unplaced Pinoy Elections 2007

Back in the Netherlands, still trying to get used to our 'easy' life.. this is my report on the elections of May 2007, due to all media attention I didnt want to risk to put it on the blog but now all safe and well, here's for the ones who havent read it yet..

May 17th 2007:
WOW! a lot has happened since the last post on the Pinoy Elections.
When I was writing the post I had no idea how much I would get involved in these crazy elections.

As of last Sunday, yours truly is an official member of the International Observatory Mission on the Elections of the Philippines 2007, and is cited today in all of the local news papers of Mindanao and had a presentation on the evening news last night!
....and all I ever wanted was just a simple medical research in a far off rural community... :)

As I wrote, the elections held last Monday the 14th, are a BIG issue in the Philippines. Because of the previous experience of rampant fraud and violence during the elections of 2004, a small group of different human right organizations has set up the International Observers Mission (IOM).
This group of international people and filipino human rights activists are sent to different electoral hot-spots (places that have been heavily militarized because they are supposed to be fraud sensitive) to observe and monitor the presence of military at voting sites (which is not allowed), the voting itself and the canvassing ( vote-counting) afterwards, all over the Philippines. They report cases of fraud, violence, cheating and other irregularities.

Last Sunday a friend and member of Karapatan (one of the most progressive human rights organisations here) invited me to go over to Davao to attend a meeting of the IOM on the human rights violations during this election-period. Little did I know that I was going to be presented as the 6th International Observer in front of all the local press of Mindanao. Completely unprepared and on the spot I was asked to give a speech on why the IOM was so necessary. A slip of the tongue: i mentioned one of the completely corrupt politicians (luckily i didnt say he was corrupt, rather that his practices are' eyebrow-raising') and I had to give interviews to snappy reporters asking me crazy questions if I was influenced by the communists and if I was aware that the IOM groups are suspected to have links with the communist party. GREAT: I still needed to extend my tourist- visa.

So there we were on Monday the 14th: me (proudly representing the Netherlands ;)), a boy from Scotland, his girlfriend from Germany, an older professor from Australia, 2 hilarious non-english speaking south koreans, and a big group of super-friendly and active filippinos, on our way to the rural area of Compostela Valley, a hot spot where on the night before our visit and on the morning of our visit 2 activists of the progressive parties were killed.

A short introduction to the most common filippino electoral frauds:
- Already long before the elections the military holds meetings in the peasant communities to propagate against the progressive parties by linking them to the communists and terrorists. As you can imagine, these meetings aren't exactly fun and informing, but rather threatening and intimidating.
- Many people of the opposition parties have been killed or receive threats by 'unidentified men', mostly activists of the progressive parties are targeted.
-Vote buying: this is happening on large scale: electoral candidates will go into communities and offer the community-captain a large sum of money if he can convince his community to vote for him. Some voters are bought individually (200 pesos) and others are donated sacks of rice, canned food, meat. I have seen our neighbour last week shipping in 4 sacks of rice and a large amount of beer and canned goods. Our neighbour is a very poor organizer of peasants... At least once every 4 years the poor people get to see some of their tax money back from the politicians.
- Dag-dag bawas: fantastic that the filipinos have an actual expression for this fraud which means: shaving and padding: taking off some (or usually more) zeros of the total votes from one candidate and adding up some or usually more zeros to another candidate.
from 90 for Kees and 10 for Piet to 9 for Kees and 1000 for Piet.
- Brown outs, the places where the voting and the vote counting takes place all have electricity and in this region the supply is good. for the last 6 months no brown out has been signalled. But anything can happen on election day.

