It's been nearly a month since my last post, and I blame a mix of laziness and lack of inspiration. Dumaguette became my home for this brief period of time, and everyone becomes jaded to what they see every day. The burning 7 a.m. sun no longer amazes, the nightly thunderstorms on the horizon do not amaze, and the cloud bursts are stoically waited out alongside the locals. Though now that I remember those things, each are experiences worth capturing in words for this blog. I'll have to get working on them. Expect a blog on each.
But for now, everything of importance is finished in Negros. The Community Project is completed. We held a teacher training at Negroes Oriental High School about Multiple Intelligences. It went well, but there is little else to say about it. I was in charge of the Naturalist Intelligence, so I took the teachers in my booth outside and talked about plants, animals, and their relationship to English grammar. It was a stretch, but connecting one unrelated idea to another is a specialty of my brain, so no worries there.
Perhaps some might be interested in the Visayan language? It is a verb-first language, so basically the opposite of German. The sequence of the basic sentence that we have learned is Tense-Verb/Subject/object/location/time. For example:
Moinom ko og vino sa dagat sa Domingo.
I will drink wine at the ocean on Sunday.
Nitudlo mo og mga maestro ug maestra sa library kagahapon.
We taught many teachers at the library yesterday.
You can form most questions by using the particle ba as the second element of the sentence.
Gusto ba ka og mga saging?
Do you want some bananas?
Tugnaw ba ang kape?
Is the coffee cold?
Naa ba ka ang tuba?
Do you have coconut wine?
There are many interesting things you can do with prefixes in this language. For example, if you add "pinaka" before an adjective, it means the -est of the adjective.
Maayong - good
Pinakamaayong - the best
Init - hot
Pinakainit - the hottest
etc. etc.
The language is both simple and complicated. It is simple in the sense that it is dead as an academic language. There are few Visayan publications, and it is not studied in universities anywhere. The result of this is that the five-pound, 2,000 page dictionary we have is mostly useless because while the language has a rich history, almost no one alive has anything but a conversational vocabulary. Picking words out of the dictionary for advanced forms of certain concepts like "rage" will only get you blank stares. Angry, becoming angry, furious, rage, all of these words are "suko", which translates to anger. Rage or wrath is simply "suko kaayo," which translates to "very angry."
The language is complicated in that it only has three vowel sounds: aaahh, oooo, and eeee. So "o" and "u" are generally pronounced the same way, and so is "i" and "e." This means that our American accents are not just amusing, they are directly debilitating to being understood. Also, many words are spelled exactly the same, but which syllable you stress will change the entire meaning of what you are saying.
For example:
MolaBAY ko og balay.
I will pass by the house.
MoLAbay ko og balay.
I will throw the house.
This is problematic.
Amusingly, the sound for understanding in America "ohhhhhh..." should be avoided as it means yes in Visayian. This usually is not a problem because in most contexts where you go "ohhhh" saying yes would apply. People here say "aahhhhh." Also, "ooo-ooo", as if you were excited to ask a question, means poop. So... avoid that as well.
A few days ago, my cluster mates and I hiked up into the local mountains, 10 km into the mountain barrios, and visited a sulfur hot spring. The place smelled of breakfast, or rotten scrambled eggs, depending on if you are a pessimist or an optimist I suppose. It was weird to see the yellowish water stream out of a cave mouth, steaming in the hot air. The water was near boiling when it emerged from the earth, making it painful to touch, if not outright scalding.
Large cement cisterns were constructed, and through a simple hose system, we could pump in spring water or cold water from the mountain stream that ran by the cave mouth below the spas. After ten minutes of pumping in the hot water, the pool became pleasantly warm. Then we had to leave after 45 minutes because we needed to walk 10km back down the mountain to catch a bus back to the city. Most people drive there, but we are not allowed to drive anything, and chartering a private jeepney is expensive. My legs are still sore from the steep walk down.
