Imagine you are driving down the motorway at 70mph (112km/h), and you stick your head out of the window. What kind of force would you feel? You’d be mad to do it. Now imagine that the air is thick with debris, bits of tree, corrugated iron, pretty much anything you might find in your house. Pretty shit scary huh? Yolandas winds gusted up to 275km/h – 2.5x faster than motorway speed, and had all manners of crap flying through the air.

Typhoon Yolanda blasted through the Philippines 8 months ago, killing over 6000 people, roughly 2500 of which perished in the regional capital, Tacloban. I remember CNN anchor Anderson Cooper talking of the terrible stench of death pervading all areas of the town, and bodies were still being found three months later.

Last week, I landed in Tacloban to visit some rural sites that had been affected by the typhoon. The airport was scrappy, but not obliterated. Outside the airport, there is a camp of UN Humanitarian Crisis Response tents. We would see a lot of these tents as we drove around the coast to Guiuan – where we boarded a boat to Manikani Island.

You can see how the geography funnelled the water towards Tacloban, resulting in deadly storm surge. We were on Manikani Island, just off Guiuan. Map via reliefweb

Tacloban was a bit messy, but not too bad. Our driver Henry told me that the storm surge had pushed the water up to the second story on buildings near the coast, so while not a technical tsunami, there was a similar effect. I was terrified at such a proposal – deep water and ridiculous winds. There were some gutted large concrete buildings, but otherwise there didn’t appear to be that much damage. The clue, however, was in the prevalence of wooden buildings, the type that you don’t normally see in a city. My guess is that where peoples concreted homes had been destroyed, unable to afford stronger materials, they had rebuilt with wood and tarpaulin. My big fear now for the region is that these “temporary” structures become “permanent”, what will happen in the inevitable next typhoon?

This was Tacloban 8 months ago. Notice the concrete rubble. Photo via tempo.com.ph

We drove for about 3 hours round to Guiuan. I took a lot of photos out of the window, amazed at the scenes flying by. To borrow from a Clowns Without Borders (yes it’s a thing and they do fantastic work) blogpost “it looked like God took a machete and lopped off every palm leaf”.  UNHCR tents and tarpaulins donated from USAID and IOM (International Organisation of Migration) serving as roofing were present wherever there were people. One thing I noticed in a lot of places were the words “SOS” or “HELP” painted in big letters on road surfaces, desperate appeals to helicopters from the instant aftermath. Thankfully, the paint is now fading along with the urgency.

The town looked OK now, but this remained as reminder of darker days. I saw this sign too late to take a photo, so I’m borrowing this image from clownswithoutborders.org

Some time later we were on the calm sea over to Manikani Island. A small island home to around 4000 people, two thirds of all buildings were completely destroyed in Yolanda, the rest only deemed “reusable”.  I want to reiterate what I mean by completely destroyed, as stats can become meaningless. Completely destroyed means that there is no part of house left standing, the only thing that is left is the floor, and this was to two out of three buildings. Just unbelievable (Jeff).  Thanks to a well organised evacuation to higher ground, only one person died on the island, but it took a week for any external aid to arrive, leaving the residents hungry and without shelter during that time.

Interesting aside: Homonhon Island, next door to Manikani was the first place that Magellan landed in the Philippines. He was later killed by Lapu Lapu in Mactan province.

The SIBAT team – Jeda, Rodel, Fergus and myself were there to carry out “Pre Feasibility Studies”. That is, it is the first time that anyone from SIBAT has visited the area to find out what the people want and need, and what infrastructure remains that we can build upon. Given that the disaster and danger had long since passed, and scars had mostly healed, I was able to enjoy the expeditionary nature of this trip. Furthermore, it was a fact finding mission with a clean slate, a trip funded without an agenda – simply to go there and find out what we can do to help.

Our home for the week was one of the UNHCR tents we had seen so many of. Tita (Auntie) Vicky’s family had built a modest wooden house to replace their concrete home that had been bulldozed by the wind, the rubble scattered on the ground around the tent to provide drainage. The storm surge had only brought water up to the knee level – so this was pure wind damage. I mean seriously – what kind of evil can blow down a concrete home!?? Big bad wolf Yolanda that’s who.

This is the kitchen and the dining room. It was actually a thoroughly pleasant place to eat and hang out. Not sure how it will cope come rainy season.

 

Here is the rebuilt wooden house, and the guest tent, which stands on the base where the living room was.

During the week we would go and visit one of the four barangays (villages) and hold a meeting about what the people want and need. These meetings variously took place in a bombed out church, a church made from tarpaulin and just sitting in the road. I would surprise people at the start by introducing myself and SIBAT in Tagalog, having improved much since Mr Tanayan chewed me out a few months ago in Looc. I even got a few rounds of applause! Jeda or Rodel would then run the meeting, leading the discussion to find out what was important to the people.

The town square in Buenavista. Notice the word HELP in 10ft letters, and the devastated church where we held our meeting.

Manikani isn’t currently connected to the grid, but it will be soon. This is good but as the Philippines has the highest electricity prices in Asia (relative to average income), there may be scope for solar panels to reduce the cost on residents, but all in they and we were much more interested in water sources.

The next step was to assess the water sources. A few years ago, there had been an Australian Aid project to provide solar powered water pumping to each barangay, and it was very successful, until Yolanda came along and knocked its socks off. At every site, there was a 6m water tower sans tank, and topped with twisted steel. The tank and solar panels were simply gone. Some sites also had access to a spring up on the hill. We assessed all the sources for bacteria – most of them failed – and took various measurements. We had a happy time trying to work out the flow and hydraulic head from the spring source – soaking Rodel in the process.

One of four water towers we saw. The tank and solar panels are most likely kilometers away.

Outside of working hours, we would swim in the warm sea, read and relax, play cards and one afternoon I was force fed gin and had to go to bed at 5pm. I tried my hand at basketball – total flop.

For me this was probably the best site visit I’ve done, mainly due to the family we were staying with. Tita Vicky had a pretty 19 year old daughter called Iris, and a 24 year old son called Ivan. They all spoke very good English so it was easy to bond with them. I asked Iris about her experience during the typhoon. I can’t remember the exact words but here’s the gist:

“I was studying in Guiuan when the typhoon hit. My cousin and I hid under the table as the walls caved in around us. When the water started rising we ran to my grandmothers house on higher ground – it was very difficult due to the strong wind. We saw some mangoes on the road and grabbed them! We were hungry! After the typhoon it was very hot, but we needed to repair the house. It would rain at night – so for three days we tried to build a shelter where the house had been but we were sleeping under umbrellas and wearing the same clothes every day. I don’t know why but I wasn’t worried about my mum in Manikani – when I got back, I asked her “Where’s the house?!””

On a bus I asked an English teacher who lived closer to Tacloban about her experience:

“We had about 7 families who came to shelter in our house because in was stronger than theirs, so it was very crowded. The house stood up to the wind, but when the water level rose, my husband ordered everyone outside and onto the higher ground behind the house. While we were running my brother was hit by a falling coconut tree. It split his head open and dislocated his shoulder. We wrapped it up but he wasn’t able to get any proper treatment until 4 days later. He can’t work anymore. The water continued to rise and it was up to my midriff. My daughter had a poisonous snake in her dress and we had to tell her to be very still so we could remove it. We watched as the house was destroyed and carried off – everything we owned, all the furniture, our TV, but I was most upset about the photographs. Our old house had six concrete pillars, but when we can afford to rebuild, we will have nine!”

There are 12 million stories like these. That’s about the same as the population of Belgium.

We also visited another site on the mainland, where a bunch of hippies had moved in and had done some good work building a shelter and a permaculture vegetable garden. It was all very nice, but it did seem to be missing the point somewhat. The “guitar library” would bring some joy to the kids, but I was reminded of Maslows hierarchy of needs, and at present, the people in this village don’t have access to any source of potable water. This led me to my quote of the week

“The problem with these artsy types is they massively underestimate the importance of infrastructure”.

