We just completed a very productive and enjoyable trip to the island of Palawan. This time we were accompanied by Kenneth Lee for one of the days, since we were meeting with the two school divisions on Palawan to discuss our proposed literacy project. This turned out to be such a worthwhile day for us. The Palawan Division handles more than 800 schools and takes care of all the schools that are not in Puerto Princesa, the main city there. I can’t even imagine handling 829 schools. They were very receptive to the project and we talked about how it will roll out and what we need from them. They also talked about their system for handling donation requests. They want all the schools to go through the division office and not directly to the donors. That way, they can act as a clearing house of sorts and make sure the donations are handled in a fair and equitable way. I’m all for this! We get so many school requests, yet we don’t really know if the division has plans to help them, or if they have made requests to other donors. We are trying to roll out this literacy program as soon as possible so we can see some progress before the end of the school year. Fingers crossed! We then repeated the presentation to the Puerto Princesa School Division. They don’t have nearly as many schools, but half of their barangays are actually pretty remote- up in the mountains or next to the coast. We ended up visiting two of the three schools that the division wants help with. Two of the schools need to have classrooms built to replace the ones that were destroyed by the Typhoon that hit last year. They don’t usually have to worry about typhoons, so it was a shock to them and they were unprepared. The other school, up in the mountains, doesn’t have any electricity. This is such a little school- only 80 students in multi-grade classrooms. They performed an amazing dance for us- amazing because it was choreographed with such detail and it was so long- about 10 minutes of dancing. The kids seemed to really love dancing and showing off. While they were outside sitting down and waiting to perform, many of the students were searching their classmate’s hair for lice. They really seem so poor here! They are an indigenous tribe and according to the teacher, the parents aren’t very industrious. The government has brought in people to help them help themselves out of poverty, but they just go back to their lazy ways. It’s so sad. I hope the children can break this cycle through education. The school is way, way up in the mountains and they put it there so the children can access the school easily- no excuses! We really do hope we can provide electricity through solar panels. We will see what the committee thinks.
Water Projects and Single Drop
A couple of weeks ago, some church members from Palawan happened to be at our ward in Makati (for training meetings with Elder Bednar). They mentioned that they have some barangays in Aborlan that don’t have access to water and wondered if we could help. Since we were going to Palawan, we decided to check it out. We were fortunate to have an employee from Single Drop for Safe Water accompany us. We know next to nothing about water projects and how everything works together from the city government, etc. so it was truly a blessing he was there and able to speak their language. We had a good discussion with the mayor, his assistant, and especially the engineer. Most of it was in Tagalog and most of it was out of my range of understanding (even in English). We will see what comes of it . One thing is sure, though, we have faith in the work that Single Drop for Safe Water does. The church has teamed up with them on many other water projects in the Philippines.
On Saturday, we had our P- Day- a whole day of recreation! We have been wanting to take a tour of the Puerto Princesa Underground River, which is a World Unesco site. It was worth it. We joined a tour and rode in a van the 1.5 hours to reach the port. Then we waited for about 30 minutes (which we spent walking on the beautiful beach) then boarded a small boat with a motor to get to the mouth of the river. Once there, we then boarded a small boat that was powered by one person paddling. They give you an audio device for the tour and you go about 1.5 kilometers through the underground river. It’s actually a very large cave, full of wonderful cave formations . Many of the formations have been given religious theme names, which reminds us how religious the people are here. There was the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, the face of Christ, the Last Supper, and many more. There was also a “vegetable garden” and others that I can’t remember. Also many, many bats! Unfortunately, my camera didn’t take great pictures inside the cave. Lenard was able to get better pictures, but not sure how to get them onto the blog. After we left the river, we then headed to have buffet lunch in a very peaceful spot- a wonderful tropical garden and a lot of interesting local art. There were lots of vegetable dishes so I was happy! After a long, leisurely lunch, we went on another tour through a mangrove. Unfortunately, the guide wore a mask and we were sitting at the back, so it was very, very hard to make out what he was saying. Basically, though, he talked about the importance of preserving the mangrove and the importance of it in sustaining their environment there. It was very peaceful there….so much so that Elder Huff had a good nap on the boat! This made for a very full day, but very informative and enjoyable. Glad we did it.
In the evenings, we had time to relax and get a bit of exercise in the pool at the hotel. We enjoyed our stay at the Hue Hotel. Strangely, there were a lot of different people there from Utah! Including a marine whose group was there to do a service project building a storm shelter. There were some guys who sort of go there to work/vacation (one who served a mission there many years ago) and a young man (accompanied by his wife and parents) who served a mission in Palawan just a few years ago. This place really attracts foreigners from many countries! So, that was our very full four days in Palawan. We love coming here and look forward to our next visit!
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