I have been living in the Philippines over the past 2 years. It changed my life, this beautiful country and these beautiful people. This is a short story about my stay. I was born a dutch/chinese girl in the Netherlands, so the Philippines was quite a change in surroundings I must say.

I was 33 when I made the decision to pack up my things and make my way alone to the Philippines in order to work for Filibata, a dutch NGO, to help less fortunate children in the Philippine countryside. After a 9-month volunteer stint in Luzon, I made my way to Samar Laoang in order to help others there. Or perhaps it is better to say, we made our way to Samar.

Just before leaving Bulacan, I met Dale a filipino who had grown up in Canada. He decided to quit his job and join me on my adventures because according to him, he had never actually experienced living outside Metro Manila’s upscale, urban environment during the five years he worked in this country before we met. So off we went.

I was invited to visit and help a small community in rarely-visited Northern Samar. I was also told that this is considered to be the poorest province in the Philippines. The poorest province? Would the situation be so desperate there? This claim made me very curious so I had to investigate.

Our trip from Manila to Laoang involved connecting modes of transportation; bus, ferry boat, jeepney and tricycle. A jeepney is a stretched, modified version of the 1938 Willy’s military jeep, which was used during the American presence in the country and is nowadays used as a sort of mini-bus capable of transporting approximately 24 people on long narrrow benches inside the vehicle. With luggage it is always difficult to take jeepneys, but no one seems to mind a little squeezing and pushing. We were dead tired when we arrived. The community project we were heading to is related to the one I used to be involved with in Luzon. Upon arrival, the head of the project received us with enthusiasm and arranged a house of our very own for the duration of our stay with the community.

Our house was very basic. It was essentially one room 3x5 meters with an open dividing wall to create a toilet and bathing area. There was no kitchen and no plumbing. Our small toilet had no water tank or seat. Water had to be drawn from a well 100 meters away from the house, carried back and poured into a 60-liter plastic pail which serves as our water storage for the house. With no plumbing, a ‘shower’ for us meant pouring a scoop full of water over our heads – it took a while before we became successful at bathing this way.

With no kitchen in our home, our host had instead arranged for us to join our neighbours/fosterparents during mealtimes. They were so kind and generous, they really made us feel like a part of their family. Up to now, I still have fond memories of my experiences there and cherish the warm feelings we shared with our fosterparents. We only saw the head of the household twice my entire time there. He was so extremely shy, he made sure to sneak away before we would show up at their house.

My concept of ‘cultural immersion’ involves doing things exactly the way locals would do things. And fortunately for me, I was already accustomed to sleeping on hard surfaces without a matress (which they say is actually better for your back), pumping water (using a well) and washing my laundry by hand.

Dale on the other hand, was not so used to the rural life. The very first time he took a shower with a scoop, I heard water splashing everywhere. He must have used at least 20 liters of water for that shower! But, after learning first-hand how difficult it actually was to fetch water from the well, traversing slippery mud and swampy patches with ‘mystery water’ (what we call suspicious or dirty looking water on the ground) and to carry it back to our house, he quickly changed his water consumption habits.

Most Filipinos bath outdoors with their clothes on beside the well. Up to now, I still can’t get used to bathing in public, mainly because I don’t know how to clean my private parts tactfully while keeping wet clothes on. After carrying a few hundred liter of water back and forth to the house, we also became wiser and started doing our laundry beside the well, saving time and energy from having to haul water back and forth to the house.

Doing laundry in public is not my favorite thing to do because I feel so insecure about how I handwash my clothes whenever I’m with the other girls. They have such a meticulous way of doing their laundry. They rinse two times, soap, squeeze, soap, rinse three times all the while making circular motions. Naturally, they have had much more practice and their advanced skill in handwashing clothes is quite obvious. My motto though is ‘not clean but fresh’, which is to say, not meticulously clean but fresher than it was before. So, with this washing method, people who see me doing my laundry usually end up laughing and calling their friends and neighbours to stare at how I wash my clothes. After they’ve had their laugh, then they would take pity on me and feel the need to give me pointers on how to do it the right way.



Sometimes our house had electricity, sometimes it didn’t. Samar is a remote province in the countryside with a lot of poor people which means the electric company would usually take its time to fix this problem. They probably felt they weren’t likely to lose that much money. I heard that on one occasion, it actually took them 6 weeks to bring the power back on. It was very hard to work during the non electricityhours, that is how used you become by using a computer and you need power.

The first few nights when we slept with the lights off was when we came to learn that mice would enter our house. Calling them mice instead of rats makes them sound more friendly. Once, one of the mice started to attack and chew away at one of our water bottles as well as a sunglass case, which was not only scary, but noisy too. And the moment we’d turn on the lights, the mouse would vanish. After reporting this to our host, he explained to us that because of the poverty in the village, and on broader terms the province, the mice simply had little or nothing to eat making them very hungry leaving them little choice but to sneak into houses to eat plastic – a tragic story indeed.