At least I know I was always destined to be an engineer.

I took a ton of photographs and have uploaded most of them to my google picassa page. You can see them here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106608639711482833981/albums

Construction!

It’s 3.20 am and I’m sitting on a wooden bench on a truck bed, sweating. It’s one thing to arrive an hour early, it’s entirely another thing to arrive an hour early for a 4 am pick up. Ugh. I’m not even sure that it’s the right call to go back to Manila. Where will I be more useful? Should I stay here in Looc and try to push through the construction? Or is it better for me to go back and get the training I’m not sure I need? Why am I here on my own? I could have avoided all this if the damn machine had worked. I could have avoided all this with a little more planning and organisation. Time to suck it up and get on with it.

I didn’t know how long I would stay in Looc for, but I knew I would be on my own for at least a week. We were about to begin a $150,000 construction project and it was left up to the guy who doesn’t have any experience of construction or speak the local language. This meant bringing all my charades skills to try to explain everything across the language barrier, and my best bullshitting face to try to cover up the fact that I was basing all my decisions off what I read in a manual. At some point I would have to explain how to join the pipes using a piece of specialist equipment, my only experience of which was a morning spent on youtube.

The trip started with taking delivery of 4.5km or 4 tons or £15,000 worth of pipe and loading it onto the boat. Luckily the port had porters to help with all the lifting while I counted everything, to make sure it was all present and correct.

Dead chuffed with this new photo stitching software I’ve got. This is about half the pipes.

We unloaded on the island and cajoled some of the 6m pipes into a “warehouse” that was 5.8m long and 2m wide. We stuck the rest outside under a tarpaulin.

Quote of the day: “Why is it all black? I feel like I’m going to a funeral!” – Mayor Ben

I needed to try out the joining (or buttwelding) machinery before training everyone, but it didn’t work! Uh-oh. The next morning we called “The Electrician” – I never learned his real name. “The Electrician” had clearly had a terrible accident with (I’m assuming) a high voltage power line. The accident had blasted off all his fingers on his left hand, mangled those on the other, and left him with burn scars up both arms up to his ear on one side. That said, I only needed to help him with the hard to reach screws, at which points I was careful to offer “help” rather than “a hand”.

The problem diagnosed as uncurable under our resources, I arranged for a replacement. I offered to escort it back to Manila, and agreed to meet the suppliers for some proper training. In the end, the machine did not travel back with me, and left me feeling the doubts expressed at the top of the page.

A whistle stop tour of the enormous pipe factory in Manila (it was seriously awesome, I wish I’d taken my camera), and a quick training session on the machine to top up my youtube knowledge, and I was back in Looc, with a working machine. We could begin.

Up to this point in my blogs, I don’t think I’ve fully explained what this water system is. Hopefully this diagram can help:

Water will be pumped from two wells using solar panels and a wind turbine. From the storage tanks there will be a few taps supplying untreated water for “domestic” use (washing clothes, bathing etc). The water will also flow into a filter. Potable water can then be drawn from a network of potable water tapstands (painted a different colour to ensure there’s no confusion)

---

 

Due to the current poor access to water, we decided to build the “phase 2” pipe first. This would allow us to bring water into the town before finishing the whole system later. To dig a water pipeline, you will require:

Lots of pipe. (see above)

One digger.

It was a game of CAT and mouse. Except the CAT was the mouse. And the cat was a team of men with some pipes.

Buttwelding machine + generator.

Buttwelding gear and two Barangay captains, Meo and Sunni

 

One bunch of cheery men.

“NPA!” meaning the communist rebels of the 80s

The digger carved out a rough trench, which the cheerful labour would then “clean” and make it “beautiful”, removing all the rocks and any stubborn roots.

A group of solid chaps would join the pipes together. Generally members of the council for each village, they were led by Kagawad (councillor) Rocky and village policeman Deemy. Sometimes we used a diesel generator as a power source, and sometimes Rocky would tap onto a nearby pole, ignoring “The Electricians” example. At one point Rocky did zap himself, and I saw some smoke come off his fingers.

The “Pogi Paray” or Handsome Mates Rocky and Deemy

For the next few days we settled into a nice routine. I would get up at 5.30 am and make my way to meet the gang to go down to the work site in a “turtle tractor”. The men would weld pipes and the digger would dig. By 10 am it was hot and we would go back to Rocky’s place for a “halo halo”. A halo halo is a cold piece of heaven made of crushed ice, sweetened condensed milk and lots of little bits and pieces that make it sweet and enjoyable after a morning in the hot sun. I would then go back to my base and be-hammock myself until around 4pm when we would repeat the mornings actions.

“Turtle tractor” and some pipe welding

 

Generally we could weld 90m of pipes together in 30m sections per session, later placing them in the trench and welding the whole lot together to make one big pipeline. It worked well and we made good progress.

After about a week of this, SIBAT technician Gengen and new SIBAT volunteer and future US Navy Rear Admiral Chris arrived on the scene. Gengen is a practical man and claims to have done this sort of thing before. While I had tried to ensure everything was done by the book to avoid any problems, I found Gengens methods a bit more rough n ready. For example: I espoused caring for the pipes, Gengen advocated dropping them to check the welds. I don’t mind taking longer to do it right, Gengen wants it done as fast as possible. However, he did know how to organise the bridge crossing.

This is where a bit of experience came in handy. Gengen had the confidence to melt the pipe to suit our needs. Working with a team of younger lads, we started with cardboard, and tried our best to mould the bend into the pipe. It sort of worked, but when the big boys turned up with a jug of diesel and tshirt on a stick, then we really got cooking. In the end we had a good result and it looks pretty neat. As the weight will massively increase when we put water in the pipes, we will go back with some steel bars to make it proper good, but this will do for now.

Bridge over the River Tulay

 Quote of the Day: Gengen – “Chris can I tell you a story?” Chris – “Sure” GG – “Can I borrow 200 Pesos?”

And thus after two weeks on site, it was time to leave. We had made good progress, but more importantly, we left the local people with all the skills they need to carry on without us there. We will of course return, but for now the work can continue. On Wednesday two teams of SIBAT staff travel to Tacloban to begin our part in the medium to long term rehabilitation after the big typhoon Haiyan. As I write I’m not sure of what we will be doing, but of course, loyal blogreader, I will update you.

Another day, another trip to the tropical paradise of Looc.

After lots of negotiations with suppliers and funders, Rodel and I went down to Looc last Wednesday, with the hope of beginning the trench digging before the pipes arrive next week.

The trip went without a hitch, which was good because it looked for a while hitching might be required. Thursday was a national holiday for Labour Day, so lots of Manilenos (Manila residents) had taken Wednesday and Friday off to make a long weekend possible and were on their way back to visit their home provinces. This meant there was a big queue at the bus station and it looked like if we stayed we might end up missing the boat. I hadn’t slept well the night before – ITS SO BLOODY HOT RIGHT NOW – and in my unconscious state I flopped around the van like an inflatable arm flailing tube man, banging my head several times on the seat in front of me. I then fell asleep on the floor of the boat too, which Rodel found particularly amusing.

We met with the municipal Engineer Gumandoy, Barangay Captain Romeo Viana, and Peoples Organisation Chairman Mr Tanayan. They all speak OK English, but prefer Tagalog, so I was glad I had insisted on taking Rodel with me. They chatted away in Tagalog for a while and I just about followed what they were saying. When it came to the point of trench digging, the conversation switched to English, meaning I needed to engage. They were worried that digging big trenches by the side of the road posed a danger to children, animals and vehicles. I agreed, but said that when I had raised this with Mayor Ben he had waved it away. Gumandoy said we should wait for the pipes to arrive then we can dig in the morning, fit the pipes and then cover them up in the afternoon. This is workable, but the pipes won’t arrive until next week, and the SIBAT technician who knows how to do it isn’t available for a week after that. The rainy season will arrive soon, so I am anxious to get it started if we are to have any hope of completing the project anywhere near on time. In the end, we had to put safety first and agree to wait a bit longer before we start.

