Before we had a chance to get comfortable, in a little over two hours, we will be on a plane headed for the Southernmost cluster of islands: Mindanao (ashamedly, I figured out that I had been spelling that wrong this entire time. Gosh darn unreliable phonetics!) For those of you, much like myself, who treat geography like a foreign language, here is a convenient map:
Does anyone else think that "archipelago" is an awesome word? Speaking of words, I have been trying to learn some Filipino (Tagalog. . . and no, not like the Girl Scout cookie. Mmm.) Most of the people here speak English unsurprisingly due to the American occupation during World War II and the burlesque infestation of Western influences over the years. Signs and billboards of American capitalism tower like menacing giants over violently choked out vegetation and piles of urban waste — a palette of muddled greys and blotchy browns, with families living under, between, and over them. When I take a look around, it seems that this nation wasn't meant for condominiums and pools shaped like peanuts or golden skyscrapers the size of pyramids. . .
So let's take a stab at this new language ordeal . . .
"Salamat": Thank you
"pagpalain ka": Bless you
"tubig": Water
"Diri lang": Stop
"oo": Yes
"Dili": No
"Bayad": Please
"Isda ay mga kaibigan, hindi pagkain": Fish are friends, not food.
"Nasaan ang banyo?": Where are the bathrooms?
"Ikaw ay maganda!": You are beautiful!
"Jesus loves mo!": Jesus loves you!
I don't know if any of those aside from "Thank you" are correct, because Google Translate gave me a million different options. Still, hopefully I'll learn within these next four weeks and improve!
The people here are resilient. That's what Jeff Long keeps telling us, and I'm starting to believe it. When you live as though the next day's food, water, and housing is wholly independent of what you can do, you have to learn to be resilient. It amazed me that when we walked around the dirt paths and alleyways that "squatter" communities were made up of, all I saw were smiling children and parents standing behind them, waving.
