Interesting Turns..

Gotta say that yesterday, though tiring as hell, was a really cool day.. Finally some really interesting experiences in Manila! We had lunch with a community that lives in a rehabilitated slum - now it looks like anything but a slum.. small but really nice houses. The thing is, the lunch was very unusual and supposedly it came about from meals prepared for US Marines before going to battle..

When we reached the village outdoor space, there were rectangular tables lined up, forming one long table, but instead of tablecloth, the tables were laid with banana leaves. "Creative," I thought, but nothing special. Then, we were told to wait somewhere else while the food was being prepared. When we came back.. whoa, in the middle of that long table food was laid out directly without any plates! There was a long line made up of small mounds of rice, noodles, chicken, mango salad, salted egg, rice, noodles,etc repeated several times..

"Wow this is getting interesting!" I thought. Roma, our co-ordinator, shouted "Aha!" three times before eating, just like soldiers going into battle (though I assume soldiers won't exactly shout 'Aha!' but something more macho/violent..)
Roma: "Ok! Now you can attack the food! You must eat with your hands..."
*No problemo, I thought.. We cool Indonesians do it all the time..*
Roma cont'd: "...and before you feed yourself, you have to feed 3 other people first.."

???!! Well, I happened to be standing in front of my architecture tutor, and I have nothing against him, really, but the idea of feeding your tutor with your hands, and vice-versa? Uhhh......huhuhuhuhu.... In the end, got it done, with my tutor helpfully starting, saying "Ok, so what may I feed you?" hahaha... It was really fun to do it with studiomates though haha.. This is what it looked like after about 20 minutes..



Next up, we volunteered to help build houses for Gawad Kalinga.. which means.. it's time to don my construction worker persona again! *Shiela versi kuli semen pun muncullah...Eng-ing-eng!* We dug, scooped, dug some more, compacted soil, etc etc, your typical preparation for building house foundation. The irritating thing was that there was some other building demolished already on the site so digging was such a tiring and torturous job.. There was more rubble than soil. Teammates were great though, and trying to speak Tagalog to the Philippines people who helped build also was fun. Plus, call it a fetish if you will, but I think my studiomates all look totally cool in construction-worker-mode hahaha... Pretty amazing how holding a spade can transfrom the usually-metrosexual archi guys...

Ate some really good food too, these few days. There was 'turon' , banana wrapped in rice paper skin then deep fried, eaten with a sauce made from mango, jackfruit and some milk I think..*photo also will be uploaded ASAP* And trust me readers, this sauce is heavenly!! Oooooh!!! In the end I was just scooping some sauce into banana leaf pieces and slurping it haha.. I think it's the best thing I've eaten here so far.

There was also coconut juice with evaporated milk.. It's the usual young coconut water and flesh (what we call 'kelapa muda' in indonesia), but mixed with ice and thick, sweet milk.. It's so good I wonder why no one outside the Philippines had thought of it before... at least, not that I know of..

Lastly, there's the friendliness of the people I meet in and around the rehabilitated areas, some of the poorest areas of the Philippines. It really touches me that they prepare such good food for us, and when we went around site surveying, they were accompanying us, greeting us, asking us if we need any information at all.. According to Roma from Gawad Kalinga, previously some of these people live without any dreams, any dignity.. When the social workers came to talk to them, they would look on the floor.. Now, when I go around the site I can see that they are proud of their houses, their gardens, their lives...

I'm touched by Roma, who told me her story of giving up a high-flying accountancy job to be a social worker... She's only 24, but holds an important position in Gawad Kalinga, not least because she can speak 3 Philippines dialect that makes it easy for her to communicate all over the Philippines. She said that her parents were very upset when she gave up such a well-paying job for helping the poor, and yet, she wants to be able to say that while she is young and idealistic, she did what she could to make a difference. It makes me think again about Indonesia, and what I can do for my country, and strangely, also about China, and what I can do for my heritage.

3 days to go, and I'm glad I'm in this trip.