Home Sweet Home

The accommodation is pretty basic here. Most people here in the rural areas of Mindanao live in Nipa huts or rough timber shacks. 

Nipa is palm fronds woven into rectangular panels which are then used for the walls of the house. Most of these houses are very small. 

In the Agusan Marsh the Nipa huts are built onto log rafts, so that they can float up and down as the water level in the marsh changes.  Quite ingenious. There is also a floating school. 

However, they do sometimes sink ! 

And as to toilets – what a luxury !

In the marsh no-one has a toilet, and in the mountains about 75% have no toilet facilities. 

I do have a toilet in my house, though, but dont ask too may questions about where the effluent goes once the loo is flushed !

Schistosomiasis and other waterbourne diseases are widespread in Mindanao.  I wonder why ! 

I have asked colleagues if anyone here has hot water in their house (I certainly don't) and they could see no reason why anyone would want hot water on tap.  Only the very poshest of the hotels in the big cities have hot water to cater for those 'soft' foreigners who want such ridiculous things.

There is a shower attachment on the wall of my loo (they are called 'Comfort Rooms' or 'CR's here) but I don't use the shower as the water is too cold.  In order that my morning wash is not with perishingly cold water, I wash by almost filling a bucket with tap water, then putting in a kettle-full of boiling water. I then throw the water over me with a plastic pan.  It works quite well really.

The whole of my CR is about 1 metre square, so it's a bit tight for space, and you have to be careful not to soak the loo roll when you wash.  Imagine it as being a bit like having a toilet inside your shower cabinet, and then just to make it a bit more cosy you tuck it in under the stairs so only half of it is standing height. There is no sink in the loo – the only sink is the kitchen sink in the main living area.  

Still, my house is really quite luxurious by local standards, and is made of concrete blocks.  One of the girls that  arrived at the same time as me is getting the "authentic volunteer experience" living in a Nipa hut in Eastern Samar where the rats come in and play with her food !  Rats are quite common here really.  I photographed these one while sitting in a eatery / restaurant place near the coast.