Whenever we are in Looc we always stay at the Vice Mayors house. It is literally on the beach, and at high tide the water stops about a foot short of the fence. At dawn, a fisherman floated up to the fence and started selling the squid he had caught that morning. Half the town wanted to get a piece of the action and we had a raucous market going on right outside my window. Some of the women put them straight onto a drying rack to make the local speciality, pusit.

Laying out pusit

At 8am Mr Tanayan came down with Engr. Gumandoy and we walked the route of the pipes, deciding exactly where we would put everything. Mr Tanayan wanted to take the pipes down the left hand side of the road, through a lot of peoples concreted courtyards / gardens. I explained to him that if we took it on the other side of the road, it was not only going to be easier to dig, but also we would upset less people. He was adamant, but then someone else explained that the pipe would also be straighter that way, and I got my way. I thought of Brian Cloughs quote

Interviewer: “How do you react when someone says, “Boss, you’re doing it wrong?””

Brian Clough “Well, I ask him how *he* thinks it ought to be done. And then we get down to it, and we talk about it for twenty minutes, and then we decide that I was right.”

We also talked about these blasted sand filters, which have given me a headache for the last 6 months. The latest problem is that they’re going to cost about double original budget, which I’m going to have do something about. UGH.

In the afternoon we did a similar thing in another area of the town, known as Guitna and Kanluran, which was all very pleasant in the afternoon / evening sun.

On Friday, we had to sort out the exact locations of the tapstands. We strolled around getting permission from homeowners and thinking up the most logical / useful places to put these tapstands. I took photos of the locations, and the guys were keen to pose to start with, but soon lost their enthusiasm. Once that was out of the way, Rodel and I were about to head back to base, but remembered we needed a phone number off of Mr Tanayan. Rodel then turned a simple task into an hour and a half chat (in Tagalog). I didn’t mind, but I fell asleep in the midday heat on Mr Tanayans sofa, which wasn’t the politest of moves.

In the afternoon Rodel and I were free, so we headed down to “Paradise”. It’s a spectacular spot, and there’s an all you can eat fresh oyster buffet. Just bash some oysters off the rocks and tuck in with your fingers – ace. I sat on a warm rock and took a sunset series, and Rodel took more selfies than could ever be deemed necessary.

Great way to end a productive trip.

When we got back to Vice Mayors house there was an amazing lightning storm going on. Above our heads was a clear night sky but about 3km away was a great mass of electric cloud. Every few seconds it would flash, and there would be forks shooting out touching all parts of the sky. It was awesome. I sat there for about 2 hours and took about 300 photos, most of which turned out to be completely black! I did manage to get a few corkers

Snap.

Crackle.

Pop!

 

Next week the pipes will arrive and we can crack on with some actual construction! Woohoo!

Lads on Tour

Two blog posts in a week! What is this madness?!

While Trevor was with us in Lubang he asked that we ensure that the well will be able to cope with the water demand of the project. We had it on good word from the local people and a map of the area showed good water supply, but he wanted to confirm it with numbers and graphs and suchlike, which meant a PUMPING TEST.

I was back in Manila for the weekend, and then grabbed two other volunteers, Fergus and Nathan to go pump water out of a well. Fergus studied water management at Cranfield Uni, and had done this sort of thing before, and Nathan will be taking over the project when Fergus and I leave in August, so it seemed like a good time to introduce him to everything and everyone. Nathans’ parents are Filipino (but he grew up in New York), so he speaks much more Tagalog than I do, which was very helpful.

Left to right: Fergus, Nathan, some other chopper

As per usual, we got on the road early and met outside the supermarket at 5am. Taxi across town, van down to Calatagan (3 hours), tricycle to the port, mild panic about boat times only for it to leave 2 hours late, boat across the Verde Island passage (3 hours), and then finally packed into the back of a truck loaded with people and much cargo into Looc town.

We got there at 4pm or thereabouts, dumped our bags at the Vice Mayors house and managed to convince the truck driver to drive us to the well, saving us a 2.5km walk. It was getting late, but we wanted to have a look around before we got down to business the next day.

Now that I’ve been to Looc so many times people recognise me and always come up to say hello, which is really nice. So when I mentioned, literally in passing, to Barangay captain Viana (a Barangay is equivalent to a village) that we were going down to the well, he hopped on his motorbike and came down to help us out. He also picked up Sunni, who is captain of another Barangay (there are three in this project) to make our group 5 in total.

We pottered around and stood and looked at things in that very manly way that men who want to look like they know what they’re doing do.

Tank and Tap

For reasons unknown even to the Mayor, the municipal engineer (Gumandoy) built a whopping great storage tank next to the well about 2 years ago. This tank won’t be any use as we take the project forward, but at the moment there is some piping running off it so rather than walk 300m into the rice fields local residents can collect drinking water a tap next to the road. The tank was about half full, and before the pumping test we needed to empty it. Nathan, Fergus nor I wanted to be the one to cut off the water supply to the people, so it was lucky that the Barangay captains were with us to take the decision. Sunni jumped down – pulled the plug out and flooded the fields.

We managed to hitch a lift with Gumandoy, who was passing in another truck at the opportune moment, so we went off to have a look at the water filter site. It’s going to be a squeeze to fit the big concrete structures into the space we have available, but I think it will be do-able.

We were tired after our day of travelling, but the Mayor wanted a chat, so after dinner we were picked up and delivered to the town hall, where we had a sit down with the Mayor and Gumandoy. When I first started, I was quite nervous about dealing with the Mayor as he sounds very important, but now I’ve met him so many times I’m totally at ease and we were nattering away like old mates. Mayors aren’t that scary. At least Mayor Ben isn’t. I’m still pretty scared of Mayor Colonel Sanchez  from the other municipality I’ve worked in. I hear he’s killed quite a lot of people.

We got up before sunrise, ate some fish, eggs and rice for breakfast, packed up the leftovers in a box for lunch and negotiated our way to the well. Gumandoy turned up and got in the car with us. I figured he was continuing on to the other town where the car was headed, so all was good. We got to the well and Gumandoy got out with us.

“you know, you don’t have to be here” I said.

“Oh ok.”

He turned around and walked the 2.5km back to town. Oops!

Nathan, Fergus and I sat down and came up with a plan of action. We needed to pump water out of the well at a constant (or at least known) rate, and measure how far the water level in the well fell.

We devised a very good way of finding the pumping rate. We measured the tank dimensions, (4.5m x 4.5m x 3.85m). We tied a rock to the measuring tape and dangled it into the tank, until it was touching the water. We then pulled the rock up exactly 20cm and waited timed until the water was touching it again. This gave us a known volume (4.5m x 4.5m x 0.2m) and a time taken to fill it – divide one by the other and you have the flow rate! Brilltastic.

In the water tank

At 9.18am we flicked on the pump, and had a frantic first hour. This was teamwork and organisation at its finest. Brilliant interview fodder. We had a timekeeper and recorder, a well measurer and a flow rate man on top of the tank. For the first 10 minutes we had to measure the well depth every minute, then every 2 minutes from 10 – 30 minutes, then every 5 minutes until the hour mark, then every 10 minutes and so on. This is because as you pump water out the water level goes down a lot at the start, but the rate of change of the “drawdown” decreases as time goes on – so less measurements are necessary. It worked literally like clockwork.

Sheer organisational tekkers

It was HOT. And we had a tank of water. A big tank of deliciously blue fresh spring water. Deeper than most swimming pools. I was even wearing my trunks.

Unfortunately, this water was going to be used for drinking, so we figured it would be pretty poor form to wash our sweaty bodies off in there. Which was a shame, it would have been great.