About half the road was paved, the other half was just volcanic soil and rock. Treacherous in the darkness that caught us halfway up the slope, Apo island sitting like a turtle in the ocean in the distance, mocking our elevation and exhaustion.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Site Visit
Lifting off the island of Negros, butterflies in the stomach as the plane dipped its toes into the sky to test the temperature. Confident, it rose and the land began to shrink. The earth became a lily pad, and I a dragonfly remembering that there were other places to land. Above the clouds containing Bacolod City in a gray box, a landscape of vapor rose to the sun like the peaks of mountains over which cottony zeppelins hovered. Here and there, a gaping hole revealed below green earth and blue expanse.
Gliding over Cebu, the width of the island centered itself in my window, and the ocean framed it. It looked as wide as one giant’s stride. The land was textured with erratic divisions, generations of families relying on history to set the borders of their fields. The mountains followed the style, their bulbous heights resting quietly, and farms climbed into their coconut canopies. Far to the north, the island narrowed and ducked behind the horizon, the ocean slivering in. Somewhere there lay San Remigio. My new home for the next two years.
The plane turned its back on my destination and settled to earth in Cebu City, a sprawling scar reminiscent of Los Angeles. Jammed roads wound their way through sun-beaten buildings, colorful jeepneys ferried their human cargo, honking constantly to warn others of their erratic movements. Pedestrians stand watching, motionless, as if the chaos on the roads kept them in a constant daze. Many seemed to have a destination in mind, and they walked a few steps toward it every now and then, others looked as if they did not know the meaning of the word. A small chair and table, a stone ledge, under shade, these were destination enough for the day. Sit back. Watch life honk, and roar by. A white truck labeled “Department of Environmental Preservation and Natural Resources” passes, emitting a stinking black fog.
Outside the city, the ugly constructions of man gave way to the bursting nature of the island. Trees towered over everything, every hut, every home, every municipal hall, making the road seem more a tunnel than a highway; the lazily leaning palms, the encompassing umbrella of the deciduous giants, and the bushy vegetation that fought for every place in-between.
Here people walked with purpose, hands filled with some important item, dodging to the shoulder of the road as the rumbling bus honked its way towards them. People watched from roadside huts, lounging in the shade behind the table of their merchandise, fruits and squash, laid neatly in rows to be seen by the passing travelers. Others lounged about to lounge about; at bus stops where no buses stopped, under concrete pagodas used for nothing else, on the broken steps of a town hall. It was hot, and the laundry done in the morning was hanging to dry. What else is there to do, anyway? Goats masticated on the roadside, stoic to the traffic speeding three feet from their goatees, focused on grass, breathing, the mechanics of their jaws.
The vantage of the bus gave a glimpse of the interior. The omnipresent coconut stood silent sentinel over drooping fields of corn and abrupt hills of fallow land. A hut could be seen here and there, but for the most part, people seemed unwilling to live far from the concrete slab that was their connection to the world.
When the highway hit the ocean, it met a perpendicular road running north and south. I was in San Remigio. The town is that single road, bordered by houses, a church, two schools, and the city hall, all nestled against the calm side of the ocean. Banks, shopping centers, a respectable market, all these things are found fifteen miles away in the region’s largest town (its status as a city was revoked a few years before.) I am eager to return, so I can come to know this new place.
Most of my time there was spent at San Remigios National High School. I was given a large welcome ceremony. There was a student singer, a regular Philipino Justin Beiber, and a trio of girls doing a traditional dance from the region. Then I had to speak to 1,800 students, the largest number of people I have every spoken to in my life. I was nervous, but I think I handled it well enough, introducing myself and giving all the usual information. Then there was the gift giving from each class. I received a nice polo with students names signed onto it, four flower leis, a corn hat, twenty balloons delivered one by one by students, two hand painted banners, a large cake, and some traditional rice cakes. I was overloaded with their generosity.
