornings, but we perked up a little when she showed us the bag of fresh suman (rice cakes) she had brought along.  Dawn advanced and after about an hour we arrived at the old new port at Cardona – water lilies, dinky narrow road, stagnant water and all.  It had been the makeshift fish port when the floods had engulfed the old one, but was abandoned when operations transferred back to the original port, just 2 days before I think it was.  Anyways it turned out we needed to pick up our local contact at the usual fishport so we went there anyway.  This was where the life was, it was barely 7 am and the first catches of the day were being piled into plastic buckets and covered with chips of ice.  Huge fresh water fish called ‘big head’ but more commonly known as maya-maya, twisted into curved forms with their huge mouths gaping open.  They have a different smell from bangus and tilapia: iron or rust-like.  Maybe because they’re bigger and bloodier.  We ate our suman with some sugar, and that rusty fishy smell.  Yumm….

that’s Big Head or Maya Maya

The Fishport at Cardona

7:30 or 8:00 am and we were on our boat heading out into the lake, dodging fish pens and water-lily patches.  Water birds were everywhere flying high and then swooping down for a catch, or cruising low and near the water’s surface. It was a beautiful setting, so near Manila, but the fish pens and dilapidated huts reminded me this was no vacation spot.  People hustled a living here.

Contemplating life on the Lake

We arrived at our first stop, literally stepping off the boat and into the barangay hall.  A fairly long, cemented main street made up this place – the biggest of Talim island barangays – and people were stirring at our arrival.  But, in true pinoy fashion, we had to eat our weight in breakfast before we could begin.  We were invited to the barangay captain’s house and stacks of fried tilapia and big-head lumpia were set before us, accompanied with that expectant look from the Kapitana as we stared in disbelief that said…”what, not enough?”.

Literally stepping off the boat and into the Bgy Hall

Thirty minutes and full tanks later we set up shop.  Ate Maggy was very organised with a master list and stubs had been distributed ahead of time to residences of areas that were still flooded – this was to ensure that the recipients of relief goods were really from targeted areas, and to minimise squabbling over limited supplies.  There had been anecdotes of things getting messy at this barangay, but this operation went smoothly thanks to Captain Bullet’s megaphone voice (I swear he has one in his trachea or something) and a little crowd management on my part as well.  I noticed that people would respond well when spoken to reasonably and when the situation was explained properly to them – they would repay respect with respect.

I was at registration with Ate Maggy and Kate and so was taking down all the recipients details.  Mostly families of 4 or 5, sometimes even 2 or 3.  That’s not too bad.  At the end we had 3 spare bags of food items (we were giving out food items and mosquito nets, sleeping mats, blankets, and gerry cans for water storage) but about 12 people still lining up.  This is the situation that Ate Maggy said that she dreads, and that standard procedure was to explain the situation to the hopefuls and let them decide amongst themselves who needed it most.  They were able to cut the group down to 8, but none of the 8 would concede.  They were all senior citizens, pleading with us as they had no more source of income and mostly lived alone.  So despite my suggestion that we play a round of Pera o Bayong (a local game show played on TV), or at least some sort of trivia game, Ate Maggy drew up raffle slips and had me pick the names out of a box.

One of the many Valdezs’ registering.  It’s an island – they’re pretty much all related.

xcs

Ate Maggy manning the registration table

Once that was done it was more food at Kapitana’s place – this time about 5 different dishes and a lot more rice, and for some reason the boat trudged on a lot more slowly when we left.

The next stops were 3 much smaller sites, where we barely stepped off the boat and just gave out just 8 to 20 packs at each site.  The families at these sites were living on scraps of land in between the lakeshore and the bamboo plantation in the middle of the island.  Commander Bullet asked them why they didn’t rebuild their houses further inland so they wouldn’t get flooded again, and they replied that the security of the plantation would stop them.  The plantation land is owned by Lucio Tan… isn’t that bizarre?  So anyway, here they were on the rocks and driftwood of the lakeshore.  It was quiet and could even be charming, but these people were just scraping by.  One could see they lived more like a tight knit community than the bigger barangays, all doing their part to help each other out rather than trying to get one up on each other.  When a family head wasn’t there to pick up their relief pack a friend or relative would step in and no one would question.  The barangay captain didn’t have a fancy house and was a simple fisherman as well, but he was there helping out and doing his part.  He even had some of his boys fetch about a dozen big heads and some tilapia and bangus for us from the fish pens.  Here the household sizes were more like 10, 12, 15.  No TV I guess?