With this knowledge in our mind, we arrived at our first site, passing 3 military checkpoints in one road(I didnt know the queen was visiting?? theres just military men all over): an elementary school where the voting of 3 municipalities was held. The voters have to find their names on the list of the municipality where they live, report themselves at the electoral staff and are given a ballot. (this is a mega ballot since there are so many seats of government they have to vote for)
And already we could see some holes: a group of registrated voters could not find their names on the list. No name: no vote. Others mentioned of many diseased voters still present on the name lists: name = vote. Luckily we didnt spot any military men around the voting sites, but some of the present electoral staff told us they had left as we arrived...
Around 15.00 the voting is finished, and the canvassing (vote counting) can begin. I have to admit that I have never seen the vote counting of the dutch elections (funny Im not so interested in that since i cant believe there will be fraud during our elections, but who knows.....) but this seemed to me like total chaos.
First the votes are counted by the teachers of the elementary schools where the voting actually took place. Because of the many seats to vote for (12senator, 1congresman, 1mayor, 1vicemayor, 8councelors, 1governer, 1 vicegoverner and the partylist- im not kidding) this is quite a complex job and takes some hours.
The big papers with the amount of votes for the candidates is put in an envelope and sealed (with a stamp, really, the Albert Heijn has better sealing stickers) and put in a pre-war ballot box, which is completely rotten old and all have different colors. It just screams to be replaced with another box with fake votes.
The same night the box is transported to the municipal hall where all the boxes from the surrounding communities come together to be recounted by a special board of vote counters. They recount all the votes under the eyes of the watchers, which have been sent by the different participating parties to make sure theres no cheating in their disadvantage. Respect to these people, because as i am writing, they are still counting, and are expected to finish in about 2 weeks. (These elections are made possible by red bull) Again this aint no joke.

Wow it was such a crazy site there, about 20 people completely tired in this sweaty hot room, bending over huge papers, trying to figure out whats what. people coming in and out, mistakes in the ballot counting fixed with typ-ex. How can anything that come out of this be possibly truth full?
Afterwards we went back with the group to our great beach resort (yes.. your not an international observer for nothing) and had some interviews with victims and witnesses of human right violations during this election. The government is structurally working against any oppostion by severe military repression, black propaganda and even killings and kidnappings of prominent oppostion voices. The group was very pleasant and the stories of the filipino activists so admiring but in the same time so frustrating. As I have tried to explain about the small chances of power shifts and the very marginalized position of the partylist (only 20 percent of the seats), its just crazy to see that still any attempt for opposition or progressive politics is completely blocked.
The next day we visited another canvassing site, this time in New Bataan, where only a few weeks ago a small 9 year old girl was killed by the military. She was naked, taking a bath in the river. The military claimed she was a child-warrior, a member of the armed struggle in the mountains. The gun that shot her was as big as her tiny body. After pressure from the parents and several human rights organisations, the military was forced to apologies, but still nobody is arrested and the people have no hope in the investigations the military started.
Again nothing suspicious was seen by us, the group of white observers and the few military we had seen on our way to the site would smile friendly and even let us take pictures of them.

Thus more shocking was the news that reached us when we rode back to Davao. Just as we had entered the city around 19h, we received a message that the canvassing site in New Bataan was experiencing a brown out, outside it was completeley surrounded by miliary men and the board had decided to stop the counting since the chief had received a deadthreat message saying if he wouldnt stop the counting he would be killed before 21h.
I felt like i was going to throw up. What the hell is this? How is that possible? We were responsible to observe the elections in New Bataan and as soon as we had left everything had gone wrong. But we could not go back... it was too dangerous to ride back in the dark.. but imagine... new bataan is a small village that we just had happened to visit, its just one of the million small villages of the rural areas of the Philippines. What has happened in those other sites, where we did not go, where the media did not go?
The day after we had to present our findings to the local press. Aaaah torment, we were given the podium to speak out against these fake elections, the microphone to scream out that there is no democracy in this country, but on the other hand, i still have to stay in this nondemocratic militarized country for the next 2 months, I still have to arrange my visa at the consulate...

So we discretely dinnounced that the elections are very complex and very fraud sensitive. The presence of the military is a direct block for the democracy. And now my picture is in the news paper, sitting next to the australian professor who holds op proof of black propaganda against the progressive partylists by the military. I guess Ill try to get my visa next week... ;)

I dont know what you have heard on the news about bombs planned by the communist.. All i can say.. the media and the government of the philippines go quite well together, add some militarization and red-fear and you get a nice report to that.
2 people got killed in another region where a school where vote counting took place was set on fire. And still every day brings new casualties... Everybody is still holding his breath.. a deep breath since it seemes to just start with the end of election day...

Culture Shocks!

