Hike for Light

Over the next few months, Hybrid Social Solutions, along with Stiftung Solarenergie Philippines (StS PH) will be participating in the Hike for Light.

This event is the second in a series of nationwide campaigns to distribute solar-powered energy systems to Filipino communities in the mountains. This campaign follows the Ride for Light, a 19 day motorcycle journey which brought almost 600 solar home systems to 80 communities across the Philippine archipelago in April and May 2011.

The climbs will consist of the six highest mountains in the Philippines, and climbers will supply 500 lights for 500 off grid families along the way. The climbs will be led by Kaya ng Pinoy’s Team Everest, the first Philippine Mount Everest expedition in history.

Provision of lanterns will be combined with training to ensure that beneficiaries know how to maximize the use of our products and receive proper technical support after we have left. In addition, this allows local residents and partners to see the value of these lanterns first hand. While the initial campaign is a donation, these campaigns are designed to produce future sales channels.

Having access to a reliable source of light is crucial for families living in the mountains. From being able to see the dangerous terrain to monitoring livestock at night, access to a clean, reliable source of light will be a great asset for these communities.

I am hoping to attend all of them, although I am told that the last one may be off limits. It is the most difficult of the climbs, and involves some actual rock climbing.

Barangay Encanto

Gawad Kalinga, meaning “to give care,” is the name of the largest Filipino Non-profit agency. Founded by last year’s Filipino social entrepreneur of the year, Tony Meloto, this organization started out building houses in communities under extreme poverty, and now does much more. Barangay Encanto (Enchanted Village), located just a couple hours outside of Manila, is their model site. What they have done here is pretty extraordinary. This village was once occupied primarily by anti-government rebels, and displaced squatters from Manila. Gawad Kalinga (GK) began building houses in this location about 8 years ago, and once those were constructed went to work helping local residents use their knowledge and skills to start micro-enterprises. As Tony describes it, the first step is restoring dignity, then comes empowerment. There are about 6 businesses currently operating out of this village. They are selling bamboo furniture and bikes, health and beauty products, duck eggs, goat cheese, handwoven bags, and bottled iced tea. These products use all natural, locally grown raw materials, and are made by local residents. Each business is owned by local entrepreneurs. The village has a fully functioning restaurant, and they are currently building a bed and breakfast in order to attract tourists.

Hybrid Social Solutions, the company I am working for, has been active in this village for some time providing solar lanterns. While they have electricity in some parts of the village, many houses do not. In addition, they often lose power for various reasons. Our most recent project is a solar computer lab. I spent some time with our technician going around to electronics manufacturers searching for the computer monitor that uses the fewest watts per hour. The money for the construction of this computer lab was donated, but the vision is that there will be a small hourly charge to use the machines. Like everything else in this village, it is a strange mix of charity (capital cost is donated) and enterprise (revenue covers operating expenses). We also installed a solar home yesterday (donated), including two lanterns, a TV, and a Dvd player. For those of you questioning the wisdom of donating a Dvd player to a family living in extreme poverty, I’m with you.

Finally, we recently installed a Starfish water purification system in their kitchen area. Starfish water purification technology is manufactured by Starfish Hong Kong, and Hybrid Social solutions is the exclusive distributor in the Philippines. Prices and participation may vary.

This technology is now operational, pending bacteriological testing (fingers crossed), and will be the next GK enterprise. They will be bottling and selling Enchanted Spring purified mineral water. This water will be sold to local residents, many of whom use captured rain water for bathing and washing dishes. Some use this water for drinking, but many buy bottled water (5g jugs) from outside the village, particularly for their children. The restaurant also buys water from outside the village, and consumes a substantial amount. The owners of the water business will fill 5g Jugs and sell them to local residents as well as the restaurant. This brings revenue to the owners and staff working at the filling station, and also provides low-cost water to village residents (jugs will be sold for 20 pesos, rather than the 35 that residents currently pay. 20 pesos is roughly $.50).

In addition, Enchanted Spring water will be sold at a higher markup in the nearby town. Profit sharing from the filling station will be shared among GK, the local entrepreneur managing the station, the employees filling bottles, and the community. The community dividend will be used to build a sanitation area behind the filling station, complete with toilets, showers, and laundry facilities.

