An unlikely pair of Gawad Kalinga“heroes”
Our latest exploits here during Bill’s visit have included participating in a Gawad Kalinga, which is a charitable event organised by a group called Couples for Christ, and basically involves a whole load of volunteers getting together to give their labour free to build free houses for poor people who could not otherwise afford them. They get the materials by obtaining them from donations from a famous Filipino singer, and from politicians such as Mayors and the like. The labour is donated free by people like us. No-one is required to do vast amounts of work -the idea is that by sheer volume of numbers it can be done by everyone just doing their little bit.
Surrounded by Manobo children from the village.
Anyway, we joined in, and took part in a house build at a place called Sitio Hitaob in Barangay Awasian, which is a mountain Manobo community that is about a 4 hour trip from were I live. However, to get to the actual build site involves a two hour walk up into the mountains, including fording two rivers. Unfortunately it chose to pour during the walk in, with a vengeance common in the rainforest, complete with thunder and lightening. Needless to say we got soaked, and the rivers we had to wade across were in spate and up to the top of our legs! Kind Manobo men made sure we didn’t get swept away though.
Some more of the Manobo kids join Bill in resting by the river
Although we were only able to be there for one day we helped to get “our” house to the stage were founds were dug, the floorboards were down, and the framing for the wall partitions was up. New volunteers were continuing to arrive as we had to leave, so a kind of ‘rota’ was going which would easily complete the houses in the allotted time (3 days). Overall, six houses were being built during the three day period. 27 had been previously built in a similar way in the same village.
Some very mucky VSO volunteers. Spot the ones who were digging out the founds for the loo!
A local woman accommodated 4 of us VSO volunteers in her house, and even gave up her bedrooms for us all. The kitchen was a lean to arrangement at the back of the house in which a open fire is lit to cook on. However – joy of joys – it had a CR (that’s a comfort room – i.e. a WC).
We cheat and hitch a lift out in the back of a truck or save our tired legs !
At night music played, huge bright fireflies sparkled across the dark outlines of the trees of the rainforest, and we all shared a communal meal in the schoolroom. At the end of the evening children could be seen wending their way homewards up the mountainside carrying flaming torches. All in all it was a great experience !