Even though it feels so much longer, only six weeks have passed since I arrived in the Philippines.
Still everyday I am amazed by the beautiful surroundings of the endless rice fields , the rows of palm trees will always look ultimately tropical and I can gaze for hours to the shades of the mountains in the end of the horizon.
The planting season has begun, the farmers are in the fields, bending over to plant the seeds, or ploughing the land with their carrabows and soon the brown coloured fields will become fresh green again.
Ploughing the rice fields with a carabao, the special rice field cow
Now the elections are finally over, I'm full time working on my research again, spending more time in the communities. I've visited many farmers now, and still every time I am surprised how warmhearted they are, how despite their very very poor situation I am always welcomed with so much hospitality, interest and cheerfulness.
Its so strange that always, before I enter a new home, I feel this moment of awkwardness.. This feeling that I am so different, that my world is so different, how would it be possible for me to communicate with a farmer living in a hut in the Philippines, sometimes in circumstances I never imagined people to live in, how can I ever come across sincerely?
But with every new peasant, no matter in what circumstances, after the first words of introduction, we smile and we talk (ok.. I have a translator of course). The awkwardness glides off, and I realize we have much more in common than we are different, we are both human beings, both with minds, interests, worries, feelings....
Where does this awkward feeling, this fear come from? Is this what constitutes the layers in society? Why all my friends are from the same, highly educated background? And I know it is not the other who makes me feel awkward, it is my own mind, my own over-self awareness..
I will tell more about the results soon, which unfortunately are not very bright coloured...

There is something else very odd in this country, something that strikes me no matter how far off rural we go: the ever presence of the west in tropical temperatures...

You arrive in the Philippines, on the other side of the world, its hot, tropical hot as you can imagine. Outside you see palm trees, bananas, mango's and papayas growing. The people look Asian, with brown skin, black hair and black eyes. Finally away on vacation, far away in a tropical country! But after the 25th Catholic, Jesuit and Jehovah church you start to wonder... You look around to ask someone for directions in broken Tagalog, and they reply to you in perfect American accent. You enter a supermarket to buy the local specialties and realize that its filled with western products! Come to think of it...everything is written in English in the streets...
Its so crazy to be confronted with the ever presence of the west here, on one side the neo-colonial presence of America everywhere (in the language and in the culture), and the other the western multinationals' domination of the market.
Even 2 days walking from civil society you will find Coca Cola and Nestle in the small local shops and a tv (even in the poorest rural houses) with 5 American channels and every 5 minutes commercial breaks.

This is not the welcome sign to a special international school, this is the usual text written outside all public elementary schools throughout the Philippines

The American influence is still ever present in the street today: American pre-war trucks (Jeepneys) are the vehicle in the street, the small Filipinos all play basketball, watch American fake wrestling 24h, schools are "English speaking communities", from grade 3 theres even 5 peso fine for children who dare to speak Tagalog or Visayan (dialect of Mindanao). Hamburgers are the favorite snack, tv is dominated by American programs and films and any tiny event in America is shown here on the national news. The American dream is the final fulfillment for many and not few Filipinos leave after their university graduation to work there (so called BRAIN-DRAIN)

Bilboards along the Edsa (the main highway ring) in the center of manila I always taught multinationals would not be very interested in third world countries because the consumers there don't have the financial means to buy their products.. But truly, its flooded here with commercials and products of Nestle, Unilever, Coca Cola, Pepsi and different Vitamin pill suppliers. The market is completely dominated by these products, leaving no room for local or smaller brands.
Even in the rural areas the choice is limited, especially nestle is everywhere with coffee (even if there are coffee fields in the community) and especially breast milk(even though it is much better for the baby to get real breast milk, most women prefer powdered milk thanks to the successful nestle healthy breastmilkpowder-campaign). Real milk is non-existing here, you can have a nice cup of nestle-powder and water.
Even in the far off comunities you will find western brands, especially Nestle is everywhere

I'm seeing the outcome of the golden dream of every multinational and the biggest nightmare of many alter-globalist: schools are completely sponsored by companies; even the chairs and the blackboards have brands. The main national basketball teams literally go by the names: Red bull, Coca cola, Pepsi etc. Commercials are everywhere, in the national soap operas subtitles advertise for vitamin pills during the show and in the soap opera itself brands are shown in close up. Even the radio-soap operas have clear mentioning of brands.
Basketballmatch on tv: team Red Bull vs team Coca Cola
I really wonder what the effect of this brand-bombing is in the rural areas. Especially the introduction of television in the far off areas (even the poorest people will take a lone and a long term downpayment to get one) is really food for anthropologists.
With the many American programs and soaps, they are being confronted with something so far away from their normal simple life's. Especially the extremely escapism commercials with happy warm families of bleached-Filipinos (the beauty ideal is to be white) really make me wonder how far the spectacle society can go with creating an extremely deceiving image of the ultimate dream of somehow reachable happiness.