I have had some difficulty coordinating the exchanges between Starfish and staff onsite at the village, so made sure to be onsite for the next meeting. I arrived on tuesday with my colleague Ronel, our solar technician, after riding the subway, a bus, a trike, and a jeepney. I spent the morning meeting with the three staff and making sure that everything was in order for a visit from Starfish technicians. This didn’t take much time, I just needed to ensure that the three main point people would be onsite Wednesday, and make sure that we had the door key to access the machine. Starfish would be arriving the following morning to train staff and take samples for testing.

At this point it was about 11am, and I spent a couple hours helping (more like watching) Ronel install solar devices in a local home and train the family in how to use the technology. After lunch, Ronel went back to Manila and I was put to work by Mira, a filipina with a masters in agriculture, who has decided to spend the year living and working in enchanted village. I spent the afternoon planting grass and learning about the different crops currently growing at the farm.

Once 6:00 rolled around, all of the men working in the village met up at...the basketball court! And by court, I mean hoop attached to a tree on the side of the road. Shots from the left side of the court were easily blocked by low hanging branches. But every young guy in the village must have been out there, and they were GOOD. I may or may not have gotten schooled by a guy wearing one flip flop. He wasn’t barefoot. He wasn’t wearing flip flops. He was wearing one flip flop. And...this cat could ball, man. In general all of them were very talented, amazing ability to cut in flip flops. A little after 7 it got pretty dark and games kind of died down. I made a joke about how we should put a solar lantern up in the tree, and then noticed a guy climbing the tree to turn on lights already installed. After dumping rain water out of one of the bulbs, we had two functioning lights and played night ball for about an hour. We mostly played 3v3, and they insisted that I stay on the court even when my team lost.

I arrived at the restaurant around 8, late for dinner, but Mira had made sure the kitchen didn’t close before I could eat. While we were eating dinner, Remy, the mom from the house where Ronel had installed the solar appliances came by with another volunteer. Apparently the solar Dvd player was not working, and they believed I could fix it. I was envisioning some type of technical battery malfunction which I would have no idea how to fix, but said I would try to help. The whole family was gathered around the TV, and the current Dvd wouldn’t play at all. After taking it out I could see that it was badly scratched. They had one other Dvd - Batman, the Dark Knight. This one started up the menu screen immediately, and I explained to them that the other Dvd was just too damaged. Ok, they said, looking back at the TV Screen, which button is play? I looked at them quizzically for what I hope was only a moment, and then came to the realization that the Dvd player only had the shapes that I recognize as play, stop, FF, etc. Ronel hadn’t covered this in the training, assuming that they knew what these buttons meant, but they had no idea! If you think about it, they aren’t really all that intuitive, and must just look like hieroglyphs if you haven’t seen them before. I hate to call you out Mom, especially since you are such a tech whiz these days, but explaining the function of each button totally reminded me of helping you in your early three-remote days.

That night I slept in a dorm underneath a white mosquito net, which made me feel like a princess. I expressed this feeling to my roommates, volunteers from the Philippine Airforce, who found it quite amusing.

Boracay Wedding = Win

Three days after returning from Cebu, I once again left Manila, this time to attend a wedding in the Philippines premier beach destination called Boracay. Ken and I were invited to this wedding while out in a bar with some friends of friends the week before. An American military guy was marrying a filipina, and for various reasons had none of his family attending the wedding. They made the mistake of off-hand inviting us, and probably didn’t consider the possibility that we might actually come. It went something like, “hey we have plane tickets for both of Ricky’s brothers that can’t make it, do you guys want to come?YES.” This was an opportunity we were not prepared to pass up. We looked into purchasing fake ID’s with the names of Ricky’s brothers, but decided the possible risk of being caught at the airport with a fake ID was not worth the $200 to buy our own tickets. I can remember sitting in my room thursday night with Ken discussing whether it was worth the money to attend a wedding of people we didn’t know. How silly that seems in hindsight. We bought tickets friday morning, and hopped a flight to the beach that evening.

Boracay is a very small island with no airport, you have to fly to a nearby island and take a boat to get there. It consists almost entirely of beachfront resorts and water sports.

I’m gonna have trouble doing this justice in a blog entry, but suffice to say this weekend was a win. We met up with the wedding party on friday night, all of which were 20 something and awesome. Went from beach bar to flamenco show/restaurant (the flamenco show turned out to be one 60 year old dude, but that was as hilarious as it was disappointing - at one point he was flamenco dancing to top forty hits.) After dinner we went to another bar that I don’t recall the name of, but I do know they had rum buckets (pint of rum mixed with coke) for $5. After that it was dancing at clubs along the beach and then bacon cheeseburgers at jammers around 5am.

