Kadayawan in Pictures

So my jam-packed Kadayawan is over. It was a great weekend, but quite exhausting by the end! Now that I am all caught up on sleep, here is my Kadayawan weekend in pictures.

First Cee and I grabbed some tasty tapas at Hola Espana on Thursday evening. We had paella too, but it looked so good, I didn't have a time to grab a pic before we dug in:

Next up, a rock concert at Damosa (all the events are free!). Manila Light beer was doing a promotion so there was free beer all night...surprisingly things stayed pretty calm:


Friday was a holiday so I slept in and then headed to NCCC Mall in the afternoon to pick up a few more things from the Fair Trade Sale. I also stopped to hear a reggae band perform for a bit:

Next I made my way over to downtown to meet up with friends at a trade expo at Central Bank. There was a fashion show, some products and art pieces on display, and I did a ton of Christmas shopping:

The fashion designer of these pieces is a Davao icon


I really loved this matching hair piece and purse

My co-worker said the creator of this display is way famous!

On Saturday I headed with friends downtown to see the street dancing showdown! In the morning street dancing groups from different schools all over Mindanao paraded through the city. The showdown was to determine the winning group. This was what I really wanted to see during Kadayawan above everything else. It was so packed with people and when Davao schools performed, everyone went crazy for them! So needless to say, it was hard to get good pictures, but here are my attempts:

Coke was sponsoring...can't you tell?

The costumes and props are amazing!

This picture is for my Midwest friends -- look -- I can't escape corn no matter where I go!

Yes, those are little kids climbing ladders being held up by people below...they survived!

I took a picture of these drummers because they rocked it out!

After a quick shower at home, I headed back downtown to People's Park to see a hip hop dance competition:

People's Park at night

The judges show off their stuff first

This crew was great, but the guy in the middle cracked the stage when they all did backflips.

The concert was on hold for a while after the stage cracked so we headed to Matina Town Square for some live music. This band performed and they were fabulous. The group is called Mebuyan, they are folksy (as we would say in the U.S.) My friend said they are the most "Kadayawan" thing we saw, their music is very immersed in the culture and they promote peace in Mindanao:

I have video of this group but couldn't get it loaded with the net connections I have, hopefully I'll get it up soon, they are so good!

Finally, the weekend ended on Sunday when I headed back downtown to see the final parade, consisting of floral floats:

In the background is the Davao cathedral

And that's it! Doesn't it make you want to come visit!?!

Its Kadayawan!

Kadayawan is a week-long, multi-venue, music, dance, art, food, flower, fashion, and shopping festival here in Davao that is held every year. Its a harvest festival, a celebration of the durian (a pungent, yet well loved by the residents of Davao, fruit), and a time for showcasing indigenous culture. Since I might only be here once in my life and this festival is a pretty big deal, I have been beyond excited since I first read about the bright and colorful Kadayawan online in Hesburgh library on a cold, gray day last February at Notre Dame. Last week, and nearly every other day since, I have been checking the website for the schedule of events and updates, and marking down all the events I want to go to so I don't miss anything!

Here are a few scenes from my Kadayawan experience so far:

At SM, the mall near my apt, artistic displays of native plants are being shown.
This one was my favorite.

I also went to the opening activities at SM for a little bit.

They also had indigenous attire on display

While I have been to these few Kadayawan events so far, I think my celebration officially began with an ukay ukay trip yesterday.

What's ukay ukay?

Ukay ukay is essentially second hand clothes shopping. But here it is more like third, or fourth, hand clothes shopping, because the clothes for ukay ukay are clothes that were designated as relief goods for the "third world," but somehow found themselves in the hands of someone who decided to sell them instead.

Bags of relief/sale clothes

Ukay means "dig" in Visaya. Because the clothes are heaped onto these big tables/pull cart kind of things outside and you literally have to dig through them to find something you want to buy. At one table the woman next to me would just blindly stick her hand right in the middle of the pile and see what she pulled out -- she had some technique right there!

Long row of ukay ukay tables

I learned a lot at ukay ukay. Such as, if you are buying pants or skirts, you can wrap the waistline around your neck and if it fits, then it will fit your waist:

My co-workers teaching me how it is done!