Commercials show how whitening soaps will literally spread the whiteness over your body

wow... its been long again... sorry.. hope it makes sense.. so much I want to write about, so little internethours.. :)
Hope everyone is doing fine, feel free to comment!!! (feel more then free: please DO :))
many hugs and kisses,
mabuhay!

Pinoy Elections..... CrAzy Times!!!

And there I am again... Looking at the screen which is my contact line with the rest of the world, a world seems further away from me every day... The screen is still white.. But my mind is flooded with words and sentences, it's boiling, so many things I would like to release, I would like to scream about...

But we take a breath... I dont want to spill out everything at once.. :)

My research has begun! The last days I have been going to communities to interview the farmers.. But still its not really a rocket-start, since everyone, even in the smallest rural communities, is completely captured by the excillerating, drama-soap-detective-horror wonder world of the Philippino ELECTIONS!

Even for the most political ignorant ostrich its impossible to let this spectacle go by unnoticed.. Campaigners go through extremes to promote themselves: every corner of the street is literally covered with posters flyers and sacks proclamating the names of the eleged politicians. It doesnt matter how far you go into the mountains, you will find promissing slogans and slick smiling faces hanging everywhere.

Beside the roosters that like to hold raging discussions around 5 am in the morning, around that time the recoridas start their tours around the towns. Recoridas are vehicles (read: anything on wheels) with a loudspeaker on top, driving aroud the whole day playing jingles of the nominated candidates. Theres even a version made on Black eyed Peas' "My humps" (Lets not forget that Karaoke is the countries favorite leasure time activity).

The 14th of may will be decisive and I am anxiously wondering how the world here will look like the day after.

But.. the Philippines would not be the Philippines if there wouldnt be a twist to the idea of ELECTIONS.. and DEMOCRACY.

Let me try to give you a small introductions on how the system goes here. The 14th of May the people are allowed to vote for the all the seats in the House of Representatives and half the seats of the Senators.

To nominate yourself to be elected as congressman or senetor you will have to pass the selection of the commitee of elections. Which basically means they will check your bankaccount to see if you have enough money. If you can not proove you have sufficient financial means, you will not get through the selection. This is a perfect tool to keep the power in the hands of the ruling elite.

About a decade ago, the government decided (after alot of pressure of the movements) to give the marginalized groups in the society a chance to represent themselves. This is implemented by the Partylist system: of the 250 seats in the parliament, 50 seats (yes.. a democratic 20 percent) are available for partylist candidates. (The other 80 percent of the seats are therefor for the ruling big families who have enough money to run for Congresman or Senator)

Of these 50 seats which are available for 'normal' parties, every party is only alowed to have a maximum of 3 seats. So if you form a party (lets say as we have in Holland the Party for the Animals ;)), you run for the Partylist, and even if you become tremendously popular and more than 50 percent (2 percent = 1 seat) of the population votes for you, you will still only get 3 seats.

Another 'funny' thing is that not only opposition parties are allowed to run for the Partylist seats (as you may think seeing that already 80 percent of the seats are ruled by the elite), there are about 90 parties (many of them government sponsored and 'empty' parties) running for the 50 partylist seats. If you calculate; with so many parties running, and every party having a minimum of 2 percent of the population for 1 seat and a maximum of 6 seats, many parties dont get enough votes to fill a seat; all the votes are spread out over the 90 parties. During the last elections in 2004, only 15 of the available 50 seats for partylist were eventually filled.

Hurray for Democracy!

I hope you are still folowing me... It took me quite a while to understand it too..

So for a great shift of power or a peoples movement overtake we shouldnt be looking in the Philippines..

Still these elections do have some importance: eventhough its not the presidential elections, GMA's (Gloria M. Arroyo, the president) position is at stake: within the dominating elite there is a 2 camp of parties who want her out and parties who want her to stay. This reached a climax in 2005 when a telephone conversation between GMA and the electoral counting officer came out, revealing GMA had frauded the elections (the HELLO-Garcie scandal- for those interested: Garcie is now also running for local senator ;)). She even confessed the fraud, but due to a majority of pro-GMA parties, she was able to remain president.

