I am tired

My days begin at 5:45am because I need at least an hour in the morning to become coherent in time for the start of my workday at 7:00am. While most people are beginning to stir awake, the WHO busy bees are buzzing away, battling the evils of Morbidity and Mortality. It's only been a week, but I've already learned a lot and couldn't be happier with how things are going. Currently on the agenda are meetings for the post-typhoon health emergencies in the Philippines and research on future health agendas for the Dept. of Health.

The situation here is unbelievable. There are still people trapped in and around flood waters, where diseases are rampant. The worst offender is leptospirosis, mostly due to the high levels of rat urine in the stagnant water. As of October 1, there are 1963 reported cases and 148 deaths, and the figure increases daily. Compare this to 40 deaths and 640 cases between 2004 to 2006, and you see how problematic this is. The DOH has a plan to distribute prophylaxis to the most at-risk populations throughout the affected regions, but there hasn't been an outbreak to this magnitude before, so there isn't an existing plan of action. However, it's not just lepto that they have to deal with. There are also increasing cases of diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid.

What do you do with the people who are in these areas, and currently displaced in evacuation centers? They can't be expected to wait out their lives in some temporary holding facility until their former homes are habitable. More often than not, they weren't even that to begin with. And the flood waters are going to be here for months--it's not as if there's a bottomless pit of funding for these medications. Then to top everything off, the typhoons keep coming--Ramil (Lupit) is expected to hit the country this weekend. Oh boy...

Change of Scenery

I'll spare you the theatrics, but long story short, we've had to re-arrange our living situation in a short amount of time. It's quite a story, however, and if you'd like to know, I'm happy to share.

Alas, we are no longer guests of the Tropicana Hotel. Our beds will not be automatically made, bathrooms no longer scrubbed, and Meena and I will not be living in the same building as our boss. Frankly, I'm a little relieved about that last one. No more chances of awkward run-ins at the pool or shared elevator rides after an especially heinous work out.

What I will miss most is the neighborhood we've been in. It's not the prettiest of places, and the ongoing construction is irritating at 8am. But we've found our niches, and I'll be sad not to be in walking distance of our usual hangouts. If we aren't home, you'll likely find us at:

• Café Adriatico, the food never disappoints, the americano is perfect, and you'll feel like you've traveled to Europe. There's a great description on the Traveler on Foot blog.

• I've already talked about the Shawarma Snack Center, but it warrants another mention. I'm pretty sure the last time we were there, the Qatar National Basketball Team was at the table next to us. Either that, or a group of neck-strainingly tall men raided a market stand that just happened to sell clothes imprinted with "QATAR" everywhere.

• We have a love/hate relationship with Robinsons Place mall. Your go-to for just about everything. We almost signed onto living there inside one of the residential towers. Wouldn't that be ridiculous? Actually living inside the mall? But there's a cafe we frequent often called MoMo!. It's gone through a renovation and it's not the same, but it'll do.

• Chinese food = Hap Chan. Ok fine, it's a chain. And more likely than not, they use MSG. But that sweet and sour pork is insane. And we just discovered their student discount, so it's only 100 pesos! ($2)

There are also the stores down the street...

• the bubble tea stand: the 20-something owners apparently open only when they want, and that's usually only on sunny days, so they are never open.

• the laundry: where everybody knows your name, but calls you, "Julie," and Julie, "Nora."

• the dvd guy and his scary wife who yells at him to charge us more.

So there it is, that's essentially where we spend our time here--in Malate, anyway. I'll post photos of our new place once we're settled. In the meantime, here's something to look forward to in the new 'hood: Hobbit House. "...[F]ormer Peace Corps volunteer and college professor Jim Turner was so inspired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books that he founded a bar called Hobbit House entirely staffed by “little people.”"

I am not a morning person

It's been a while since I've had to wake up at an adult time, sans the once-in-a-blue early morning flight. I'm a grad student. I've just taken out an ungodly amount in loans, so if I want to sleep until 11am, I'm going to sleep until 11am.