Next day was the wedding, which uh, set the bar pretty high. This day was legendary. Roughly 60-70 people, great assortment of Barongs. First there was the church wedding. Then the ceremony on the beach. From this point on there was an open bar throughout. And by open bar I mean the bartender would occasionally just leave, allowing us to pour our own drinks. Following the ceremony was the reception with live band and hors d'oeuvres. And Fire Dancers. Then dinner at nearby resort, buffet style with entire cow roasting on a spit, jello shot cake, and make it yourself Halo Halo. Then speeches and games. Then a showing of the video filmed throughout the day of them saying vows, running along the beach at sunset, etc. Then the fireworks show off of a boat out in the water, blasting Katy Perry. Then a different live band doing American covers and dance party on the beach.

I think our presence was actually very much appreciated, given that every other guest was a friend of the bride. When the photographer asked for a “friends of the groom” picture, we made things significantly less awkward.


Notable events:

Obama Grill along the beach, with Sunset Bonanza all you can drink from 5-8pm for $8.

Wading from club to club at 3am because the tide came in.

Did I mention the fire dancers?

Mitch stands corrected

"I like an escalator, because an escalator can never break--it can only become stairs. You would never see an 'Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order' sign, just 'Escalator Temporarily Stairs.' Sorry for the convenience. We apologize that you can still get up there."

- Mitch Hedberg

Cebu

Had my first vacation this last weekend, 4 day weekend for the end of Ramadan. Even though 98% of the country is Catholic...I believe the reason for this is to appease the muslim population located in the Mindanao region. Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, Philippines.

My roommate had a free ticket to Cebu with his mom and Aunt, so I decided to tag along. Cebu is an island in the Visayas region in the Philippines, and I convinced them to come with me to a town called Moalboal because it is supposed to have fantastic Diving. And it does. Wall dives, reef dives, spectacular diversity of coral and wildlife, including sea turtles, dolphins, and, most famously, the Lion fish, which is pretty badass. I went on 4 dives, two full mornings, for a total cost of $100. Which, interestingly enough, I still haven’t paid for. They told me I could pay for the dives altogether at the end with a credit card, so I spent all my cash on Tanduay rum (obvi). Then when it came time to pay, their line for the credit card machine was down and they told me there was no way to enter the number manually over the phone.

There was also no functioning ATM for miles, although during my search I did discover an Automatic Tubig Machine (Tubig is the Tagalog word for Water). Their proposed solution was for me to go to an HSBC branch in Manila with their account number and deposit money that way. Ahh the developing world. No paperwork, just trust that I will do the right thing.

Anyways, this town is awesome, totally in the middle of nowhere, dirt road with small resorts along the beach. I could wander out of my guest house in the morning, cross the road, and be at the dive shop. The second morning it was just me and the dive master, Dodo, living the dream.

“I’d like to dive with some sea turtles, Dodo, where should we go?”

“Oh, Tongo Point, its beautiful and many sea turtles live there.”

“Word.”

It was beautiful weather the entire weekend, and we managed to avoid the typhoon that passed by Manila over the past few days. Actually a good deal more powerful that the one that just hit the east coast of the US. And I bet none of you Americans even knew about it. How does that make you feel? Just kidding, I hope everyone on the east coast is alright.

On the 3rd day Jeff and I rented motobikes and drove about 8 kilometers to Kawassan falls. It wasn’t quite the serene waterfall I had been anticipating, as the area was packed with filipino tourists. But the falls really were beautiful, with turquoise blue water and numerous pools deep enough for swimming.

Two Very Different Weekends

My second weekend in the Philippines, I accompanied Jeff to Cavite, a small town outside of Manila. He grew up in Cavite, and his family still lives there. In stark contrast to manila, it was extremely quiet. On the drive in we passed a basketball court near his house, which I got very excited about (I haven’t played any basketball since arriving in the Philippines). Two minutes after arriving I was out the door with my sneakers and a flattened basketball I found in the house. However, the guy at the gas station up the road informed me that he did not have a needle which was required to blow up my basketball. Duh, stupid american. Unphased, I walked to the basketball court with my flat basketball, only to find that the gate was locked and had large “Private Property, No Trespassing” signs all over it. So I went home. Good story, Danny. Then I found 20 dollars. I did end up buying some very nice basketball shoes later in the weekend at the sports store that Jeff’s parents own.