On the smaller islands the registration table was a log on the shoreline

The community looking on

Ynares Covered Swimming Pool

Fresh fish in tow we headed back to Cardona where we had a few courtesy calls to make before a halo halo break and heading back to base.  On top of the 9 well fed volunteers the FX now had about 3 sacks of fish to deal with but it pulled through (I’m not sure it will ever smell the same, however).  Also, the trip home was marked by a non-stop all-hit medley sing along… and I really mean non-stop…for practically 2 straight hours.  We went through 90s boy band hits to OPM to OPM classics and back to 90s girly group favourites and I think there was even some Linkin Park in there somewhere.  All thanks to fellow volunteer Anthony who acted as deejay and lyrics master, completely making up words in the rare case that he didn’t know them.  Oh and I mustn’t forget the free style rapping!  Holy cow… we were free style rapping in tagalog in the FX… what was that about.  It must have been the halo halo!

Our jam masters/deejays/musical-arrangers/magic-mic-personified

Back at base we distributed the fish and hummed a few Backstreet Boys tunes to ourselves as we said goodbye and see you next week.  Captain Bullet however rushed off to take over ambulance duty – along with a megaphone he’s got some Energizers D sized batteries in there as well, I swear!

Clouds

On the fourth week of volunteering at Red Cross and some clouds have crept onto the horizon.

The past 2 weeks have involved some coordination with NHQ and other branches, as well as day-to-day office work kind of stuff.  Not too much deployment excitement except for the medical mission last Wednesday, as I’ve had to stay in and meet people, send emails, and the like.  And it’s here that the clouds have taken shape.  But not in the nature of the work.  I don’t think it’s a matter of missing the adrenalin rush of trooping out with an army escort to unknown watery lands.  That stuff is exciting, but so exhausting I honestly can’t keep at it the way some of my volunteer peers do.  No, I don’t believe it’s that.  It’s more about the pace of work and general attitude that hangs in the atmosphere.  Sort of, process-oriented, territorial, and conservative.  And slow.  That last one is probably more a product of me not being so entrenched in the system and not knowing the right buttons to press and not having the right connections.  But, isn’t that kind of lame?

Please indulge me that last rant of a sentence, it will stop there.  (Oh wait just one more!  It’s so bloody hard to keep your head down and get admin/paperwork stuff done in this office – Ms. Farrah will be shouting on the phone cos she can’t hear properly, Kuya Luke will come on and watch TV at full blast, people walk by laughing and eating, and then Karla will rattle off about what her kid ate for lunch or something else really fascinating like that.  Ok it’s a fun place but when you’re on a crappy extension line straining to hear the person on the other end, or quickly trying to finish up your emails on a borrowed computer… it’s all a bit of a pain.  Does this rant count if it’s in brackets?)

At this point I can hear a million voices resound eh, ganun talaga! (Well, that’s just how it is!), and I have to agree.  That’s how it is in old traditional organisations, or NGOs, or the Philippines.  Whatever.. I don’t really know.  That’s just how it is.  I wonder if it’s about finding a place more suited my temperament, or way of working, and there probably is such a place – a smaller organisation, younger, more progressive.

But, but, but…

There’s something to learning how to adapt to the situation rather than making how one works and what one is used to the starting point of any assessment.  Wouldn’t it be so much better to be put in the middle of the situation and just be able to work with what one is given rather than ask tons of questions and complain about everything?  Unfortunately that is what I find myself doing much of the time in my mind at least.  My attitude stinks.  But I’m working on it.

Not that observations about paralysing bureaucracy and inefficient processes should be completely discarded, just put on the back burner while one keeps their head down and plods on.  Another source of distraction is the soap opera that is the current political scene.  But again, we should all just get on with the tasks stacked up on our in-tray rather than get embroiled and at the worst disheartened by the whole drama.  The English put it wonderfully – keep buggering on Chaps, keep buggering on.