So if in the coming elections the anti-GMA parties will have a majority, there is a big chance she will have to resign. This is a reason for many critics to fear fraud... Everybody is holding his breath... what will happen this time? The last elections there was a 3 hour brown out, what trick will be pulled this time on the backs of the people?

And not only ballots and votes are expected to be missing... In the last months over 100 people have been abducted or killed, either through targeted elimination of opposition, passer-by shootings or party-conflicts... again everybody is holding his breath for in the last week, everything can happen in the Carnival of the elections...

With every day that passes in the streets of the Philippines, every rural community I visit, with every silent peasant I meet, every new eyebrow raising story I hear, my vision of home gets more blurred... My life in amsterdam, my friends, my daily activities... Its getting difficult to imagine my life there with the experiences I have here...

Thank you thank you thank you so much for keeping in touch, it gives me again the feeling that I come from somewhere, im not alone here, and I have something to go back to.

Nature Calling!!!!!!

How easily do we forget in the flat lowlands of Holland the incredible beauty of lush, green mountains ! Everytime I see them again, no matter in what country, I wonder how I can live without them...what miraculous wonders of nature! :)

As I was complaining about hot and sticky Manila, I write you now from the beautiful green and mountainous province of Davao del Sur in Mindanao, the most southern island of the Philippines.
The island which is mainly in the news because of the ongoing struggle for independence of the Islamic majority of the population, the Moro National Liberation Front.
But rest assured, Davao del Sur is one of the few provinces with a Catholic majority, the second largest religion is our beloved animal loving 7th day adventists church :). So no worries about Abu Sayyaf... (Im Iranian anyway! ;))

Mindanao, the 'food basket' of the Philippines, is one of the biggest food suppliers for the rest of the country. It exports coconot, banana, pineapples and oil palm not only to the other provinces but also to the rest of the world, mainly Japan, US and Malaysia.

Very ironically, 1 in every 3 households in Mindanao is suffering from extreme hunger, making it one of the poorest regions of the Philippines.
The blessing of the country is slowly becoming its curse; the focus of the agriculture is turned to export, the demands of the global food market are more important than the domestic needs. Crops which are high-value in export are taking more and more land, while essential food crops like rice and cattle-farming are decreasing. In the past, farmers were at least able to feed themselves with their own harvested products, now they must have the money first to buy food from someone else (mainly imported rice from China!).

The promiss of fortune made from the export of coconuts, pineapples (del monte) and bananas (del monte, dole, chiquita) unfortunately does not reach the normal farmers. The large plantations where these export-crops are grown are owned by big international companies or rich philippino landowner-families, who cash in the profits.
Small farmers who used to harvest on their own land, lend their land to large plantation owners who offer them short-term 'large' sums of money. For example, the farmer signes a 4 year contract with a plantation owner, he will receive the payment 1 year in advance, so he gives up his land and receives immediately 200 dollars cash, for the coming 1 year. Most of the farmers have never seen such a large sum of money in their life. Needless to say that after maximum 3 months all the money is spent, and the farmer is left without money, without land and thus no income. They are forced to find employment in the plantations, working on their own land, for the large sum of 100 pesos per day (61 peso is 1 euro). To give you an idea, the average household here consist of 6 people. 1 kilo of meat is 170 pesos.

Again I have one to add in my book of contrasts in the colourfull land of the Philippines.

And I haven't even mentioned the working conditions on the plantation! Especially the use of extremely toxic pesticides by unskilled and unprotected plantation workers will make your next banana taste bitterly different...
As I mentioned, my research will focus on the knowledge and attitudes of small-scale farmers, working on private land (not on plantations), concerning pesticides.
Before I came here my view was so different.. I had been reading other researches on the dangers of misuse and unsafe use of pesticides by farmers in third world countries. Most of the researches put the blame on the farmer for not informing himself better how to use the pesticide.
Now I know that these researchers did not keep into account that many small scale farmers have contracts with food-companies, they provide them the seeds, buy their harvest, and also determine the pesticides they must use. Small side note: many of these foodcompanies have contracts with pesticide-producing companies (eg Cargill and Monsanto)!
Many pesticides on the market in developing countries are forbidden in the west, even in the countries of the pesticide-company!
I will go more in to that after my first research results.. I will go into the communities the coming week with my questionaire... I dont want to overload you with too much negative info...

And I really must say: there is hope..!! The peoples movement is incredibly strong here! More and more peasants and workers are organizing themselves, and despite many setbacks they continue to struggle for justice.... just the right to have enough to eat in this superrich country.

sooo... how was queensday?? ;)
many greetings,
maayong adlaw
babai
Shadi

ps. I havent figured out how to underline the pictures: so first two are pictures from mount apo, the highest mountain of the Philippines (actually its a vulcano). We (dr. romy, nangin (who helped with the questionnaire) and I) hiked up the mountain where dr romy is setting up an organic farm.

The third picture are kids in an adjacent village, on our return, with their own improvised pooltable.

4th picture is another farm project of dr. romy where he is planting organic medicinal plants, the children live in the small house on the background and are the children of the caretakers of the plants, indiginous peoples. (many of them lost their land as described above). They have signed a 10 year contract with the plantation and still have to wait 9 years to get their land back.

Dusty Manila

Manila.. sticky, hot, dusty, chaotic, strange, friendly, jeepney vivid, but most of all a city with extreme contrasts.. Where the extreme poor can watch and smell (though not taste) how the extreme rich leaves their food untouched food on the tables of expensive restaurants.
Where the richest neighbourhood is 1 block away from the new smokey mountains in the coconut-valley. Where most children in the slums die of simple asthma attacks, while the richer kids who are getting as fat as in our countries are easily taking insuline tablets (for elderly diabetes) on their 15th. The 1st and the 3rd world all combined in one city with all the contrasts succeeding it.
And this is only day 2 in chaos-city.
But I don't hate this town, I can't hate it. I feel ok here, even better than yesterday when I just arrived.

Frightened I took the public transport for the first time this morning in the traffic mess.. Afraid to be mugged, afraid to draw too much attention, afraid to take the wrong jeepney (see film), afraid to get out the wrong stop. Aarghh its so terrible not to be able to communicate in their language! Im lucky they had the colonial past of the Americans, and everybody can speak English, mais o menos, but it just doesn't feel right. (I bought my dictionaries already! ;))


On my way to Gabriela, the women's party of the Philippines, to visit a medical community project in the favelas (slum) south of Manila. Because most of these slums are never visited by doctors and the people living there simply have no money to go to the doctor themselves (health care is completely privatised), Gabriela has put up free health care services for them. Through charity and funding they have created a mobile Pharmacy and every community is visited twice a month by a volunteering doctor and health workers (women living in the slum themselves) are educated by gabriela to provide local first line care.

If only I could describe for you the situation in the village, so you could visualize the pictures which are still running in my head. Tiny square houses, as big as my kitchen, filled with large families, 5 on top of each other and in each house another family. Sewage water running throughout the village, children playing in it, some dressed, most naked, women washing their laundry in the end stream, men playing cockfights. Smelly and incredibly dusty, located next to a large paint factory where most of the inhabitants work. The doctor was sent in from Belgium by Intal, assigned to work for Gabriela for a period of 4 years.
And then I remembered Im a fourth year medicine student... I took place next to the doctor and started to examine the long line of patients who had not seen a doctors for a long time one by one. Many cases of TB, most children suffering from asthma because of the extremely dusty environment, lots of allergic reactions and an extreme demand for vitamins.
Even though it was such a great experience to be able to finally make use of the advantage I have gotten to study medicine, to be able to contribute, I feel so strange... I have a strong feeling of powerlessness and injustice... What can we do for these people? We looked at them, examined them and prescribed, for we can not send them in for further investigation, operations.. We cant even prescribe them most of the life-saving medicine some of them needed. These people will never be able to afford any real medical care. And yet they were so incredible grateful to us to visit them. Just something so simple as insulin injections, needed for worsened cases of diabetes is incredibly expensive, even though it is the only remedy for most people not to go blind or even die because of diabetes. Sickness and health is not a question of medical possibilities and advantages in medical science. It depends on where you live and how you were born. And then of course there is the question if I, a 4th year med student with almost no practical experience, should take the responsibility to examine these women and children and men, with serious illnesses... (don't worry, I think I did ok)
Through it all... when i drove back in the jeepney in the night, I didn't feel so scared anymore, I didn't feel like I was extremely far from society, that because Im a tourist its obvious im so much richer and I shouldn't confront the people with that. Because of this fear my behavior was awkward, and when riding back in the night, after seeing all these people from a completely different world , but still having faced them, talked to them and even touched them... I felt so good.

Tomorrow will be a big day! I will fly to Mindanao with doctor Romy (my extremely nice and active assisting doctor). Chiquita banana has given permission (this was actually a really long story) to come and take interviews of the plantation workers to monitor the pesticide- use and effects! This is extremely important and also very strange since you may know that chiquita is the new name for United Fruit, a terribly corrupt company with involvements in establishments of dictatorial regimes in middle-america and CIA(see link). Romy has previously been sued by another banana plantation of the Philippines for exposing them on their pesticide use. Im secretly praying that this will not be a trap and that they will abduct us as we arrive in the plantation. Anyway.. if you dont hear from me for a long time...... ;)

Sorry for making it again so long... thanks for reading! I hope to make pictures soon!

Voorbereidingen...

Uiteraard kan de lang gemaakte belofte tot een weblog vol met avonturen en overpeinzingen uit de Filippijnen pas 's nachts, zo'n 10 uur voor het daadwerkelijke vertrek waar worden gemaakt.
Maar hier is ze dan: bij deze zal ik proberen regelmatig iets te vertellen over mijn onderzoek en de situatie in de Filippijnen, met name de regio Mindanao, waar ik de komende drie maanden zal verblijven om onderzoek te doen.

De bedoeling is dat ik voor mijn studie een zogenaamde KAB(Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors)-studie zal doen naar de kennis en het gedrag van Filippijnse boeren omtrent pesticiden.
In de regio waar ik zal werken (Davao del Sur) maken de meeste boeren gebruik van extreem toxische pesticiden. Al eerder verrichtte onderzoeken hebben laten zien dat het hoge aantal doden in ontwikkelingslanden ten gevolge van pesticiden voor een groot deel wordt veroorzaakt door het verkeerde gebruik ervan.
Met mijn onderzoek hoop ik een beeld te kunnen creeeren van de kennis en het gedrag van de boeren en te kijken of dat van bepaalde factoren afhankelijk is, zoals geslacht, leeftijd of eerder doorgemaakte ziektes. Het is ook belangrijk om aan te tonen of de boeren wel voldoende zijn geinformeerd over de gezondheidseffecten en de juiste manieren van toepassing.
Het uiteindelijke doel is de beste manier te vinden waarop de boeren zouden kunnen worden ingelicht over pesticiden en het gebruik ervan. En natuurlijk dat ze dan allemaal de mogelijkheid krijgen om op zo'n veilig mogelijke manier hun pesticiden toe te passen waardoor er geen onnodige slachtoffers meer vallen. Maar goed.. Ik focus me voorlopig op het verkrijgen van de onderzoeksresultaten en daarna begint het redden van de wereld! :)
Ik ga uiteraard niet in m'n eentje de donkere paden van de bananenplantages betreden. Ik wordt bijgestaan door de NGO (non governemental organization) PANAP: Pesticide Action Network Asia & Pacifics (www.panap.net).

Hoewel mijn onderzoek alleen al ontzettend interessant is :), hoop ik ook meer over de situatie in de Filippijnen te kunnen vertellen. Op het moment gaat het namelijk niet zo goed met de mensenrechten in deze 'voormalige' kolonie van Amerika: sinds mevrouw Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) aan de macht is, zijn er deze afgelopen 7 jaar al meer dan 800 politieke moorden gepleegd. Hoewel je er nooit iets over hoort, de Filippijnen is na Irak het gevaarlijste land voor journalisten om hun beroep uit te oefenen. In de aanloop naar de verkiezingen in mei lijkt het deze periode steeds onrustiger te worden, met als absolute dieptepunt de arrestatie van een van de belangrijkste oppositieleiders afgelopen maand.

Ok.. nu wordt het toch echt tijd om te gaan slapen en te dromen over het vliegtuig, dat mij in de ongelovelijk korte tijd van 12 uur naar de andere kant van de wereld zal brengen en me uit zal leiden in een volkomen verschillende omgeving, met andere kleuren, temperaturen en omstandigheden.... Philippines... here I come!