listen to what we say, but pay no attention to how we behave!!
The world is full of hypocrites and I have found some here in the Philippines! During our instruction, we are taught to adapt and be respectful of the cultural norms in this country. It's a world of gray and we as volunteers must the forces of the status quo and adaptation. We are to adapt our eating styles and working styles to work with our Filipino counterparts, but still retain our identity and values in order to share them. We are also taught to be sensitive and avoid offending the host country nationals.
Filipinos are very hospitable and on more than one occasion, city officials have gone out of their way to accomodate visits by volunteers. They often prepare large amounts of food and take time out of their schedules just to meet us. We may not even be working in their communities, but they take time out of their schedules to meet with us to chit chat. In general, schedules and timelines in the Philippines is secondary to personal relationships. While being taught to be respectful, mindful of others, and work the Filipino way, HQ still operates the American way. Schedules and deadlines must be met, policies and procedures followed, and the overall attitude is that my time and schedule is more important than yours. Allow me to illustrate with some examples.
A current volunteer scheduled a visit for the trainees to a province. The governor wanted to welcome them with a dinner and homemade rice wine. Originally the volunteers were supposed to spend the night in the province, but HQ decided they needed to visit the volunteers at their cluster sites. So HQ forced the change in schedule. Due to the schedule change the volunteers could not particpate in the banquet that was planned. To further aggravate the situation, the night before the visit, the mayor had to take his wife to Manila (8 hours away). He returned right after he dropped her off in order to meet the volunteers. The mayor was able to meet the volunteers briefly before that had to return to their cluster sites to accomodate a visit from HQ. The mayor was offended and his hard work to set up a banquet went to waste! Worst of all, guess who has to clean up the mess? Not the volunteers, but the language cultural facilitators (LCF's)!
The LCF's are constantly reconciliing misunderstandings and apologizing for rude behavior by the Americans. As trainees, we're making lots of mistakes and thank goodness for our sensitive, intuitive, and observant LCF who has smoothed over the many mistakes we have made! I admire the LCF's that I'm working with. They must put up with the volunteers as well as HQ who controls their jobs.
I appreciate the hard work by all the LCF's and I definitely see how tough their job is. I just have to figure a way to express that feel acurately.
| 
