Orientation - Part One

On Tuesday morning at 9:00 – a reasonable hour, all things considered – we were picked up and brought over to the Peace Corps office. It’s on part of a floor in a big building, with a view of Manila Bay. The offices themselves are nice and spacious, and the décor is pleasant. I’ve been to three offices now – Rabat, Bangkok and this one – and they are all quite different from one another. Milo, the Peace Corps Response Coordinator, is our liaison here; we parked in his office and reviewed the agenda, organizational chart, job descriptions/paperwork expectations and the notebooks he gave us (I’m taking Monday and Tuesday away from the office next week to go through all of the Peace Corps materials). We lined up in front of the staff at their meeting to introduce ourselves, and then the presentations began. As someone pointed out, we didn’t have to do any skits!

First was Safety and Security. The whereabouts policy seems more flexible than the one in Morocco (even the revised one that was put into place shortly before I left) – fine with me. There are off-limits areas – not only Mindanao, which I suspected would be on the list, but also other parts that have communist (as opposed to Muslim, which is in Mindanao) insurgencies. Also new to me was that each volunteer is issued a life vest, which must be brought along when traveling on any ferry. It’s one of those one-time-use ones, so it can fit in my backpack. To date, no volunteer has used one. We did hear about the volunteer who was killed here in 2007 – a sad story (most of which is confidential, so we didn’t hear the official version, and since it is confidential, I’ll not pass on the rumor mill version). And we heard about typhoons, earthquakes and volcano eruptions, all regular occurrences.

We had lunch with the Country Director and Programming and Training Officer; it was July birthday celebration day so there was lots of food in the office. I wasn’t all that hungry (as I noticed after South Africa, jet lag not only affects your sleep but also your appetite), but I did enjoy the noodle dish and found a Filipino delicacy that I liked – a salted egg. I’m not sure how it’s prepared (baked?) but you scoop it out of the shell and eat it with fresh tomato.

Then we had about an hour of language and no time for cross-culture. I’m glad I read my Culture Shock but I already have had some questions about daily life that weren’t addressed in a book meant for ex-pats living on expense accounts. As for language – why didn’t I start Tagalog before? Well, in part because the language of business is English and in part because of the delays and in part because I figured I would get what I needed when I got here. I’ve already started to study, but in retrospect, I do wish I had learned more than just “thank you” before I left (at least I learned that!). Everyone does speak English though, which makes it easier, but it’s still nice to speak to people in their own language – and to know what they are saying to each other!