Oil, oil everywhere

During our time in Iloilo, we have visited Guimaras Island a number of times. The small, green island is located just to the south of Iloilo City and is renouned for the sweetest mangoes in the world. The island is a favorite weekend getaway for Ilonggos (people of Iloilo) and the visiting Koreans, and many flock to its white sand beaches or bike the mango filled hills. We visited twice to tour the island by bicycle. During these trips we exhausted ourselves riding up and down the hilly terrain, visited hidden waterfalls and ate the delicious mangoes.

On our last visit to Guimaras, however, we left the bikes behind. This trip was not the frolicking, carefree trip of previous visits. Instead, we came to Guimaras Island to witness first hand the destruction left behind by the Philippines largest oil spill.


The oil spill occurred on August 11, 2006. It was caused by the sinking of an oil tanker off the coast of Guimaras. The newspapers have stated that the captain of the vessel was not properly trained to handle such a cargo, especially in stormy conditions (such as there was that fateful night). The ship sank to the ocean floor: 640 meters deep and beyond the reach of any salvage ships from the Philippines. There is talk of ships from Japan and the U.S. to come to help retrieve the ship but as of yet nothing has shown up. They suspect that only one of the ten oil tanks has ruptured but it has already leaked 190,000 liters of oil and covered 300 kilometers of coastline. If the ship stays on the bottom of the ocean, the other nine tanks could rupture in the future causing futher damage. We have what they are calling here in the Philippines an 'ecological time bomb' on hand. To read more details check out an article here.

When we headed to Guimaras and asked around where we could see the oil spill, we did get a few weird looks. Why did these white people want to see an oil spill? And once we arrived at one beach where a clean-up effort was ongoing we were met with even more suspicion (especially by supervisors of the clean-up who were with the Petron oil company). After talking a bit in Ilonggo to the local fisherfolk and explaining that who we were and that we just wanted to check it out, we did not run into any more problems.

We found out that the fisherfolk in the area were being paid 200 pesos a day ($4) by Petron to help with the clean-up. Since the livelihood of these fishers has been destroyed by the spill, this is the least Petron can do. While Petron has not taken full responsibility for the spill and instead is blaming the shipping company, at least they are doing something to aid in the disaster. The community residents were picking up sand, rocks, and debri covered with oil and placing it all in rice sacks. These sacks were then being piled up on the beach to be hauled away (to who knows where?). After a week of this process, the 100 or so people in one community had hardly made a dent in the black ooze that covered the beach . With over 300 kilometers of coastline to cover, it is hard to imagine that this clean-up will be finished anytime soon. Another smaller spill occurred over a year ago on another island off the coast of Panay and the clean-up is yet to be completed. It is difficult to determine what the overall effect of this spill will be on the coastal residents of Guimaras and other nearby areas, but unfortunately the situation certainly does not look hopeful.

2 Months with Koreans

Before Lora completed her time with the Peace Corps, we headed to Iloilo City on the island of Panay (Lora's home island for the past 2 years) meet with Reo, the manager of English to Koreans at English Initiatives in the Philippines (EIP) to discuss the terms of our employment as "native English speaking tutors." During the meeting, we agreed to stay for 2 months, to get free room and board (living in a dorm with some other students) and teaching full time (ie 40 hours/week). We left the meeting satisfied with the deal and eager to begin our work.

After our trip to Romblon, we moved to the dorm to begin tutoring. Life was ok. We were told to teach American pronunciation and sat back to wait for the students to come rolling in. But, to our surprise, not many students did come rolling in. At the end of our first 2 weeks, we were each teaching less than 15 hours a week, mainly on MWF. Maybe life wasn't all that ok. We were frustrated and bored. We were frustrated because we had planned on making enough money during our teaching stint to cover at least 1 month of traveling in SE Asia and this (obviously) wasn't happening. We were bored, well, because we were just hanging around our dorm and we weren't making enough money to be able to avail of all that Iloilo has to offer (ie malls and movies).

Then we had to pay for our visa extensions: P4000/each (aka US$80). OUCH. There went 2.5 weeks of pay. Our relationship was strained from Lora constantly bitching about the situation...a slight exaggeration, but you see the point. We finally got so fed up that we spoke to the manager to tell him we would be leaving at the end of the week. He said he too was embarrassed by the piddly amount of money he's been throwing our way and he said he would start giving us a salary, if we stayed until Sept. 15. We told him, "Sure! We'd love P15,000/month!" and walked out feeling somewhat satisfied. However, after our last paycheck, we're not feeling so satisfied anymore. Apparently Reo thought we meant P15,000 TOTAL when we meant P15,000 EACH so really, we're not making much more than we were to begin with...and we're STILL only working about 15 hours a week.

