Prior to the trip, my (and my family's) biggest concern was safety in Philippines. Typhoons, landslides, crime rates are issues regarding the safety of Philippines. My parents didn't allow me to go for the trip and it took a lot of effort to convince them. However, while doing some research work on the Philippines, i did realised that the crime rates are pretty high in the Philippines. It got me worried for awhile because i knew that through out the 6 days we will be staying in a village and i was quite worried.
Another concern will definitely be the cultural difference. One most important difference was language barrier. Although i know that most, if not all, filippinos speak english, they usually still speak in Tagalog. Bearing in mind our research project -- survey, that has to be conducted, i cannot really imagine myself carrying out the survey to 60 families and not knowing what to say because i don't know the language.
I think that now that i've come back from the trip, i realised that Philippines is not as bad was what i thought it would be. After visiting numerous Gawad Kalinga (GK) villages, i feel that safety isn't much of a problem in the villages. In fact, it is quite safe. A group of my friend actually went to survey families in 2 of the GK villages we visited and found out that there are almost no, or little crimes in the villages and if there are crimes, it is usually outside of GK villages. Yes, it might be true that Philippines has a high crime rate but since we're staying in the villages with the villagers, I feel safe throughout the whole trip.
Not only that, language isn't really a big problem. Most of the villagers are able to communicate in simple English and thus communicating with them wasn't a big headache. One of our intention is to conduct a research there in the GK villagers, and my group prepared surveys for the villagers to fill it up. We prepared it with Tagalog translation and there were also translator who helped us along.
I was also worried about the toilets. Who can survive without it? I expected the toilets to be very dirty and honestly, problematic. I was also worried initially about not having clean waters to bathe in. However, i realised that the villages have proper toilet, although not as good as those in Singapore, but at least there is a proper toilet. There were also water, although not as clean as what i wanted it to be, for us to bathe in. The water we bathed in was had a rust smell, and I feel that i'm cleaner when i didn't bathe. However, after asking the villagers, we found out that the water is actually clean, except that the water pipes are rusty, which resulted in the clean yet rusty water.
After one or two days to the trip, i found my pre trip jitters fading away. I think it is a good experience and i'm glad the villages are so much better than what i expected it to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment