Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
We started off the day as we have been for the past couple days- wake up call is at 8am and breakfast (honey smacks and a generic coco puffs… mmm) at 8:30am. We then headed out to UC Banilad, (a nearby college that is allowing us to use some of their classrooms for work space) to start our work day. Today was a little different than our days thus far. We weren’t meeting with the high school students or visiting the Alaska Mumbaling community, so a lot of today’s activities were dedicated to worm education for ourselves and time to work on our individual focus group tasks.
Noelle and Liz did a powerpoint presentation for us on worms- basically what kinds there are, how they are transmitted to people, how to treat them, and how to prevent them. And let’s just say there were some pretty graphic images from that presentation that have been imprinted in our minds FOR-EV-ER. But I think it gave a lot of the group a better sense of the information we need to know, and what we need to pass on to the folks we want to affect. Work time after that in our focus groups was good- or well, I can only speak for my own group. But as for the adult team, we’ve been putting in a lot of great ideas into what we want our adult workshop on worms to encompass. I’m excited to see the high school students to get their input on and ideas too. They always seem to have the most insightful and thought provoking things to say.
We all had lunch at Chow King and unfortunately had to say our goodbyes to Kevin, one of our adult/professional mentors. It was a sad moment because I’m pretty sure we all grew to really appreciate Kevin’s presence in our group. He was always making us think critically and pushing us to continually question ourselves and strive for something bigger, something higher. After lunch we went back to the classroom at UC Banilad. Dr. Belizario came and did a presentation for our group about worms. He gave us a lot of information that was really helpful in trying to wrap our minds around what the Alaska Mumbaling community really needs, and what the struggles in providing health education are going to be. Something that really stuck out to me is that he said, in order to run a successful deworming campaign or program, you really must be able to change the ATTITUDES of the people you are trying to educate. It’s a difficult thing to do, and complacency about this issue is going to be a big obstacle. Complacency, as well as working around the limited resources that the community has, has been something I’ve personally been struggling with. I’m hoping we’ll all be able to address these things and come up with creative ways to combat them in the coming weeks. I’m sure we will!
After this we basically updated each other on what each specific focus group was doing, had about 20 minutes of free time in the hotel, and then went to dinner. As usual, our group took up about 50 tables at the restaurant- this time, a Filipino food place called Maxim’s. I witnessed several thumb and arm wrestling competitions and two rounds of telephone. “What song is this?” turned into something about a twig. And I shared my personal strategy when it comes to getting boys to not want to dance with you at clubs. Needless to say, you’re all going to see more girls doing the robot when you go out from now on. Just a heads up.
We had a debrief on our thoughts on the day and more work time after dinner. Kayla was our spotlight on person. She is such a big ball of energy, and it was cool to learn more about her. Andrew ended our night with a medley of his own song called 16, plus no scrubs by TLC. Now that’s talent.
I’m excited for what’s to come in this project! Everything has been amazing so far, and I’m having the best time learning from everyone around me. Good times, Cebu. Good times.
-Justine Katindoy
