Lost track of the days....

This last week was a very busy week and with all the work, traveling, data analysis and general sickness I did not get around to posting by day so I will give a general overview of the week, everyday was about the same so you haven't really missed anything.

Me doing a key informant interview

From Monday until Thursday was data collection- focus groups, key informant interview, and household surveys. On Monday we went to two barangays-one in the morning and another in the afternoon. We did household surveys first by walking around with the Barangay Health Workers (BHWs) and trying to interview every 3rd house. This gave us a chance to see the community and find out what the community thought about water and sanitation. It was very interesting to see the communities and see how each barangay was different and had so many different problems. After we did the surveys we would move into doing focus groups and key informant interviews. In the focus group we had them do a community map, prioritize the problems and a problem and solution tree. So we did this in the morning for 4 hours had a short break and then went and did the same thing all over again in another barangay in the afternoon. I will just say that we were incredibly tired the first day and we made it home by 7pm after being out all day. As a side note: I've already discussed how humid and hot it is here--now think about that but you're in a small room with ten people and one fan. Lets just say that we were all very very sweaty and gross by the end of every day. Monday was a very hard day and on Tuesday we decided to break up our little group and do two barangays at once in the morning so we could be done earlier in the day-- it meant less woman power but getting done early was worth it. So Tuesday to Thursday we split the group up and went to separate barangays-- it was lots of work but so rewarding and interesting. I really feel like I can do a focus group now, and successfully implement the other skills I have learned. 

Julie, Jennifer and Helen doing a focus group

The group finished data collection on Thursday July 19th and then the task of data analysis began. We spent the better part of Friday analyzing data and then writing reports of the results by barangay. The nutrition group left on Friday to head to Boracay- one of the islands. I was a little jealous to say the least, but there was no way I could go because we had enough work for the whole weekend. Saturday and Sunday were work days...with little breaks in the afternoon. Saturday I went to the local mall-SM to get an actual coffee that wasn't instant for Nescafe. Walking into Starbucks was like being at home, it was a very comforting feeling. The coffee did wonders and so did the mango shake later. Unfortunately the food that came with the mango shake was not what we were looking for- green mango salad with some fish paste just doesn't work for me. Sunday was a paper writing day with a short break for swimming, and the Silang market. Even though we had lots of work to complete it was a relaxing weekend free of stress. We were getting our work done and not having to stress about it was nice-everyone did their part and got it done. It was a very long week but I learned so much and am glad I had the experience of working in the field and understanding the challenges and rewards that come with it.

DAY TEN: Not a day of rest

Sunday is not a day of rest this weekend. Last Friday we officially started working on our projects and we pilot tested all the tools we made--FG, KII, Survey. Obviously changes needed to be made so we pretty much worked on that all day. When working in a community it is really nice to know the general background of the community but in our case we were pretty much going in blind to every barangay. So after our pilot of the tools on Friday we found that the community perceptions were very different than we were thinking they would be. An example would be that they all buy mineral water as a source for drinking water so they don't see themselves as having a problem with water. But if a community member doesn't have money for mineral water they are drinking from the posos or deep wells which many times are contaminated. So really there is a problem with water but if you can buy mineral water you choose to not see the problem because it doesn't effect you directly.
Re-creating the focus group guide, which was my job, took a good hunk of the day.  Unfortunately I was starting to feel a little sick. Other people had gotten sick on the trip and ended up at the doctors and on antibiotics so I am really hoping that wouldn't happen to me.

DAY NINE: Manila

Got up early and headed out to Manila to go shopping at Green Hills. I was expecting more of a market with crafts and one of a kind souvenirs but it was a mall. There were small stall shop areas but mainly if you were interested in a knock-off Prada purse or a Rolex. I did find a few really cool things but overall I was a little disappointed. However, it was an exciting day because I was able to get pasta! When I'm in the US I eat pasta around 3 times a week so not having it has been hard so I was very excited to eat my pasta, and yes it was very good and hit my pasta craving perfectly.

After Green Hills a small group of us headed to Intramuros which is an older section of Manila that has lots of Spanish architecture and a really old church. 3 weddings were going on when we got there, one right after the other. I got to see some very interesting bridesmaids dress and yes they are just as hideous here as they are in the US. My favorite was the bridesmaids that had bright orange dresses with green sashes-- the colors made me think of a pumpkin. The architecture there was gorgeous and we had a great time wandering around, shopping in the little souvenir shops and meeting new people. A few of us decided to get some food at a hostel in the area and we met 3 guys from Holland that were headed to northern Luzon to see the famous rice terraces.

Dragon Fruit and Soursop

One of the good things about the Philippines is the variety of tasty fruit there is. The mangoes are great, especially the green mango shake! But I had always wanted to try a dragon fruit and I finally got my chance. We decided it kinda tastes like an Asian pear with the texture of a kiwi because of all the seeds. 

Dragon Fruit! 

I also got to try a Soursop... not sure if that is the correct spelling. But its kinda like a cherimoya. It was really sour and a little slimy but still very good. Though I will say that I liked the dragon fruit better. 

Soursop 

DAY EIGHT: Zip line, the beach and "flying saucers"

Isla Bonita 

After a night of little sleep due to creating a focus group guide and go to the mall I had to get up, eat and be ready to head out by 6:45am.

The morning started by making a courtesy call to the Rosario Municipality. It's a way for us to know whats going on in the government and for them to know that we'll be in their barangays for the next week doing work. We got a chance to do some informal key informant interviews with a few sanitation worker and just see all the departments of the government.

Helen and Arti on the zip-line 

Isla Bonita 

After that we went to Isla Bonita which is the city beach area. It used to be a trash dump but has been cleaned up and turned into a beach with restaurants and its own zip-line. We hung around, waited for the mayor, relaxed, ate some food, really good chicken and rice, and of course went on the zip-line. This was not an ordinary zip-line. You actually had to lay face down on it and it took you over the water and then you climbed the other tower and it brought you back. At first on one really wanted to go on it and a few people thought they would get stuck or fall in the water below. But when it came down to that time to fly 6 of us ended up doing the zip-line. I went with Jen and I told her if we fell in the water I would pull her out because she can't swim. Though swimming was the least of my worries if we fell in, the place used to be a trash dump site and there was still plenty of trash and other things in that water. I was more worried about catching some nasty disease if I fell in. But we all made it across and back across the bay just fine.

Chicken and Rice 

Zip-lining completed we headed to our first barangay to test out our focus group guide, key informant guide and our survey if there was time. We encountered many roadblocks and found out that we needed to change lots of our focus group guide. As part of the focus group this was our first time doing a problem tree and for many of us our first time facilitating a focus group. By this time it was well after 2pm and we were so tired making it harder to change on the spot and come up with ideas and more questions.

Julie and June doing a problem tree 

Normally when you conduct a focus group or any type of assessment you would first have a look around the community and do a little back ground research and possibly a windshield survey so you would know what the community had and what they didn't have. We pretty much went into this knowing nothing and having our own perceptions which were shattered as soon as we started asking questions. We quickly found out that our perception of flooding is so much different than the Filipinos perception of flooding. I mean we think its flooding if its up to our ankles and here that is normal. Some people here only consider it flooding if its up to your waist and if its to your knee that is just high tide. Also, when your used to coming from a place where you can technically drink the water out of your sink at home its hard to see people say that they are fine just buying mineral water by the liter.

The most interesting part of this focus group was finding out about the "flying saucer". Some of the places we visited didn't have bathrooms or comfort rooms as they call them here. So we asked were they went and we were told they went in a plastic bag, tied it and flung it--hence the term flying saucer!

Sick in the midst of a crazy week

I am currently very behind on putting posts up and I hope that I will get some time to post this weekend. Its been a rough week with lots of work and I am trying to get over a fever that I have and some congestion and a cough.

DAY SEVEN: Let the work begin!

This morning we went to Cavite City to visit the provincial hospital and a presentation that would have created many sexual harassment lawsuits in the US. Our presenter was a surgeon who was pretty interesting and I think wanted to make us laugh but it made many people mad. He told one of my female colleagues that she had a large butt; and two others that they were showing too much cleavage. When presenting us with coffee at the end he found out my last name is German and said something in German and did the Hitler sign to me. Yea it was an awkward day. The hospital overall was pretty nice. The OB room was so crowed, there were around 3 women per bed with their little babies and every bed was full so over 100 women in the ward. It was interesting to see, especially because women in the US get mad when they don't have their own room while the hospital now; such different perceptions.

After our trip to Cavite City we made our way back to IIRR to finally find out what our projects would be. I am in the Disaster Risk Reduction group and well we found out that we had lots of work to do. I thought that we would just have site visits to see where we would be working on the rest of the time but we found out that we needed to make a whole focus group guide, key informant interview guide and survey by Friday- July 6 and it was Thursday July 5, at 5pm at night. We also needed to go to the mall to get snacks and supplies for the focus groups. The mall trip took a very long time. We found out that we needed rain boots and other things which would have been nice to know before we left....oh well. We got back from the mall and started writing the questions and going over what we wanted to actually research. My group is conducting a water and sanitation assessment in 9 barangays over the next week which include a focus group, key informant interviews and a household community survey. We spent until about 1am finishing up on the questions and then tried to get some sleep because we had to be up early the next day to pilot test all of our assessment tools. Its going to be a long day tomorrow.