Overall, it was an interesting experience. At first I felt pretty overwhelmed by all the clothes (I thought about my mother, who hates shopping, this would literally be her nightmare). And then I felt kind of strange. These were all clothes that came from places like my country for "those poor people down in the Third World..." I might be being a little cynical, but a lot of stuff had holes and stains -- is this the best we can do for helping those who may really be need in relief? Are these just the leftovers rich people give to make themselves feel better? Are clothes really what poorer countries need, or really less oppressive political and economic policies from the U.S. And then my Filipina friends reminded me to relax and teased me, asking me, "do these pants look familiar?"

Eventually I really got into it and dug around at the dress/skirt table. I didn't buy anything that is ready to wear, but I was feeling inspired by this awesome blog, that my even awesome-r friend Caitlin sent me yesterday, so I bought two dresses (for a whopping 30 pesos) that I want to make into some really amazing article of clothing once I am reunited with my sewing machine back home. I really like the patterns:

After ukay ukay, we all took a stroll to see more of the Kadayawan festivities. I had some street food (gasp! I was told not to eat it or I would get sick...I just tried a bit, just to test it, and I feel fine, and it was delicious). And we sat, had some cokes and listened to the band playing.

Everyone chillin out at Kadayawan.

More posts to come on my awesome Kadayawan weekend...the fun is just beginning!

Catholicity

This past week I attended a Catholic Peacebuilding and Reconciliation workshop in Cagayan de Oro, in the north-central part of the island. The workshop was organized by the Catholic bishops here, the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, and Catholic Relief Services/Philippines. The workshop was intended to be a resource for Catholic Sisters, priests, lay people, and bishops here in Mindanao. The aim was to empower these church leaders to carry out peacebuilding and reconciliation in their communities, particularly with the Muslim population. There is much animosity between Christians and Muslims, history is blurred to place blame on either side, and there are serious biases and prejudice. I was privileged enough in the workshop, however, to hear Christians struggling to come to terms with their biases against Muslims, disown these biases and try to turn over a new leaf for peacebuilding. There was such a positive energy and spirit by the end of the conference. None of the participants thought this work would be easy, but the conference did its job in empowering them to know that they can do it.


Personally, I was in my element at this workshop. I was at ease speaking with priests and Sisters and bishops. I enjoyed the humble and sincere prayer for peace. The theological and scriptural presentations brought me back to my undergrad days. My heart was full of joy as I saw women stand up among the men and represent a Catholic diocese, and as I heard Sisters rail against nuclear power and environmental degradation. This workshop reminded me of why I stay Catholic.

A beautiful new church in Cagayan de Oro

One of the things I wanted out of this field experience, as I chose a secular organization as my internship placement, was to know how I would feel working in a secular organization. I was raised Catholic all my life and was a leader in my youth group in my home parish. In undergrad I worked with the U.S. Bishops and went to a Catholic university. I then spent a year working with the Sisters of St. Joseph. Now I am at Notre Dame. I am the near epitome of a cradle Catholic. And if its not Catholic, I'm usually trying to soak up some other religious teaching or spirituality by reading Thich Nhat Hanh or attending Nordic prayer services at the Lutheran church. What would it be like if I worked in a secular organization? Well, I now know the answer. It’s fine. But I get a particular joy in working with an organization or a movement that has a Catholic (or at least religious or spiritual) character to it.

But as some of you may ask or feel -- but the Catholic Church is on the wrong side of a lot of modern issues, why be a part of that? How in anyway can that be fulfilling? I know, I ask myself the same questions often. I do have many issues with the church. But I still cannot leave the church. I have come to terms with the ambiguity of loving the church and being frustrated by it at the same time. While I don’t judge those who want to leave, I think they have perfectly good reasons. I want to stay and try to bring about the reform, while slow, that does take place in the Catholic Church. I would love to do peacebuilding within the Church. I also stay because Catholicity is deeply rooted in my identity and as much as I try to shake it, I can't.

