The presentation went well. Perhaps because these are barangay officials, I think that most of them understood the overall message of my presentation, if not the details themselves. After my introduction, I laughed and told them that in the United States at least, we sometimes like to do exercises as part of our presentations. With that, I asked everyone to stand up and stretch! This was taking a chance because I could have gotten zero cooperation. Luckily however, filipino’s are proving to be fun loving and very friendly. It turns out they were more than willing to stand and stretch and laugh! Nice ice breaker! Then, after seating them, I explained that that is just one sort of exercise… and that I had more in store for them! I asked everyone to draw a bicycle wheel on the page in front of them! And thus, I had created the theme of the presentation - the importance of coordination and communication within government, between government and private sector, and then between government and NGO. This, I ventured, is where we have the most to gain in disaster preparedness - namely improving communication, coordination and cooperation! Yay! there were more exercises as things went on and It went well!
After the symposium I went back to Goa via Jeepney with my new friend Choy. Choy is sort if a “fetch it’ guy at the office and I was told by my counterpart that for the modest sum of $3, Choy would be more than willing to wash my clothes and clean my living space on a regular basis!! When I asked Choy how old he was he told me that the had no idea, but I would estimate that he is around 30. He has no front teeth but he wears a constant grin (which takes some getting used to!) Anyway, Choy and I went to Goa to gather some needed cleaning supplies for his visit tomorrow to do chores. He was happy to be my ‘kasama’ for the evening. Kasama means companion and it seems that kasama’s are very important to the culture. You rarely see people walking alone here, especially when shopping, eating, drinking etc. This is an extremely community oriented culture.
It rained very hard last night and it is continuing as I write this. Hence, my room flooded again. I’ve isolated the leak and have to have someone look into this. Power has been out for 12 hours as well and I am trusting fate by using my computer battery right now that it will come back sometime soon! I have FAITH!
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