I had followed Robin Scanlons first commandment and brought my hammock. So as the gap between measurements increased, we took it in turns to do engineering / hammocking (not mutually exclusive as it turns out!) and played 20 questions and read books and played cards to pass the time.

 

Engineering in action

Engineering in action

After 4.5 hours, the tank was full we switched off the pump, and had to spring back into action, following the same measurement time schedule as the well “recovered”. More clockwork, more measuring, leading into more relaxing as time went on.

I didn’t do any relaxing at all

By 5pm the well was almost back to its original level (which is a good thing) and the sun was leaving us. We packed up and by the time we were back on the road it was warm moonless night. We had no lift organised, so we walked back to town and actually lost Fergus in the dark!

Dinner was followed by another chat with the Mayor, which went on until about 11pm. Mayor Ben then decided he wanted to look at what we’d been doing – nothing that dramatic – but we piled into his pickup truck and went down to the tap by the road. We needed one final measurement to confirm the well had fully recovered so they swung the truck around and pointed the high beams over the fields so Nathan and Fergus could navigate the rice paddies. I hung back and looked at the stars. There were lots. It was purty. Nathan smashed Mayor Bens brand new torch, but nobody seemed that bothered.

Our boat back was leaving at 5.30am. We agreed with Mayor Ben that someone would come and pick us up at 4.45am to take us to the port in the town down the coast. Only problem Mayor Ben never told the driver this. So we got up well before the sun and waited and waited and waited some more. A man passed us on a motorbike, so we asked him if he could find something out. He roared off into the night. I woke up half the town phoning people to try to find our missing driver, but our motorbike man came back with a van full of people also going to the boat. The day was saved!

Back to Manila. Macdonalds and a nap. On Sunday, my housemates daughter graduated from high school so we put together a big meal for all the family and friends and I delivered two Heston Blumenthal style roast chickens. The crowd went wild.

Nailed it!

 

Finding the decision maker.

After a quick nip back to the UK to SMASH a job interview and eat some of Mums lasagne, I was back in Manila sorting out this Lubang water project.

I have had a frustrating time in the last few weeks convincing the funders that I need to make some changes to the original proposal for the Looc water project. The funders had forced the previous EWB volunteer to rush the proposal so I have had the pleasure of righting the mistakes he made. At points, the funders raised some daft objections to my sensible and necessary changes. In the office, the only question we wanted an answer to was “How did these people get into a position of authority?”! It did rather feel like I was banging my head against a poorly located concrete water filter.

These long discussions were taking place with the shadow of the visit from the mythical Trevor from Melbourne. All the prior arguments were with people who weren’t the final decision maker, so it was important to convince him that we were doing it right.

The expedition began in the “Royal Kitchen” Chinese seafood restaurant in Manila on Thursday night. Shen (my boss), Rodel (SIBATs electrical engineer) and I were invited along for dinner to meet Trevor and discuss the project with the local funding partners.

Seated at a massive circular table we had a delicious meal of calamari, Lapu Lapu fish with mango, king prawns and even a bit of lobster. Trevor and I ended up sat diametrically opposite from each other, meaning that we had to shout across a 4m table with our mouths full of fish. This wasn’t conducive to an easy conversation, but we made good progress. It transpired that Trevor is a water engineer by trade, giving me hope that he would at least understand my proposals. At the same time it also worried me that he might point out that I was doing things wrong!

Shen and I had agreed to meet at 3.30am the next morning to catch the boat with Trevor and the gang early the next day. So after dinner, I made the clever decision and went out drinking to belatedly celebrate Paddys Day, and got home at 1am. Oops!

Friday wrenched me out of bed and we landed in Lubang a long time after schedule – nothing to do with me! Trevor needed to visit another project on the island in Pulili, so we all bundled into various vans. Shen and I ended up taking a police van – complete with four armed police as our escort! Not that they were necessary, I think they just had a spare van and not much else to do!

On paper the project is complete, but in reality, it still needs an extra storage tank and pump if it is to truly meet the objectives. Trevor wasn’t best pleased about this, but I didn’t have any personal pride at stake and said that I would get on sorting those items out. As a celebrity, I wasn’t allowed to leave until I had posed for separate photos with the men and the women of Pulili. I’m kind of a big deal (in rural Philippines).

We took the boat over to the other side of the island (Looc) and the waves were quite rough. In my sleep deprived state I was able to chow down on some chill time ride the waves like a rag doll while others around me fell off their seats!

We arrived quite late and were only able to visit one of the three sites in Looc before dinner. Trevor seemed to agree with me about the problems we were facing, and was reasonable about how we could go about solving them. He did point out some things that I hadn’t noticed, and in fact I learnt a bit about site inspection from him.

After dinner we settled into Odies house. Odie grew up in Looc but is now a successful businessman who owns a pillow factory in Manila. He had built a big Italian house in Looc surrounded by houses more typical of a poor rural community. It reminded me somewhat of this clip:

http://www.yourdailymedia.com/post/family-guy-thomas-edison/

That paints him in a bad light – Odie is a great guy and his factory employs a lot of people from Looc, and he is invested in this water project too. Over beers on his porch, I told him I was an Industrial / Manufacturing engineer and he offered me a job in his factory! If it wasn’t for my recent success in the UK, I might well have taken him up on it!

In the morning we got up early to go have a look at the other two sites, and again Trevor agreed with me on the problems and the solutions. This was such a welcome relief from weeks of increasingly bitter emails, and now we can move forward. He attached a couple of conditions – that we find out the exact height of the new filter location and perform a pumping test on the well. These won’t be an issue and I am returning to Looc tomorrow to do these, so we can start digging in two weeks!

No photos as it was just a quickie.

I’ve used an app to help me write in short sentences like Hemmingway – what do you think? Feedback appreciated.

Gengen and Jenjen

Long time no see!

Got back into the adventures game last week with another trip to Looc.

My world had fairly fallen apart on the Friday evening, when we met with Mayor Ben Tria of Looc and Rotary Club members (who are funding the project) with a view to straightening the L’s and rounding the O’s on the Looc project. What happened instead was the discovery of a major failure in communications. The initial proposal and design, submitted by Ryan, my EWB predecessor, said that we would provide “200 litres of potable water a day to each household” in the town. My calculations had shown that there was no way we would be able to filter that amount of water so I had designed a system whereby we provided 160L untreated water through the pipelines, and people could collect their potable water directly from one of three filters in the town.

Basically, while my priority had been to design a system capable of providing 200 litres, the Rotary Clubs priority had been the word potable. Apparently, the people already have adequate water for washing and cleaning etc, but they need treated drinking water! Somehow this part hadn’t made it through to me or Ryan in multiple meetings over 18 months, so I would have to redesign everything within 3 weeks before the scheduled groundbreaking! Eek! I felt like I’d been hit by a bus and I must say didn’t hold my poker face very well. I didn’t say anything untoward to the lovely Rotary ladies, nor to Mayor Ben, but once they were gone, my language did get rather loud and colourful as I vented my frustration to my colleagues.

The next day was Saturday, and I had a good old whinge at my housemates, before heading off to the airport to pick up the lovely Jenny Rosam, my friend from Sixth Form. She is currently working in the British School in Guangzhou, China, and had two weeks off for the Chinese New Year. She and 6 friends had arranged to do a week of volunteering in Bohol, which was hit by a big earthquake in October, before heading over to Boracay for a week, where I would meet them for the weekend. But first they had the night in Manila and I took her and pals to my favourite spot, the Bayleaf Hotel, for rooftop sundowners, a not very authentic dinner and then some more drinks.  It was a very effective way of dealing with the stress, but not necessarily the problems.

