From Trevor: Wednesday May 23, 2007

This morning, I woke up about 4:30 to hear the roosters crowing. It seems the roosters here don’t just crow at dawn, but whenever they feel like it. So much for being natural alarm clocks.

This morning, there were ants all over the bathroom, they seem to come and go basically as they please, like Steve said, nature is basically integrated into everything. In the US, it would be pretty normal to just get ant traps, but here, you just brush them away and keep going. That works for the most part, except when an ant gets between your toes, like one did for me yesterday. My toe is about double its normal size.

Diane gave us a tour of Mambajao. What strikes you here, as soon as you see the town, is the disparity between the rich and the poor. The governor of the barrio has a large compound which is perhaps funded by public money right next to the ocean. Then there are families where the daily occupation is searching for food for that day.

We visited patients in the hospital with Diane. The hospital in Mambajao serves as a secondary hospital. The ER is open to the outside, with beds from wall to wall. The hospital has many facilities, including a number of wards and an operating room. A major difference between the Mambajao hospital and hospitals in the US is the difference in privacy for patients. There was nothing to divide beds in the wards, and patients would be lying extremely close to each other. One of Diane’s patients, a three-year old boy, had fallen backwards onto a pot of boiling water, and had second degree burns on the backs of his legs from his waist to his feet. It had taken him a few days to even get his own room in the hospital. Diane said that it was the first time she had seen him when he wasn’t screaming in pain. Tomorrow we’ll be traveling around the island with Diane to visit patients.

The market in town is also an amazing sight. There are people selling every fruit or vegetable imaginable and every part of animal imaginable. All of these sales occur under a large, open-sided roof with an almost unbearable temperature. We bought a few of the small, apple-like fruits called Sarguilas. They’re a little sourer than apples, and have large pits. I asked Diane about chili peppers, and in fact, they do use them in the Philippines, so maybe I can have my spicy food after all.

After we got back to the house, I talked to Tom and Diane about my documentary. I think we’ll be focusing on a few individual children, and use their stories to tell the overall story of the school. I’m really excited to start filming at the school. We have our first staff meeting Sunday June 3, and we move up to the school that day.

Of course, Steve and I had to “BM it up”. Badminton has become our sport, and let me tell you, these are some epic battles. Of course, I schooled Steve as usual.

As we sat outside at dinner, right next to the ocean, I began to think more about the day’s events. It’s amazing to me that there can be such poverty and, to some extend, sub-standard health care in a place that is so beautiful.