Memories of Places Visited

A friend's e-mail got me thinking about places we've been to throughout the years in our work. In her e-mail, she ("Hi Jill") was telling stories of the past after coming up on a 20 year anniversary mark. I started remembering the past 20+ years as well. Some of those years I crossed paths with Jill. So of course, it made me remember a lot of old times.

One being, working with Primary Health Care and the remote places it took us to in various countries. One place was in Banaue, a mountainous area of the Philippines where there are 2,000+ year old rice terraces with sitios (small villages) interspersed. We hiked along the rice terraces, with backpacks full of our clothes, sleeping bags, medical reference books, medicines, and even pots and pans for cooking!

Here are some really nice photos I found of Banaue on-line. I have a lot of my own, taken back in 1990, but they are mostly all in slide form:

http://www.pbase.com/mark_dominic/banaue

In these pictures, you can see the houses built on piles that the Ifugao people live in. We lived with them in those small little huts, cooked our food in the "kitchen" located underneath the hut, fought off the chickens when they tried to eat out of our pots of cooked rice (and that region grows the best tasting rice I've ever eaten), got bitten-up by chicken mites, chased the pigs away in the outhouse (!), danced their dance with the Ifugao people, made the locals laugh when we tried to winnow the rice (and they make it look so easy), hiked far sometimes just to take a bath in a spring, tried not to slip and fall in the mud while hiking, enjoyed breathtaking views of the terraces, waterfalls, and villages, enjoyed fresh, crisp air (huge contrast after having been in Manila), and were overcome by the hospitality (in the village I stayed in with two other girls, they built us our very own house out of bamboo, and a brand new outhouse that was surrounded by a large bamboo enclosure! This house and outhouse was to be used as a dormitory for students after we left as students must hike sometimes over 6 hours to attend school. With a dormitory, they can stay over rather than having to hike back and forth to school.)

The need for basic health care and education in the region was immense. One of the problems stemmed from lack of water to bathe in. We had lines of children waiting to get treated for various skin ailments. Scabies and with secondary infections oftentimes, like Impetigo. Because of the lack of water as well, there were problems with parasites. Vitamin A deficiency and lack of iodine were also common. Many of the older women had very large goiters. Some so large that they would have to support it with one hand.

The Ifugao people were amazing. They could hike-up the terraces, in steep and difficult areas, with huge sacks of rice on their heads. Their feet are spread (toes oftentimes flaring out) from hiking barefoot with so much weight over the years!

The Philippines is a place I'd love to visit again someday. Of all the places I've been, I always say it is the country with some of the most hospitable people.