On another occassion, we once encountered a two-meter long lizard in our bathroom (actually, it turned out to be only the size of my forearm, but hey it sure seemed bigger at first glance). Little did I know that this lizard entered our house to hunt down the mice who kept invading our living quarters each night (I’m a city girl after all, so how was I supposed to know about this whole food chain protocol). I still remember that moment; I didn’t necessarily scream, but I was certainly speechless. Dale and I ran out of the house to notify the neighbours and within 5 minutes, a group had formed determined to hunt this thing down – it turned out that they considered lizard meat a special treat and were anxious to capture it, roast it on a spit and dip it in soy sauce. You can bet that it took me a while to regain restful sleep after that adventure.

It wasn’t very easy for me to live in such a basic way. I learned how much water you actually consume a day and that it is hard work to get it. Until now when there is water coming out of the tap I am happy. I appreciate a washing machine, it saves so much time. To have electricity and light whenever you want. All things we take so much for granted in the west.

After visiting the school and the poor local families, my heart was touched by those friendly people from Samar. Once we were visiting families in their homes in ‘Little Venice’. The name of the neighbourhood sound so nice, but actually ‘Little Venice’ refered to squatter homes on stilts above water. I must tell you that the water in this area was absolutely filthy. Small, makeshift bundles of scrap wood were the only means of bridging these houses to each other and the main land. You could see that the people living there were very poor. The stories we heard while meeting these people were very sad; fathers or mothers abandoning their own families to either run away or start new lives with new lovers. Those left behind to fend for themselves often included families with 5 or more children to be cared for with sick relatives and no money for proper medical attention.

I have seen it time and time again that the people you meet with the least amount of worldly possessions are oftentimes the most generous people you will ever meet on this earth. Case in point, as we were leaving ‘Little Venice’, an elderly woman hunched over from osteoperosis, came out of her makeshift home and handed us a boiled egg as a way of greeting us. Of course, I was so touched by her gesture, it immediately brought tears to my eyes – and still does every time I think back on this. I learned afterwards that it is in typical Filipino fashion to offer up your guests the very best that you have to offer.

During our six weeks in Laoang, we committed ourselves to writing project proposals and potential business plans for the community. Some concepts included starting a cooperative livelihood program, a new school building, a jobskills exchange program and devising sponsorship programs to generate funding for the school. Unfortunately, it was festival time throughout the province, making it very difficult for everyone to focus on our projects as well as the tasks at hand.



These festivals or ‘fiestas’ are about celebrating special occasions – usually the birthday of a saint. We came to learn that most families would beg, steal or borrow in order to be able to provide a lavish spread for their guests come fiesta time. It’s really hard to imagine people taking out sizable loans just to avoid ‘losing face’ or feeling shamed by not having anything prepared for these so-called special occasions. Through my own observations, I have come to learn that the key ingredients to any fiesta in the Philippines are: loud music, dancing, roasted pig, fruits alad (fruit in sweet cream), visiting the church and every neighbour you know (which is basically everyone). Basically, this continues on through for a day or two, which is usually when fiesta food runs out.

The first time I was introduced to this phenomenon I introduced myself to the host, ate their food, and promptly left. Our group immediately proceeded to the next house just a few doors away, to eat a whole other meal. On that first experience, we visited four houses and ate four times. This experience absolutely shocked me – and my stomach. I must tell you that I am a vegetarian and that this philosophy is not so common in the Philippines because everyone I know there loves meat. During these fiestas, I learned that they would prepare fish or salad (which is very rare for these occasions) especially for me, which of course was a very kind gesture.

In Samar I was even chosen to join a panel of judges for their local beauty contest. As part of their custom, each beauty contestant would dance around a box to some kind of traditional spanish folk music in order to attract audience members to come up and dance along with them while conspicuously tossing money into the box, as a means of showing support for the contestant. At the end of the evening, the ‘beauty’ contestant able to raise the most money wins the contest. I had never seen a display like that before, and I found it very strange to see people throwing money in the air so carelessly and conspicuously, especially in this supposedly poor country. Most of the time these festivities would be held in a fenced-off town square with guests on the inside and the rest of the neighbourhood watching from outside the fence. Those outside the fence usually could not afford to pay the entrance fee.

During the fiesta, market stalls and a small carnival are put into place to add to the excitement. So, these fiestas are a big occasion. Locals even get excited six months before the actual event and start practicing their dances to perform. Out of this experience, I learned to dance, celebrate life and appreciate the basics of life.

For more information or to support our projects, please visit:

www.filibata.nl or http://kwee.in (also in english). It is possible to visit Northern Samar, Laoang and discover this beautiful area, please email me if you are interested: juliette@kwee.in.

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