During the workshops a presentation was given on the Catholic imaginary (this theology is being developed and written about by Fr. Robert Schreiter of CTU). The Catholic imaginary is this sort of mindset, the way Catholics see the world, even if they don't realize it, based on how we have been taught to be as Catholics. Everyone has different imaginaries based on religion, family upbringing, ethnicity, etc. The Catholic imaginary is distinguished by such things as sacramentality (the belief that one can find God and God's grace in the things of this world), ritual, eucharist, and a hope for a better future , even in the midst of wrongdoing and hurt in the world. The workshop also presented the long tradition of Catholic social teaching, its modern defense of human rights, the church's move from pacifism, to just war theory, and now, slowly, its coming to a strong defense of nonviolent resistance. Yes, the Catholic Church, while it has these great traditions has a long history of violence, prejudice, and corruption. And yes, on many issues today it is not moving forward, it is not getting the full concept of inclusion or human rights, for example. But it still does have this amazing tradition from which I can draw inspiration and hope for the future. As a person imbued with the Catholic imaginary I say yes to all the issues, and then look forward to the hope for a better day.

Most importantly to me, the church is made up of its people, everyday people, working hard to make a difference and trying to bring something positive to this world. And the church, as shown above, has a number of resources to help these people find meaning and inspiration for their work. Yes, there are a bunch of men in another place that are hurting many people, including myself, deeply. But I can't turn away from the spiritual and theological tradition that motivates nuns to protest and get arrested at the School of the Americas every year, or priests to risk their lives to reach out to "the other" in their communities, and lay people to take up leadership positions for social justice, peace, and prayer.

There are many other ideologies and religions that motivate people to do these same things. And I could work for peace and social justice in a number of different ways. But I was imbued with the Catholic way of seeing how to do these things. And I can't ignore that it is what most powerfully motivates me to stand with these Sisters, priests, and lay people to support them in their work.

It's a new day for peace!

Nicknames

While nicknames are a fun thing you might be privileged or cursed (depending on the name) to receive in the U.S. because of your goofy family or “creative” friends, they are nearly mandatory here. Almost no one is called by their own name. On my second or third day of work my supervisor asked me what my nickname was and I felt a little lame to say, “I don’t have one.”

This whole custom of nicknaming is a little out of the ordinary to me. My parents told me multiple times when I was growing up that they picked the names they did for my sister and me in part because the names were unlikely to be turned into nicknames. My parents wanted people to call us by the names they gave us! And they were pretty much successful; I’ve never had a nickname that really stuck.

This of course has changed in Mindanao. Believe it or not, my name has been shortened to “Anns.” This came about because I started calling my roommate, whose name is Chernor, but his friends call him Ceebah, and I would call him Ceebs, for short. So in turn he called me Anns. This evolved during Orientation, which was led by Ate Myla and Ate Cora, who joined in on the nicknaming. From there our nicknames quickly spread.

Also, when I meet new people I sometimes feel as though it is verbally impossible for them to say all two syllables of my name. They usually call me Ann….and then it trails off. And I’m pretty sure they most often know my full name, but of course no one would say your full name – only nicknames! In the U.S. when people call me Ann I hate it – I want people to get my name right! But please see previous post about learning to be flexible and laidback…

Anyways, I’ve been teasing my parents (whom I love dearly!) a lot in the last two posts. So, in honor of my parents, I am posting a picture of me with an Asian pear. Jokingly they asked me last week if they have Asian pears in Asia. Well I recently learned they do, except they are called “Korean pears” in the Philippines, they are ridiculously expensive for the price of fruit here (they aren’t native), and the Filipinos I was with didn’t know what it was. But they took a picture of me with the Asian/Korean pear at SM grocery store in Cagayan de Oro anyway, just for the two lovely people who raised me:

Road Trip!

When I was growing up we took a lot of family car trips. At least twice a year we took the eight hour drive to Florida to visit my Grandma in Ormond Beach. These trips usually consisted of waking up at around 3 or 4 in the morning, stumbling to the car, and falling back asleep. If the set time to leave was 4am, you better be in the car by 3:55 because Dad had been waiting for you with the engine running for about twenty minutes anyway. We would usually stop twice for a bathroom break and once for a fast food breakfast. When we did stop at gas stations or rest areas to use the bathroom Mom would yell from over the stall to me and my sister, "Don't Touch Anything!" Since the hour we left was timed around being away from the big cities during morning rush hour, since we made efficient stops, and since my father drove relatively fast, we would make amazingly good time and get to Grandma’s for cold cut sandwiches and potato chips at lunch.