On the bright side, there's only 2 more weeks left, we just moved into a new dorm complete with hot water (gasp!), we're diligently studying for the GRE's and we get to hang out with some amazing Koreans!!

The Koreans are a different matter entirely. Some of the Koreans are extremely shy talking with the "scary" native speakers. These tend to be the newer students who are still unconfident about their English capabilities. Others, are extremely eager to talk with us about any and all topics. It has been very enjoyable learning about Korea and its culture. Some of our students have been kind enough to take us out for Korean food and soju, the most popular alcohol in Korea, which is made from rice and/or sweet potato.

It has also been interesting to see the interactions between Filipinos and Koreans. Most of the time, they get along great. There are many similarities between the two Asian cultures, but they also have many differences (am I stating the obvious?). Lora finds it extremely humorous to listen to what the Filipinos say about the Koreans in the local dialect right in front of the students!

One example of cultural differences is the EIP bash we attended last night. The party was organized by the Filipino tutors. They broke everyone at the academy up into 5 groups and told each group they were required to perform a dance, skit, song, etc. Now, this is an extremely Filipino thing to do and it did NOT go over so well with the Koreans, who pressured the tutors enough to DROP the acts. However, the tutors couldn't bring themselves to completely abandon the limelight, so they still broke up into groups and performed.

The Unclimbable Mountain

So when KC returned from his little visit to the States we decided to visit a small group of islands in the Philippines called Romblon (which is also the name of the province, the capital town AND the island). The main reason was to hike Mt. Guiting-Guiting (meaning knife edge in the local dialect) on Sibuyan Island a place that we dreamed would be a biodiversity wonderland after reading about it in the Lonely Planet. But we should have known. While it was one of the best forests that we have seen here in the Philippines, it did not quite match our expectations of pristine rainforest. Oh and did I mention it was wet. Why we always choose to hike in the rainy season I will never know but I am sure it will happen again...wait, when are we beginning our travels of Indonesia. Oh, yeah, we'll be touring around during the wet season!

On the first day of the hike we climbed almost 6000 feet on a track with no switchbacks (apparently they have not been told about those in the Philippines). Half of this journey was through a thick forest of evil climbing bamboo, which would grab a hold of anything (limb, head, backpack, you name it) and not let go until we struggled til we were blue in the face. We set up camp for the night once we reached Mayos Peak with the plan to start early on the hike up the remaining 1500 feet. But, after a freezing night inside a mist cloud, we decided that we could not handle another night of near hypothermia, not to mention that the thought of climbing a "knife edge" of slippery stone in the pouring rain wasn't that appealing. So instead, we got up early to look at the mountain we didn't climb and then made our way back down. We did get a great view of the sunrise over the island and a wonderful morning hike down through some amazing rhododendron and mossy forest and sore feet to boot. Lora was really astounded by the view of the near perfectly conical Mayon Volcano, which is on the other side of the archipelago but could be seen from Mayos Peak. Overall though, it was not a cakewalk and probably something that should not be tried in the rainy season but, it was still worth it.

After the arduous hike we headed back to Romblon Island to hang out with some other Peace Corps Volunteers for July 4th. The island of Romblon is truly an amazing place. It is severely cut off from the rest of the country and can only be reached by a handful of overnight boats a week from Manila. However, it is home to a sizable expat population and thus has some pretty interesting places to eat and hang out. For example, while there, we were able to indulge our cravings of real mozzarella pizza and mashed potatoes while watching the World Cup on satellite! We rented a house that was built by one of the Swiss ex-pats who lives in the area for half the year. It was one of the most architecturally pleasing native houses I have seen here and was built for only $6,000. Not a bad deal for a vacation home. The house was set up on a cliff, overlooking a serene white beached (private!) bay. We spent most of our time cooking, eating and listening to music while watching the lulling waves.

After some good food and good times, we visited Simara Island (another island in the Romblon group) where another Peace Corps volunteer is assigned. This island is even more secluded from Romblon since it is only accessible to Romblon and Tablas Island by 2 small wooden and bamboo boats a day. When the weather gets rough, such as during the monsoon season, the boats don't run. Some nasty winds were blowing through, but the waters and scenery on the island were gorgeous.