Friday, May 20, 2011

Compare and Contrast

The United States and the Philippines are two completely different places, each with their own rich culture. One question has come up a lot recently: which one do I like better. I have really been analyzing my relationship with the Philippines, and I have been relating it to the United States. I have come to the following conclusion: The United States does a few things better than the Philippines, the Philippines does a few things better than the United States. Most things, however, are a simple choice of preference and familiarity. For example, who has the best food system? The Philippines. Who has a better transportation system? The United States. Who has better food, or desserts, or college system, or 90% of the things you can think of? That answer depends of where home is. People naturally enjoy the things they are familiar with. It’s why I will always take a slice of pie over halo-halo, and why every Filipino thinks I’m crazy for saying that. It’s also why everyone considers the scenery in their hometown underrated.

Therefore, I prefer the United States. But, if I were born in the Philippines, I would prefer the Philippines. And if I were born in India, I would prefer India. However, I chose to spend this year outside of my comfort zone, and I chose to live in the Philippines. I choose to stay every day when I don’t fly back to my comfortable life in the United States.

This does lead to a more important issue. The issue is the few things that are actually legitimately better in one country than the other. It hurts my national pride a little to say it, but the way we get food in the United States is overcomplicated and vastly inferior to the Philippines. The US would do very well for itself if we stopped engineering our fruits to look bright and colorful 12 months a year. Rather, we should be selling 90% of our fruit only when it is in season. Our fruits would go back to actually tasting like fruit. Also, if the US government stopped paying everyone to do nothing, people would find jobs for themselves. Jobs like hunting deer and selling the meat at a market, or raising ducks for slaughter. This would greatly increase the availability of meat that has never seen a slaughter house.

Another thing they do better in the Philippines is small scale banking. In the United States many people rely solely on banks and payday advance loans when the need money. In the Philippines, there is another very attractive option: Co-operatives. Basically, co-op is a community bank where you can invest your money or take out a loan. It is only available to a certain group of people, usually just one barangay. (A barangay is a sub-city usually large enough for one small elementary school.) The key to co-ops is that the money stays in the community, rather than go to banks, who will decide what everyone’s interest rate is. Since the co-ops are made for community well-being instead of shear profit, they are able to offer almost similar lending and investing interest rates, with only a small difference to go towards paying one or two employees. Credit unions come close to accomplishing this goal, but they tend to be inclusive and drastically underutilized. 

When I return to the United States, I intend on supporting the implementation of some of these ideas. I think both of these ideas have huge possibilities in an economically struggling city like Kingston, NY.

I am encouraged by beer, but not in the way beer usually offers me encouragement. When Americans and Brits visited mainland Europe, they realized that Belgian and German beer was vastly superior to the stuff we had in America. Next, people started brewing craft beef in micro-breweries. Now, American craft beer is on the same level as European beer(Of course, I think it better for the reasons stated in the first paragraph). 

The tricky thing for me has been to try to introduce American improvements to the Philippines. Nobody wants to be told by an outsider an aspect of their culture is inferior. However I will, with all due respect to the other 99% of Philippine culture, give one quick example. The addition of more organized physical recreation into Philippine culture could do wonders for community health and camaraderie.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Sagada, Saliuk, and the Toledo Mud Hens

I spent holy week in Sagada. Sagada is a kind of touristy town in the mountains that gained popularity due to its hiking trails, caves, and American landscape. It is also one of the home bases of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines. The Mountain Province and Baguio are the only places where Episcopalians are the dominant denomination. In fact, most of the Episcopalians elsewhere in the Philippines are migrants from that particular region.  I really enjoyed my time there. I was able to spend the whole day hiking and come back to a big meal and a cold beer. The inns were all sold out, so I stayed with some local Episcopalians who had made friends with Melanie, the last YASC volunteer. They were the best hosts I could have ever asked for.
I had started to go a little stir-crazy in the office, so I took some time last week to get back to my roots, and help teach a week of VBS in the very rural village of Saliuk. I say get back to my roots, because I really got my start in mission work at St. Christopher’s mission in Bluff, Utah. For 6 weeks since 2000 I have flown down to the mission on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation to assist in teaching a vacation bible school to the Navajo children there. I learned many great lessons there that came in very helpful last week, such as the attention span of 10 year olds and the expansive definition of the word “projectile”. My job in Saliuk was songs, memory verses, and games. I introduced some of the Navajo’s favorite songs such as “in right out right”. I also taught them a classic game with a twist. It’s called pato, pato, gezu. If you don’t know what that means, read my last blog post. I spent the week living in Saliuk, where I had the opportunity to eat ants, ant eggs, and snake. Anyway, I must not have screwed up too bad, because I might get a chance to help with help with another VBS week in the nearby village of Abra soon.    
My aunt bought me a Toledo Mud Hens hat so that everyone in the Philippines would know where I came from. Sadly, in Benaue, I lost my hat. The next week I search through all the 2nd hand clothes and hat shacks in Baguio to look for a replacement. I actually found one! I've been wearing it with pride ever since. I didn't put the hat there. The thorns were so sharp on my hike that it actually took my hat right off my head while I was hiking.