This is not how Filipinos take road trips! First of all, Filipinos aren’t so strict on time. So while your fellow travelers may say “we’re leaving at 9:00am.” You probably aren’t leaving until 9:30, maybe 10:00am. You don’t have to worry about getting hungry because you will stop for major meals along the roadside. Many small establishments dot the highway with a table stocked with covered pots. The family that lives there probably cooked what is in front of you. You take off all the lids to see what is being served and point to what you want to eat to order. You sit down to eat – there is none of this eating in the car while you drive business. Even if you left at 11:30am or 12pm you will stop 30 minutes or so into your trip for lunch. As Filipinos (at least here in Mindanao) eat about seven times a day (morning coffee and snack, breakfast, then merienda or snack around 10am, lunch, then second merienda around 3 or 4pm, dinner, and then evening snack) you will probably stop at least once more for a snack. On the trip I took to Bukidnon we got to the first gas station, about 20 minutes away from the office, and stopped to buy car snacks – snacks which are completely unnecessary since you stop for food every couple of hours anyway. On the way back home your trip is elongated because you will stop at the vegetable and fruit tables to purchase even fresher and cheaper produce than you can in the city to bring home. There are clearly no laws prohibiting public urination anywhere in Mindanao as far as I can tell, so men stop usually anywhere on the side of the road to relieve themselves. Women can stop at gas stations to use the restroom but sometimes they bring a malong instead (a fabric about the size and texture of a bedroom sheet but sewn together on the long side to make a tube) to cover themselves when they need to use the bathroom on the side of the road. You may also be able to use the CR (comfort room, as they call it here) at one of the roadside eateries, but it is probably the personal bathroom of the family who runs the eatery.

Now I’m not trying to make a judgment on the best or worst way to make a road trip. I like both ways for different reasons. I like that my family raised me in a way to care about timeliness and efficiency. And Americans, in general, covet these values I think. On the other hand, I can often have a lot of anxiety around being a perfectly scheduled and timely person. Filipino culture is quite laidback and easy going, and while there can be drawbacks to this approach too, these are values I could use a good dose of. And while I might get stressed sometimes that I’ve been waiting for someone for twenty minutes or a meeting is going way longer than I thought it would and I have fifteen other things I’ve been planning on getting done that night and now I can’t and that affects the skype calls I said I would make the next morning…I clearly need to chill sometimes!

Anyways, here are a few pictures from my last road trip to Cagayan de Oro. The view is beautiful, and these pictures don’t even come close to doing it justice. But it’s hard to get a lot of good pictures in a moving car with tinted windows. (And while it is beautiful, I just also want to make a note that these lands are horribly deforested and a lot of Filipinos have mentioned to me that they miss what its beauty could have been without the environmental degradation the lands have suffered).

This is at a roadside cafe we stopped at for breakfast on our return trip. It is run by NGOs to buy local farmers' produce. I took this pic because the plants are lined with gatorade bottles!

Sorry I have not posted in a couple of weeks; I have been very busy and gotten quite behind on my blog. I’ve been working, traveling, attending a workshop, skyping, and shopping. I have a lot of things I want to blog about, so I will try to get all the posts up this week – many updates to come!

My first update is from last weekend. Chernor, my Kroc classmate and roommate, was out in the field and I had a lot of time to myself. So I used the time alone to do what I have been wanting to do for a few weeks now, that is, I journeyed out into the city to learn my way around. I just wanted to walk and walk and learn all the streets. My dad calls himself the “human map,” because he is amazingly good with directions. And I think I definitely picked up some of those genes. When I get to a new place the hardest thing for me is not knowing my way around. I remember crying in frustration when I would get lost driving clients around in Minneapolis when I first moved there. So whenever I go somewhere new in Davao I try to follow where we are going and memorize the roads and neighborhoods. But being in the passenger seat hasn’t really helped me learn my way around; I needed to walk the city.