Back in the office on Monday, I wracked my brains and came up with a solution. We were going to elevate the filters by 2 metres, and use them to put potable water into the pipes – and the children would cheer! It would require the building of three utter calamities of architecture to blot the landscape for years to come, but progress comes at a price. Along with a slight rejig of the piping system all the problems were solved so I patted myself on the back for a job well done, lit my pipe and put my feet up on the desk.

 

No style points here. Inspired by Dunelm House, Durham

And now, the adventure part of this tale can begin. On Tuesday I got up at 5am, met up with Gengen at the office, waited for an hour for our driver, picked up Jeda (armed with some digging tools), got to the port for about 10am, waited for Mayor Ben for 3 hours, 3 hour boat ride, 1 hour car ride and we were in Looc!

A note on the Tria dynasty of Looc. The current Mayor of Looc is Ben Tria. The former Mayor is his older brother, Nestor Tria. The Vice Mayor is their cousin Poly Tria. The local priest is Poly’s little brother – but I haven’t met him yet. Mayor Ben owns all the ferries (hence why we had to wait for him, it is his boat after all), and Poly (or Vice as he prefers to be called) owns all the big fishing boats. Between them, the Trias have this island completely sown up. It’s quite amazing, and it’s a bloody good job that their all very nice responsible people. Also, the boat we took was called the “Lucky Benjamin”, all the boat crew’s shirts said “Ben Cares”, and Mayor Ben himself was wearing one of his three “I Love Looc” T-shirts. Just in case you had forgotten who to vote for.

Amongst other things on the Wednesday, we had a meeting with the Peoples Organisation. This is the group of local residents who will not only help with the construction, but will be responsible for setting and collecting a tariff from users to be used for the maintenance of the system, which they will carry out themselves.

I have been having Tagalog lessons, and took my chance to showcase my mad skillz. “Magandan Hapon” – “Good Afternoon” I opened.

“Ang pangalan ko ay si Robin, ako ay engineer taga England. Ako ay ditto sa Philipinas anim buana, at magtatagal dito anim buana mas” – “My name is Robin, I’m an engineer from England, I have been here six months and I will be here for six more months”.

I reclined triumphantly into my chair and awaited the amused smiles, laughs and applause that normally follows any foray into the local language. Instead, a stony silence followed. The leader of the Peoples Organisation was the first to speak.

“You really need to learn Tagalog” he said, in English.

My triumph turned to embarrassment, and I don’t think I said more than 5 words for the rest of the meeting. To be fair, I couldn’t because as we all know now, I don’t speak Tagalog.

Thursday, we ate a massive crab, fried eggs and rice (naturally) for breakfast to set us up for our big day to find some gravel for the water filter. We had looked in the river beds on Wednesday to no avail, so this time we got a boat and headed out to a remote beach with some local fellas. We had a really good time, and found exactly what I was looking for.

Grabbing some gravel

Later as I sat down to write in my diary, I asked Jeda what we had done today – “we looked at some sand, and you didn’t climb a tree!” – see below.

From this angle, it looks quite high, it really wasn’t.

 

On Friday, we had a meeting scheduled in the evening, so during the day we headed to the beach or “Paradise” as we all called it. Here, Gengen, Jeda, Novi (a local friend) and I just messed around in the water, on the rocks and enjoyed ourselves. Gengen in particular was having a great time with the starfish. We also recorded the first episode of the (future) Youtube hit series “Robin Scanlons Island Cookbook” which will be hitting your screens VERY SOON.

Gengen on the beach

Jenjen on the beach. 

You pay yer money, you make yer choice.

 

In the meeting that evening, Mayor Ben decided that he didn’t like the look of my new brutalist filters, as he thought they would cost too much. He suggested we put them on the hill behind the school. I didn’t even know there was a school at this point, let alone a hill, so I said we would check it out. Check it out we did, and the hill is pretty much the perfect site to put one big filter and is a much better solution than three smaller elevated ones. It’s government owned land, there’s lots of open space, the soil is strong, and as an old rice terrace, we have a choice of different heights to choose from. Once discovering this, I finally got the sense that everything is going to be ok. It’s not the best to be making these sort of decisions with only two weeks to go before the ground breaking, but its better than trying to do it after the ground breaking! Given that it was just a week since my meltdown in the office, I was very pleased with how quickly everything had been resolved.

We got up at 4am on Saturday to catch the “Lucky Benjamin” back to the mainland, where I would rush to the airport and go join Jenny et al in Boracay. As it happened, there was a typhoon warning and the coastguard forbade any commercial boats from leaving the island, so we were stuck, and I missed my flight.

Through a rather circuitous tale of events, Jeda, Gengen and I ended up having a bumpy tour of the island in the back of a pickup truck. One of the towns we visited is home for a group of Air Force employees who look after a radar station on the island. We arrived to the sound of Shaggy’s “Angel” blaring out and saw a stripped down Air Force jet in the playground. Gengen might be 34 years, but he is an absolute child and together we had a great laugh sitting in the cockpit and pretending to be fighter pilots. I also saved Jeda from plummeting to her death.

Pogi = Handsome , Syota = Sweetheart

On Sunday we were able to leave the island. The “typhoon” hadn’t happened, but the coastguard ban was still in place. Nestor Trias wife needed to be in court on Monday – she’s a lawyer, so we paid a fisherman and his crew to carry us across the sea. It would have been fine in a big boat, but as we were on a piddly little thing everyone got soaked to the bone.

I reorganised my flights and thanks to my housemate acting as a “Switchboard” I was eventually able to meet up with Jenny in Boracay. Oh! The fun we had. Drinking mojitos and sunbathing and sailing and eating and swimming and dancing and and kicking Jenny right in her massive scab and beaching and drinking more mojitos it was all very nice. We also found out that I don’t selfie well, but I think we need picture proof of us in the same place at the same time.

I had somewhat caught the sun, yes

Keep your eyes out for “Robin Scanlons Island Cookbook”.

I’m going to start writing postcards to those who have sponsored me. If you give me your address, you’ll go to the top of the list.

AAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNDDDDDDD finally, I would like to take this opportunity to announce the sad news that Flora Huntley and I have finalised our divorce proceedings – apparently she’s met someone else, and is taking the house and the dogs…….

Seriously Flozza – CONGRATULATIONS!

FINALLY FINALLY. BIG PHOTODUMP AT (if you go to the bottom of the page, there are some crackers of Alina from the leaving do too!)

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106608639711482833981/albums

Corporate Social (Ir)Responsibility

No photos this week. In my excitement I may have forgotten to take my camera battery. Hopefully Dave will get the time to post more photos on Facebook soon.

We all knew the fourth bottle of gin was a bad idea, but by the time we knew how bad an idea it was, it was too late.

I sat up from my lying position and immediately knew I had pushed it too far. I ran to the back of the boat and launched my half-digested breakfast into the South China Sea. It was bright yellow. A kindly sailorman handed me a bottle of water with a smile. After consuming that, I felt a lot better, so I clambered to where I’d last seen Dave and Rodel several hours before at the front of the vessel.

“How are you man?”

“I’m sick maaaaaan”

And boy did he look it, despite being Philippino, Rodels face was bright green. Dave wasn’t faring any better, his bare torso was badly sunburnt and hunched around the guardrail with his head hanging over the water. “This is the worst experience of my life” he mumbled. He had started feeling ill almost immediately after leaving port, and had crawled out of the cabin to get some fresh air and to throw up. The sea was rough, so he was soon completely drenched and in the shade had gotten very cold. He had moved into the sunshine and could feel himself burning, but declared “one problem at a time!” and went back to heaving up his guts over the side of the boat.

And that is why you don’t drink four bottles of 60p/litre gin before getting up at 4.30am to get on a boat when you know the sea is going to be rough.

 

Other than our unceremonious exit, we had had a good time in Cabra. Frustrating, but good. On one hand, we had completely failed our objective of sorting the pump out (we managed to make it work for 20 minutes, but then it conked out again), but on another we were on a tropical island filled with friendly locals and delicious fish. Our third evening will go down in the history books as one of the best things that has happened to anyone anywhere, ever. Short of a randy Eva Mendes strutting down the beach and asking for a nipple massage, I’m fairly sure it couldn’t have gotten any better.

