Tuesday was a good day. Car troubles are the standard, and a Filipino university isn’t that much different than back home.
As I was digging the rain trench with Theresa and Lacey, Benhard walks out of his room attached to the dining area. Benhard is a friendly, talented, and generally amazing 27-year-old Filipino that lives and works at Mt. Moriah, doing all kinds of jobs around the camp, leading devotions with the kids, and leading worship at the church service that meets here on Sundays, on top of finishing up school at the local university. Well, he walks out, and tells us he is going into town to drop off a paper at his school. Theresa had the fantastic thought to volunteer her manual transmission skills to borrow Jeremy’s jeep to drive Benhard into town, along with Lacey and I. Initially, I’m convinced she’s joking, until Jeremy says yes and we’re piling into this jeep. Benhard is more than willing to bring us to school and give us the full campus tour. Of course, I kind of forgot how much 3 Americans would stick out on a college campus here and potentially make Benhard the talk of the university, but I’m not too terribly concerned that he’ll lose his admirable humility because of us.
<—-maxing out GI Jane on a different trip
So here we are – Theresa helming the wheel, Benhard riding shotgun, and Lacey and I bouncing around the back. Now, I should introduce this jeep – I’ll call her GI Jane. When I look at it, I think African safari. Military green, a dashboard that more resembles a fighter plane cockpit than your car into town, and two metal benches along the sides of the back generously referred to as seats. Furthermore, as we learn on our drive today, Jane has an incredibly loose steering wheel, a tendency to fall into neutral when you’re going up hills, and she makes sure you feel every imperfection in the road. This jeep is begging for an adventure. Now, I want to give Theresa tons of credit – on our drive she exhibited admirable confidence and peace under distress. If I was behind the wheel….we probably wouldn’t have left the parking lot.
Thankfully, we managed to get out of the driveway. The steering wheel made for a slightly extended 5-point turnaround in the parking area, but I’d rather find that groove there than surrounded by pedestrians in town. We were blessed by a reasonably open road to pull onto with a small window of time before we are getting passed by motorcycles, jeepneys, and charter buses. Passing is a very common occurrence, mostly in occasions that would make an American wet themselves, like approaching hills or around blind curves. It’s a pretty straight-shot to the university, but it doesn’t take long to get to the first uphill climb, and Jane decides she doesn’t like this whole “forward motion” thing. We slow to a stop and pull along to the side of the road as first gear only yields a revving engine and rolling backwards. We aren’t there for long until a truck pulls up and some jovial gentlemen hop out with flashy orange and blue DPWH shirts – Department of Public Workers and Highways, Benhard informs us. One of them hops behind the wheel, jiggles some levers, gets Jane to make some forward progress, and tells Theresa not to touch the lever that we find out causes the Jeep to fall into neutral (is it that obvious that I have no idea how to drive stick shift?). We’re on our way! The next hill gives us the same trouble, but Theresa is quickly able to pop it back into place and keep us moving.
Successfully dodging a tiny girl in her school uniform darting across the entrance, we pull into the campus and meander through the pedestrian-filled streets to find a parking spot. We hop out to the first of many stares, as Benhard begins our tour. It is “Intramural Week” this week on campus, which means instead of classes there are just all types of sports competitions between the different colleges and grades represented on the large campus that covers middle school to college. Saw the school of nursing playing basketball against the education department, and a freshmen vs. senior ping pong match-up, along with a awesome glimpse at the sport of Sipa/Sepak takraw. Look into it – I’m trying to find a ball to practice up and bring back to the states.
I really enjoyed the couple hours we spent touring around the university. Despite the stares, being on a college campus definitely had an air of familiarity to it. We stopped and chatted with a friend of Benhard who works with the InterVarsity group on campus. This was a cool glimpse of the international body of believers, meeting college students just like myself (yea yea, technically graduate, close enough) going after their campuses for Christ. I’m hoping to go to their weekly meeting tomorrow (Friday) night, and then we’re all going to (and possibly performing a song for?) a concert they’re putting together next Friday. I’m really excited to press into these opportunities on top of what else is available.
We managed to make the drive back without much occasion, again thanks to our awesome drive Theresa. Just another day in the life.
