Volunteer reflections
Claire continues:
The year 2009 started off with a big bang! I met with some of the other AMA volunteers in the city of Iloilo to celebrate in Filipino Style! They say the Philippines New Year is one of the loudest and I can support that as it is so noisy! Fire crackers, fireworks are set off everywhere, people running round clanging saucepans! Everyone beeping any horns in sight! The sky was a ray of colour, the air full of smoke the atmosphere incredible! Everyone playing music, singing Karaoke, dancing and singing in the streets! A very memorable new year - although the following day we were slightly hard of hearing. I felt like I was walking around with cotton wool stuck in my ears!
The windy weather means kite season for the children so we were busy making kites out of any rubbish we could find. Staring at the sky, running your kite, flying it high in the sky in all its beauty is a wonderful feeling! Seeing how such simple things are magic and seeing the world in a child's eyes again is brilliant..
In my sessions with the children we have organised an Art Month and the main feature of it was an Art Exhibition. You can imagine the children's excitement preparing for an Art Exhibition! They busily prepared their finest beautiful pictures and there is so much untapped potential here. We held the Art Exhibition at the local fiesta when we were celebrating the local patron Saint, St Louis de Mariliac here in the children's centre! It was very successful, the children were very excited and we had 32 entries, I gave every child a prize from the gifts that were sent to me, then the child that won in each category won an extra prize! They were delighted with their prizes and they now draw at home with their own colours, pencils, and stationary. They are so proud and happy with their work.
Throughout my sessions with the children, there is a little girl, aged 5, who doesn't sit still and causes lots of cheeky trouble! She cannot write yet, I have been trying to help her sit and write her name, we have spent so much time on this every day but she still couldn't write her name alone, then one day she came running to me waving a piece of paper! On the paper she had written her name neatly in capitals letters. Her face said it all - it brought me to tears, for her to accomplish this was a big achievement but to see the joy it brought to her was the most moving part. She continues to bring me her name written everyday, for me it was the most fulfilling moment since I arrived in the Philippines.
At the moment I find myself forever thankful for what I have, I couldn't wish for more.
I have found my life to have so much more meaning here, because the people around me see life this way too. I am happier without luxuries; life feels more pure and more wholesome. Sometimes I wish I could be living a harder life still. I'm not quite in solidarity with the people here. I don't have to go hungry or worry when the rain is coming that it will wash my house away. It's sometimes frustrating realising that I will never fully be able to empathise with them and it's a feeling of guilt that I have learnt to treat as gratitude. My gratitude to life here has found me triumphing over the smallest things! I've found myself loving my cold showers in the morning! I even mastered the technique of showering in one bucket of water, I've found myself talking to the lizards, and for that matter I've found myself meowing at the rats in an attempt to appear as a cat every time I go to the bathroom to scare them away, I've found myself laughing whenever I find a spider in my T-shirt, I've found myself hungry when I don't eat rice three times a day, I realised I don't check for ants in my food anymore, I've come to enjoy eating dried fish like a true Filipino although the smell still reminds me of wet dog! I love it when there is a coconut tree I can climb, I swim in anything and everything, I can't sleep without the feel of the wind through the house, and the noise of the cockerels outside, and I enjoy hand washing my clothes and the socialising that comes with it! And I look forward to every time when I will travel and ride the motor tricycle. Life here is an adventure and I love it!