This morning after going to sleep at 2am working on school projects, I am awake at the very adult 6am to continue working on school projects (and said blog post). Why the sudden change? What happened to "we have soooo much time on our hands?" Somehow, unbeknownst to us, projects were assigned by the powers that be, and everyone decided October 12 and 13 looked good for due dates. I've had 4 papers and 3 projects to work on over the last few days and into the next few. Not all of this is because of procrastination and poor planning. Only 85%. Anyway, with this time crunch, I'm guilty of some self-neglect. I've been making meals of SkyFlakes because my visit to the grocery store is long overdue.

However, despite my griping, waking up this early is good practice for the half-way point of being in Manila. Shortly after classes are over on the 13th, Meena and I will begin our internships at the WHO. We're working with them for six weeks on various projects. That's six whole weeks of adult time awakening. I hope I'm ready for this. I am going to require lots of coffee.

Tour de Philippines

*******************

Typhoon Ondoy. Please look at Google's list of places to help and consider donating resources.

There are also victims of the earthquake in Indonesia and tsunami in Samoa.

The Red Cross and Mercy Corps have information on how to contribute.

*******************

Over the past few weeks, we've done some more exploring in and around Manila. Here are some highlights:

Diana invited me to a reproductive health information session that her boss held in Tondo. It's always startling to see women barely older than you with 7, 8, 12 children in tow. My grandmother married at 17 and had 9 children--a life not too unlike some of the women I meet here. I'm constantly reminded of the opportunities I've had in my life simply because I was born into the right circumstances. When I asked a 9-year old girl I met that day what she wanted to do with her life or be when she grew up, she had a blank expression on her face and no answer for me. I didn't quite know how to react to that. These children are some of the sweetest I have met since we've been in the Philippines.

This past Sunday, using Diana's birthday as an excuse to travel, we flew to Bohol for a few days. Whether good timing or bad, our flight out of Manila was after the first major storm of the typhoon, so we weren't in Manila to see most of the devastation. Luckily Bohol was spared from the storms, so we toured the island. Our day included:

1. The Blood Compact Monument

2. The plaque explaining the Blood Compact Monument

3. The Church of the Immaculate Conception (1527), the oldest church in the Philippines, and made of coral

4. Prony, the 23-foot python, with a surprise performance by this lovely lady:

5. Lunch on a floating restaurant, and a stopover at a "native" village (a completely fabricated village of people dressed in grass skirts and holding fake spears)

6. Tarsiers (Meena's blog has a creepy video of one)

7. A drive through a man-made forest, planted 38 years ago

8. The vista overlooking the Chocolate Hills, all 1776 of them

As always, food was the highlight of our trip. Bohol Bee Farm has an amazing selection of organic dishes. If you find yourself in Bohol in the near future, book your stay with them.

Finally, we've just returned today, two days early, from our field visit to Palawan because Typhoon Parma is on its way. We were there to test for malaria. For those of you who haven't already heard the BU go-to public health fact (fourteen times from the same three professors), the word mal-aria (bad air) has its root in the miasma theory of disease. Feel free to use that little gem as a conversation piece at your next party. Or is that lame and I should get out more? Anyway, as you can see, 'twas not the best time to be had.

Somehow, my master plan of spraying repellant on myself every twenty minutes on the barely-there exposed skin didn't work. Those little buggers bit through my clothes, on my face, and ear. The next day on the other ear! Ok fine, so I forgot to spray my ears. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I get malaria. Apparently though, we didn't have to worry because mosquitoes transmitting malaria are mostly active at night. Big sigh of relief, right? Nyet. Unfortunately the day biters spread dengue. Our professor contracted it once and she was in the hospital for a week with fevers, headaches, abdominal cramps, and bleeding gums. Bleeding gums. What have I gotten myself into here?