We had had a long day, and decided to go down to the sea for a pre dinner swim. The water was warm and wavy as we frolicked in the shallows, enjoying ourselves and the company we were in (even if Miss Mendes was busy elsewhere). It was pitch black with the stars twinkling overhead. On the horizon there was a strange orange glow, just like the kind that you get off a big city at night, only we were miles and miles from any population centre, so we were a bit confused.

It was the moon! As it rose the orange turned to red – confusing us further, until I remembered the story about the Spanish conquistador turning the moon red and telling all the invadees that he was a god. We were witnessing a lunar eclipse! On a tropical beach! Several thousand miles from home! With one of my oldest friends! With stars overhead! Pretty fudging awesome if you ask me.

 

When we made it back to the mainland, Dave and I wasted no time in getting the laundry done, eating two Macdonalds meals each, and catching a few z’s before waking up at 4.30am again to get to the airport. Our destination: Cloud 9. I’m not even joking. That’s the name of the place. Google it. It’s sweet. We changed planes in Cebu, where two British C-130 cargo planes are parked on the tarmac ready to help out with Yolanda relief, and where a team of gnarly looking French doctors were beginning their return journey to Europe after 2 weeks in the disaster zone.

Cloud 9 was well, cloudy, but only to start with, and Dave and I went to rent some surf boards and teachers and prepared to join the ranks of totally bodacious surfer dudes at 7am. Our first foray was an unmitigated success. With our friendly teachers, Sunni and Joel, pushing us onto the waves it was almost impossible to fail. Dave and I even managed to be totally radical and high 5 while on the wave. Move over, Keanu.

High on our glory, Dave and I asked the resident surfer dude, Dane, where would be a good spot to head out after lunch. A note on Dane – Dave aptly described Dane as “a slow Guy Sears”, full of charisma and energy and generally a good guy to hang out with, but a few horses short of a rodeo. He was certainly entertaining. He advised us to head out to Stimpies, a reef break a short boat ride from our hotel. “Soooooper mellow, bro, sometimes it gets a little gnarly, you know it just like, PULSES, you know, but soooper mellow, you guys will have a great time out there, just stick to the inside and you’ll be fine”.

Dave and I had no idea what the “inside” meant so we hopped in a boat and headed out with a hotel acquaintance, Mike. We arrived to what was basically a scene from “The Perfect Storm” with huge waves and some seriously gnarly surfer bros carving it up. Unperturbed, we charged in head first. Eventually I plucked up the courage to catch one, I was riding the beast! It was magnificent! Maybe surfings not so hard after all! Then, a blur appeared to my right, shouting at me with a French accent– I was on “his wave” or something. He was heading right across my line (which was dead straight of course, I had no idea what I was doing). Given that I wasn’t standing, I grabbed my board for dear life and rolled into the wave. Probably the right thing to do, but it didn’t end well for me. The board was torn from my grasp and then my ankle, and I was subjected to the washing machine treatment, tumbling and gargling in the deep whitewash. When I eventually surfaced, I was greeted by an angry Frenchman and my board was already 20 metres away. I swam after it, but a huge wave washed over me tossing me about like a toy, and carrying the board even further away. This was going to suck. I reckon I was sprint swimming for a good 5 minutes until I finally caught up with the board, about 300 metres from where I had started. By the time I got out of there, I was exhausted and headed for the sanctuary of the boat. Swimming on top of a surfboard uses a totally different set of muscles to normal swimming so by the time I reached the boat I was truly knackered. “water! Tubig!” I panted at the boatman. Once I had regained my composure, I thought I’d better look for Dave. No joy. “Wheres my friend?” No reply. “Nasaan akin ka’ibigan?” (I’m quite the dab hand at Tagalog now).  They disinterestedly gestured to the large group of surfers waiting for the waves. No Dave. I look to where I was stranded and had a mild panic attack certain that Dave had been swept off into the Pacific to become sharkbait or get chewed up by an oil tanker (check out “how to avoid huge ships” on Amazon).  After a few restless minutes, he popped up just as chewed up as I had been. Glad that he was alive and fully revitalised I returned to the waves only to have more or less a carbon copy of my previous experience, minus the angry Frenchman. In short, we all (Dave, Mike and myself) got our arses kicked and Dane is fucking idiot.

In other news, we found other, much nicer places to surf and great places to ride motorbikes. We also flirted with the pretty waitresses and went to the local nightclub, which was basically a bamboo shack with a loud stereo, a disco ball and a plentiful supply of rum, where we stood head and shoulders above all the locals.  Yet another incredible Philippine sunset was seen from the beach house, and just in case the spectacular sunset itself wasn’t enough, we were treated to a rainbow at the same time!

 

Back in Manila, Dave and I headed over to the seedy part of town to watch midget boxing, because, well, where else are we going to have the chance to do it? We prepared with a couple of looseners in a British themed pub and were ready to leave our morality at the door to go see some little people hit each other in the face repeatedly for our own amusement. I think we were prepared for a few hookers, standing at the bar and winking at us, but walking into the “Ringside Bar” it became all too clear that we had made a terrible mistake. About a hundred scantily clad women daubed every wall, chair, and standing area turning our innocent night of morally dubious entertainment into a seriously uncomfortable situation. We ordered two beers and were quickly joined by two not unattractive girls who cosied up to us and stroked our legs. The madam asked us if we would like to buy the girls a drink, awkwardly we said yes, as it seemed simply rude not to. To be fair, £20 for four jagerbombs may sound like a bargain to you London folk, but it’s veritable night time robbery here, and was pretty much all the money we had on us.

Roughly 10 minutes later we retreated with our tails between our legs and feeling like we had just had an intensive seminar at the University of Life.

 

All in all, it was great to have Dave here, and if there’s any other engineers out there who feel that they can convince their bosses to do their Corporate Social Responsibility out here, well you’re more than welcome to join us. Actually, we at SIBAT are just about to begin an “Assessment of Needs” for the areas affected by Yolanda, and I’ve been asked to see if we can recruit some volunteer engineers to work on those projects. More details to come.

Disaster Tourism II

I was about ¾ of the way through a blog when Yolanda hit. It had a great opening as well. But when my 4am taxi driver told me that he was from Tacloban and that he hadn’t heard from his son or wife after 3 days, my blog complaining about visions of Mick Hucknell and spending the day with the man with the worst haircut in the world seemed somewhat insignificant, so I’ve canned it, and now present Disaster Tourism 2.

After a rather lovely “Mongolian Barbeque” style dinner I headed over to Ateneo university, which has been designated as a relief operations centre to get stuck in and put myself to good use.

There was so much stuff! Stacks and stacks of food, and more coming through the door all the time. A mountain of clothes. And sacks! Sacks everywhere! I had to pause for a minute to take it all in. They had clearly been at it for a while, as there were already many completed sacks stacked up in the far half of the basketball court.

A veritable hive of activity

I wandered aimlessly for a while to find somewhere to fit in, but also to get my bearings. There were several subgroups it seemed. One group was packing toiletries – toilet roll, soap, toothpaste etc into plastic bags while other groups sat around big piles of rice, 2 scoops to a bag, 4 bags to a bucket.

Apparently they got through 250 sacks of rice – 12.5 tonnes!

The buckets were then placed in sacks along with 2 big packets of crackers, some cooking sauces and the toiletries, before 10 tins of fish were added. The sacks were then tied up and hauled off to the far side of the basketball court to be placed in piles of 50.

I found my niche somewhere between the tins being added and the people tying the sacks. There was a small girl wearing a t shirt declaring her love for pi – up to about 50 decimal places – putting tins into sacks so I figured I could help out by using my big strong man arms to move the completed sacks to the girl who was doing the tying. Trisha (pi girl), Cat (tie girl) and I formed a crack squad of super efficient sack packing, the likes of which have never been seen before. It wasn’t a competition, but we definitely won.