Spent that whole weekend lounging around Jeff’s parents house. I finished reading a book Jeff had lying around written by Jose Rizal called El Filibusterismo (the subversion). For those that aren’t familiar, Rizal is one of the foremost Filipino national heroes, and this book was one of two novels that led to his execution by the spanish colonialists in 1896. It was written in spanish, and is a fictional work depicting the lives of different castes and ethnicities living in Manila around the turn of the century. Fascinating book, obviously very critical of the greed and hypocrisy of Spanish friars.

Jeff’s parents have a live-in maid (pretty much everyone here does, I think my boss has 7) who made all of our meals. On sunday I went to their family lunch gathering, which is a very common Filipino custom, and ate more than I should have. I sat around that afternoon watching sports and chatting with Jeff’s dad and uncle, then drove home.

So that was weekend number 2. Enter Ken, the other PIA fellow living in Manila this year. Ken went to princeton, and has been an investment banker in new york for the past 2 years. He likes to party. One of his coworkers is a cambodian expat who brought us to this seafood restaurant called hongkong master chef. Before entering the restaurant we bought about 3 kilos of live seafood from a market immediately outside. Haggling over the price per kilo while three different vendors shove live crabs in your face is always good times. Afterwards, you bring that fresh seafood into the restaurant and tell them how you want it cooked.

After copious amounts of shrimp, crab, and beer, we went to meet a friend I had met through my roommate at Resorts World Casino. However, both Ken and I were wearing shorts, so were not allowed into either club. So we went home. And I found 20 dollars in my pocket. Kidding, Ken ends up hitting on one of the ladies working at the casino and gets her number (despite the fact that he is wearing shorts and a backwards polo golf hat). So we spent the rest of that night and saturday night clubbing with her and her friends, all of which claim to be models. Judging purely from the amount of makeup, outfits, and quality of conversation, I have no reason to doubt it. I read no books that weekend, but I did manage to make it out of the house on Sunday to watch Rise of Planet of the Apes.

Which lifestyle will Danny lead? Will he become well versed in Filipino history and traditions, or end up in clubs where shots cost more than in Seattle? Find out on the next episode of DannyPIAPhilippines.

Thoughts on Manila

Over the past two weeks I have often found myself comparing Manila to Shenzhen. They are similar in many ways, but have noticeable differences. While I am working and networking with mainly the rich and powerful (had dinner with 3 harvard grads on tuesday), Manila is far less developed. The level of poverty here is much more out in the open than what I saw in China. I haven’t had the chance to travel to a really impoverished area in the Philippines yet, although I am planning to in the next week. But even in Manila, entire neighborhoods consist of people essentially squatting in makeshift slums along the banks and overhanging the heavily polluted Pasig river. From what I have learned, they are totally undocumented and unregulated, and people just live there as long as the government will let them.

Because of the lack of development, particularly with roads and drainage systems, there is constant traffic. I didn’t think it was possible, but Manila is noticeably more crowded than Shenzhen. At rush hour it can take an hour and a half to drive from the office to our apartment, a drive that in the middle of the night would take 10-15 minutes. taking the Light Rail during rush hour is quite hectic, with lines stretching out into the street and train cars packed to the gills with passengers. It is currently the rainy season, and when it rains the streets and sidewalks flood. I’m talking water literally up to your knees, which just exacerbates the traffic issues.

Many people do speak english, far more than in Shenzhen, but not everyone. Even those that do know english often speak tagalog, and business meetings and general chatter around the office often jump back into Tagalog. I am picking it up pretty quickly, but obviously have trouble picking up the subtleties of long conversations about rural empowerment.

I stand out due to my physical appearance, but not near as much as in China. No one has asked to take a photo with me, and children do not point at me and shout “foreigner!” I am called Sir quite often, but that is very common even among Filipinos.

The culture is much more open. In the business world people are very laid back and prone to make inappropriate jokes. Apparently I live in an area with abundant prostitution, which people like to joke around about. One of the closest villages we work with apparently has many volunteers from France and other european countries, and at least two people have suggested that I hook up with some or all of them.

There is far less propaganda and much better television programming. Jeff (my so-worker and roommate) likes to cook, and I swear there is a cooking show on 24hrs a day.

I can’t say I am super into the food yet. Home-cooked meals have been great, and I have had some really excellent dishes at expensive restaurants. But the low budget spots and street food haven’t thrilled. Still looking for the equivalent of $.50 dumplings.

In general here I am much busier, working pretty long hours and spending at least an hour commuting every day. I am trying to use that commuting time in the car with Jeff to practice Tagalog, which he is pretty receptive to. He is an academic at heart, and tutors math and english as a side job, so enjoys teaching.