So I took my lonely planet book, which had a map of downtown and walked from the City Museum, to People’s Park, to a tourist shopping area, to the outskirts of Chinatown, then to Torres St. for dinner. I essentially walked around the core downtown area. And I definitely don’t have everything down yet, but I have much better bearings for the area and I’ve figured out how to take a few different jeepneys. I noticed I felt quite empowered by having been able to walk around and find my way. I had a new sense of the city and my place in it. I didn’t feel such a stranger. Here are some pictures of where I went. First the City Museum, then People's Park, then Chinatown. Of course, I didn't bring my own camera because I forgot, so I found these online:

Taken from: http://www.yousaytoo.com/museo-dabawenyo/318178

Taken from: http://tagadavao.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/durian-dome-at-peoples-park-davao/

Taken from: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=269391&page=47

As the day ended I thought back to the women and men I worked with in Minnesota, they were all trafficking/domestic violence victims. Most of them didn’t speak English, had few relations in the Twin Cities, if any, were undocumented, and had few possessions or little money to their name. Sometimes, as a completely untrained case worker, I wonder if I really did much to help them. I realize how much more I could have done with a degree in social work. But walking around the city, I felt as though I got a small taste of what my clients went through. I am in a place where I don’t know the local language, the customs, food, and people. Most everything is different. I often feel quite alone. Just knowing one new thing about this place – a few streets – made me feel just a little bit stronger and less lost. This little walk around the city reaffirmed my belief that even if one isn’t able to make great, worldwide changes in their lifetime, the small changes, small bits of help we offer to our fellow humans can be just as powerful and life changing as these big efforts. Here is one of my favorite quotes from writer, David James Duncan, who can express this point better than me:

“When small things are done with love it’s not a flawed you or me who does them, its love. I have no faith in any political party, left, right, or centrist. I have boundless faith in love. In keeping with this faith, the only spiritually responsible way I know to be a citizen, artist, or activist, in these strange times is by giving little or no thought to ‘great things’ such as saving the planet, achieving world peace, or stopping neocon greed. Great things tend to be undoable things. Whereas small things, lovingly done, are always within our reach.”

Comfort Food

There is nothing like being sick to make you miss home terribly. Yes, I have officially hit the homesick phase. The initial excitement of a new place has worn off and I am missing certain comforts from home - my family, David, friends, lakes, my bike, gardening, and of course, food!

I was quite excited to try all the new food here but, again, the newness has worn off a bit and I'm struggling, as I always do, to figure out something to cook for myself every day for lunch and dinner. I figured I would just mostly eat out when I was here, but I realized I'm too money-conscious for that. So yesterday, after a particularly monday-ish Monday I splurged on comfort food.

What is comfort food to me in the Philippines? Here is my list of groceries I bought:

1 Box of Whole Wheat Penne Pasta
1 Jar of Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce
1 Box of Annie's Organic Cheddar Bunnies
1 Carton of Chocolate Rice Milk
1 Bag of Organic Stovetop Popcorn
1 Box of Organic Granola Bars
and 1 small single serving of organic gummy bears (they were delicious!)

I then realized what a crunchy granola dork I am that my comfort food involves spending $1,000 pesos at the health store...why don't I own birkenstocks?

Pictures of my Bukidnon Trip

So I finally have downloaded the pictures from my Bukidnon trip, sorry for the delay! Other than this I have no real update, I've been sick the past week so I've just been spending time doing research for my internship and struggling through creating a research proposal for my own research for Kroc. So enjoy the pics for now!

The Hall of Peace, where our gathering was held:

And the gathering begins, with a ritual:

David's chickens would never have been able to handle this, being tossed about:

The chickens are slaughtered:

The downstairs area of the Hall of Peace, where we ate,
and where many beautiful paintings are hung:

It was hard to choose, but here is my favorite:

View from the Hall:

We made friends with Tonton:

And he took us to see his monkey:

Here is his house:

More scenes from outside the Hall of Peace:

My co-worker, Daisy, speaks with Datu Vik, this village's elder
and a IP rep from Indonesia (Daisy's home):

It was a beautiful weekend!