Grimly ironic crackers

Had my work cut out for the evening.

We got about halfway through this stack before we ran out of rice. There are about 17 boxes in the photo – so that’s 17 boxes. 100 tins per box – that’s 1700 tins @10 tins per sack that’s 170 sacks going to feed 170 families. Not bad.

When we ran out of the rice, the jig was up and our encouraging announcers decided to have a quick quiz for the prize of a former beauty queens autobiography. All credit to them, they had been organising and encouraging everyone the entire time I was there, keeping everyones spirits up. My favourite moment was when they got the sign in list and started reading out peoples names, and getting them to give them a wave. Simple, but very good for morale. Being the only white guy around, I got an honourable mention and they thanked me in Spanish.

This event was organised by a group called “Bangon Philippinas” which is a small charity attached to the university, which had used its networks to draw the donations in. Before I left there was an appeal for people to come along at 4am to help unload a rice truck which will be delivering 22 tonnes of rice. I’m considering going along, could be fun.

On my way out, I passed the other sports area, which usually served as three basketball courts. Here, there was a government run sack packing mission. It made my group look like amateur hour. Everything was in nice neat rows, and there were enormous snakes of people passing bags and boxes to one another before they ended up at the far end of the hall. I was mesmerised by the whole thing. The set up showed that this was a well practiced drill, and reminded me that disasters like this happen all too often in The Philippines. Hell, I’ve been here just four months and this is my second time doing this!

How the big boys do it. 

So an interesting night for me, but the topic on everyones minds and everyones lips is the disaster that has unfolded in the affected areas. My biggest worry is that this turns into another “Haiti” where the final death toll vastly outweighs the initial damage. Right now, the big concern is hunger and immediate medical care, but to avoid further catastrophe we need to make sure that disease is not spread. To do this, aid agencies need your support to ensure that a really bad situation doesn’t get any worse. I highly recommend the Disasters Emergency Committee as they will channel the funds to the most appropriate organisation.

http://www.dec.org.uk or text DEC to 70000 to give a £5 (in the UK)

As for me, we at SIBAT are currently looking at how our expertise might be of use. There is talk of setting up solar powered water pumps, and of using our agriculturist’s expertise to grow crops that can be planted and then harvested just 3 weeks later. I am considering looking into how I can get involved with the long term rebuilding after my placement with SIBAT finishes is July next year, as my visa will still be valid until November 2015.

On a brighter note, my school mate and Jaguar Land Rover engineer Dave Watkins is coming out on Saturday! We’re going to be corporately responsible for a week, and FINALLY sort out the Cabra pump once and for all amongst other things, before going off and being rather corporately irresponsible somewhere else!

Peace and love people.

OK blogreaders, strap in. I’m sitting here with my good friends Captain Morgan and Bombay Bicycle club and I’m ready to rock.

Last Sunday, I got up at 6am and walked to the office. My peaceful stroll was ruined however, by the local weirdo rubbing his inner short shorted thighs, making eye contact and wishing me a good morning. I’ve seen him every weekday for the last two months and normally I just stare at the ground as I walk past the bench he sits on, but given that we were the only two people on the street it seemed rude not to at least acknowledge his presence. An omen of things to come, who can say?

Our departure had been delayed first by a week, then Monday became Wednesday, Wednesday became Thursday, Thursday became Friday, then Friday became Sunday, so it was only right that 6.30 should become 7.15 before we were finally on our way. I took the delay as a chance to grab a sly McDonalds breakfast, unaware that we would be getting another one just an hour later.

We were off to Looc. I’ve decided I’m going to start including maps in my blog, so here’s the first one.

A picture paints a thousand words

So what were we doing in Looc? WELL. We at SIBAT have set up a joint venture with the University of the Philippines (UP) Electronics and Electrical Engineering Department. One of their masters students, Raphael Dorilag, is working on building a wind turbine and he wanted somewhere to put it. He and his team came to SIBAT to ask if we knew somewhere good, and we suggested Looc, where it will be incorporated into a project to provide good clean water out of tapstands to the good clean people of Looc. The tapstands will be shared between 4-6 homes, so the people will not only have water that is legitimately safe to consume, but also won’t have to walk very far to get it. This is good. The UP guys want to monitor the wind conditions so they can do whatever with the data, so we all went down to Looc to install the mast which will eventually be the home for the turbine, but for now will just hold a load of wind speed and direction equipment, until the turbine is completely finished.

While this part of the project is essentially UPs deal, we from SIBAT were there to provide our expertise, and also to make final fine plans for our water distribution system. We needed to know exactly how high the hill was, so we can buy the correct pump and make the correct plans for the building of the water tank. Question, dear blogreader: How do you accurately measure how high a hill is? We went to the town hall to borrow as GPS. It was no good, so we went old school. Using a long piece of wood, a spirit level and a tape measure, Rodel and I made our way up the hill from the water source diligently taking measurements as we went. Maybe the picture will make it clearer.

Picture of the year right there.

As for the actual hoisting of the mast, it was a real effort. We (by that I mean the local people) started by carried these five big steel sections, each six metres long and weighing 250 kilos up the hill. There, two of them were spectacularly welded together to create a “gin pole” for pulling the mast up and down.

Sabrina from UP took this one and I spent 45 minutes trying to replicate it to no avail

The next two days were spent putting it all together. There are 16 cables totalling over 400m, and these all needed to be measured, cut, tied, bolted and adjusted before we could get anywhere. At this point, I got quite frustrated. There were a lot of delays as Raphael failed to communicate his intentions and a lot of time was wasted. Rodel accurately described it as “amateur”. For example, Raphael had bought everything in exact quantities for the finished product, an erect windmast, but had failed to account for items that would be used in the erection. This resulted in corners being cut. The upshot of this was a complete ballsup; at one point during the actual hoisting, one of the cable ties buckled, and the whole mast crashed to the ground. Nobody was injured and the only damage done was to one poor anemometer (RIP brother), but it was a cockup that was due to poor project planning and nothing else.

The night before the tower tumbled, I saw legitimately one of the most beautiful sights of my life. Raphael had literally run off with my camera, but it was one of those moments that I won’t need a camera to remember. For you, my gorgeous little blog readers, I will do my best to describe it:

There was laughter in the air as we downed tools for the evening. The local guys who had been working with us were all having a chuckle practising their English on me, and we posed for a series of boy band style photographs. They waved their goodbyes and headed home. Raphael ran off. Rodel and I started talking about something or other, but soon we were both completely entranced by the colours forming on the other side of the valley. We had just about dried off after the monsoon rains had engulfed us an hour before, and now it was the turn for the other half of town to have their share. The sun was setting behind the hills to my left, and as it hit the thick clouds, they turned to a colour lying somewhere between pink and orange. It wasn’t your archetypal sunset with streaks of colour contrasting against one another, it was one continuous band, stretching down the hill and into the sea. There were no battle scars across the sky, there was no differentiation, it just peacefully graduated from this beautiful pinky orange through to deep blue over the ocean to my right.  Contrasting against the fresh yellows and vibrant greens of rice fields below, it was truly incredible. Every second for fifteen minutes it changed as the variables sun, wind, and cloud mixed together to produce a 900 different paintings each worthy of the finest galleries.

I called it “God’s cinema”.

Right. Enough pretention. Back to reality dreamy heads.

Just so anyone looking at the photos isn’t confused, we had arrived in Looc with 6 people from UP, but after two days, four of them went home, and two days later the SIBAT team had to abandon ship too. We left Raphael, Jun, a local legend named Jordan, and a 45degree tower to go drink brandy with our favourite lashinghero, Tatay Nani of Cabra. No, in all seriousness, we had received word that the pump that we installed on my first field trip had stopped working in Cabra and given we were in the area in made sense to go and check it out.