Finally, my counterpart teacher gave some quote from Gandhi about friendship, and then said, “And now Mr. Gage will end with his final reflection.” She handed me the mic, that instant being the first I had ever heard of any such requirement. I managed a stately “uhhhh…” which echoed majestically about the school grounds, and then I went into a long sequences of thank yous and appreciative remarks that, while not impressive, seemed to satisfy everyone involved. Glad to be done, I gave away the mic for the last time and took my seat. I look forward to starting my work there in November with much less fanfare and ceremony.
Gliding over Cebu, the width of the island centered itself in my window, and the ocean framed it. It looked as wide as one giant’s stride. The land was textured with erratic divisions, generations of families relying on history to set the borders of their fields. The mountains followed the style, their bulbous heights resting quietly, and farms climbed into their coconut canopies. Far to the north, the island narrowed and ducked behind the horizon, the ocean slivering in. Somewhere there lay San Remigio. My new home for the next two years.
The plane turned its back on my destination and settled to earth in Cebu City, a sprawling scar reminiscent of Los Angeles. Jammed roads wound their way through sun-beaten buildings, colorful jeepneys ferried their human cargo, honking constantly to warn others of their erratic movements. Pedestrians stand watching, motionless, as if the chaos on the roads kept them in a constant daze. Many seemed to have a destination in mind, and they walked a few steps toward it every now and then, others looked as if they did not know the meaning of the word. A small chair and table, a stone ledge, under shade, these were destination enough for the day. Sit back. Watch life honk, and roar by. A white truck labeled “Department of Environmental Preservation and Natural Resources” passes, emitting a stinking black fog.
Outside the city, the ugly constructions of man gave way to the bursting nature of the island. Trees towered over everything, every hut, every home, every municipal hall, making the road seem more a tunnel than a highway; the lazily leaning palms, the encompassing umbrella of the deciduous giants, and the bushy vegetation that fought for every place in-between.
Here people walked with purpose, hands filled with some important item, dodging to the shoulder of the road as the rumbling bus honked its way towards them. People watched from roadside huts, lounging in the shade behind the table of their merchandise, fruits and squash, laid neatly in rows to be seen by the passing travelers. Others lounged about to lounge about; at bus stops where no buses stopped, under concrete pagodas used for nothing else, on the broken steps of a town hall. It was hot, and the laundry done in the morning was hanging to dry. What else is there to do, anyway? Goats masticated on the roadside, stoic to the traffic speeding three feet from their goatees, focused on grass, breathing, the mechanics of their jaws.
The vantage of the bus gave a glimpse of the interior. The omnipresent coconut stood silent sentinel over drooping fields of corn and abrupt hills of fallow land. A hut could be seen here and there, but for the most part, people seemed unwilling to live far from the concrete slab that was their connection to the world.
When the highway hit the ocean, it met a perpendicular road running north and south. I was in San Remigio. The town is that single road, bordered by houses, a church, two schools, and the city hall, all nestled against the calm side of the ocean. Banks, shopping centers, a respectable market, all these things are found fifteen miles away in the region’s largest town (its status as a city was revoked a few years before.) I am eager to return, so I can come to know this new place.
Most of my time there was spent at San Remigios National High School. I was given a large welcome ceremony. There was a student singer, a regular Philipino Justin Beiber, and a trio of girls doing a traditional dance from the region. Then I had to speak to 1,800 students, the largest number of people I have every spoken to in my life. I was nervous, but I think I handled it well enough, introducing myself and giving all the usual information. Then there was the gift giving from each class. I received a nice polo with students names signed onto it, four flower leis, a corn hat, twenty balloons delivered one by one by students, two hand painted banners, a large cake, and some traditional rice cakes. I was overloaded with their generosity.
Finally, my counterpart teacher gave some quote from Gandhi about friendship, and then said, “And now Mr. Gage will end with his final reflection.” She handed me the mic, that instant being the first I had ever heard of any such requirement. I managed a stately “uhhhh…” which echoed majestically about the school grounds, and then I went into a long sequences of thank yous and appreciative remarks that, while not impressive, seemed to satisfy everyone involved. Glad to be done, I gave away the mic for the last time and took my seat. I look forward to starting my work there in November with much less fanfare and ceremony.
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