Stopping the night in the big town of Lubang, at about 8pm the municipal engineer, Arnel, who I met briefly once before, turned up roaring drunk and shouted at me how much he liked me and how much he wanted to have a drink with me. My omphalophobia getting the best of me, outwardly I grinned but inwardly I groaned. Luckily he spared me and selected Rodel to go buy the brandy with him, leaving me watching Iron Man on the telly. Only, they didn’t come back. Two and a half hours later, Rodel returned alone. Apparently, after requiring Rodel to put the key into his headlight-less motorbike, Arnel had changed his mind about drinking and driven (with Rodel on the back) 5km to a local gambling den, lost all of his money, and determined not to end the night a loser, roared back home to get some more, leaving Rodel stranded without a mobile or any idea where we were actually staying. Rodel, to his credit, didn’t want the trip to be wasted so he picked up some brandy and on his belated return we stuck a Mr Bean DVD in the machine and drank to that.

The next day, we made our way to Cabra. The problem was thus: the brand of pump we installed is notorious for problems with its control unit, so we just had to take it off the wall, poke around inside a bit and declare it dead. We packed it up and at some point this week I’m going to go shout at the guy who sold it to us (probably not shout, but y’know). It’s doubly annoying because I’m going back to Cabra on November 1^st to show one of the project funders our wonderful non functioning water supply system, and if she’s not impressed they won’t fund any more projects and that will be mightily frustrating indeed.

We left Cabra the next day with the controller and about 15 kilograms of peanuts as a going away present. On the boat were two cows! They survived but I don’ think it was very comfortable for them!

cattle class

Back on the main land we met up with a sober Arnel and visited yet another project just to check up on it, and everything is going sort of smoothly. Just a few touch ups needed. Arnel invited us over for a drink, again I groaned, but luckily his 26 year old son had some of his mates around so I hung out with them and ate some banging fish called Lapu Lapu. Ten Scott Mills points if you know who Lapu Lapu is without googling it. In fact, you can be top of my postcard list if you’re the first to reply (if you’ve sponsored me).

I’ve now moved through the Bombay Bicycle Club albums, Bon Iver, and two Bryan Adams albums, so I think it’s about time to sign off, never mind the rum. Much peace and love to all and sundry.

EWB are still open for donations!

Photodump: https://plus.google.com/photos/106608639711482833981/albums

Lightbulbs

Hey everyone, before I get on with this essay of a blog post, I’d like to have a final donation drive as the fundraising deadline is next week! The link is at the bottom of the post, along with a photo dump. I had an incredible and inspirational week, I couldn’t hope to include it all here. Enjoy!

After a lengthy stay in Manila, this week I’ve been in the Apayao region looking at some Micro Hydro Projects with an EWB team from Imperial College London. The inspirational leader, “ex-co-president” Ian Sipin was born and bred in The Philippines, but is a now a naturalised British citizen and a second year mechanical engineering student. Ian wants to set up a long term project/partnership in The Philippines for EWB Imperial and this was the first visit to scout out potential projects and come up with ideas. His cohort was made up of “Grandad” Marcus Bishop and “Immature Idiot Man” (as Jeda named him) James Metcalf – both first year chemical engineering students. Having both achieved firsts at the foremost university in the UK for chemical engineering, they were clearly bright, but being freshers, they were also capable of being complete planks, especially James.

A quick Google of Apayao a few days before we left revealed that this was the least densely populated region of The Philippines and not a whole lot else. My housemate El warned me of the women head hunters that used to live in the region so I knew we were in for an adventure. The Imperial team, Jeda and I took a short flight and a long bus and arrived at a house in Melama at about 4pm. We knew a trek lay ahead, and some of us puffed out our chests and declared “come on! Let’s go! Night trekking! Woo!”. Twenty minutes later, I was snoring loudly on a wooden bench. Tomorrow was a better option.

We rose early and hit the road. A tricycle ride to the path and we were off. It was splendid. As we tackled a steep section of the wide dirt track my mind raced back to trekking in India, and I remembered how much people can pay for this kind of experience. Not for the first time here, I felt very lucky to be able to do this and call it work. Two hours later, the sun had reached full power, and Ian and I were lagging behind a bit and were wondering which way the others had gone. We turned a corner, and BAM! Rivendell! I mean Lapat. 

Lapat. I wish I could work out how to make the photos smaller. 

Better yet, we were welcomed by an ice cold coconut juice, courtesy of a micro hydro powered fridge – nice one SIBAT. We sat, drank and ate a few rambutans, but we still had a long way to go. Our goal was Buneg, at the head of the valley. The path was now much narrower, single file all the way, clinging to the hillside and treacherous in places. After just 45 minutes, Ian stacked it and went over on his ankle. We changed his Nike Jordans for walking boots and he valiantly tried to press on but to no avail. Paraphrasing Jonny Cash we “dropped him like a hot horseshoe” and sent him back to Lapat to recover while we went on without him. 

The Fellowship splits. (Ian on the left, James on the right)

Three hours later, we paused briefly in the garden village of Bubog long enough for lunch, but not long enough for a snooze. Just after leaving Bubog, we crossed the river one at a time. I was too heavy and, reminiscent of tubing in Laos, a tractor tyre inner tube was fetched to add buoyancy to the bamboo raft.

Jeda aboard “The Titanic”

We trekked through the heat and collapsed at a shack at the top of the hill after about 2.5 hours. Thirty seconds later, the heavens opened, but we were only halfway from Bubog to Buneg. I got my snooze in, but the rain didn’t lighten up, so we waterproofed ourselves and braved the elements. It poured and poured and three hours later we stumbled into Buneg drenched like a family of kittens that had escaped their sack.

Here, we had the most dramatic wash of all time, worthy of an original source mint shower gel advert. It was incredible. In the pouring rain and surrounded by rainforest covered mountains, with the pitch black only interrupted by the occasional lightning bolt, we three intrepid explorers washed our stinking bodies in a boulder filled mountain stream. Given that washing in streams is genuinely one of my favourite things to do, this was pretty special. “Good for the skin, great for the soul”.

After a terrible nights sleep on the hard wooden floor, something I didn’t get used to all week – appreciate your mattresses people! – and 800 words into this blog, we finally got down to work. Our guides were the local school administrator, Peter, and the operator of the micro hydro system, whose name eludes me. The system in Buneg diverts a stream into a channel before sending the water down a pipe and into a turbine. The turbine turns a belt which drives a generator. The generator then provides power to a lighting circuit for all the houses in the village (about 80 houses ~ 300 people). The powerhouse wasn’t dire, but the whole place was a bit dusty and there were two things that really struck me as interesting.

• The generator they were using was a “brushed” type generator. And the first thing you mention on any electromechanics exam paper concerning generators is that brushes are bad because they wear out and need replacing. And when it takes you ten hours to walk to the nearest road, this can be a real bugger. Since the projects inception in 2003, they were on their third generator after the brushes hadn’t been replaced in time and it had become damaged beyond repair. Now for the interesting part. To our western eyes, it seemed mad that they were quite alright with buying a new generator (and lugging it up the valley) every few years. BUT, these generators are relatively cheap. Brushless generators clock in at about 15x the cost of the brushed ones, and are designed to last about 25 – 30 years after which point you’ll probably want to upgrade it anyway. So if they can get just two years out of a generator, then they’ll be breaking even compared with the more expensive generator. It’s odd, but it makes sense. That’s no excuse for letting the brushes wear out, so we explained what was happening, and told them to replace them sooner. 

• We had assumed that people would want more domestic comforts and that the Imperial task would be to find a way to allow this to happen with a limited power supply. However (the men at least) all wanted more machinery. They had lighting and even a TV to watch the basketball on and now they wanted more processing capability. Also, astoundingly, one of their priorities was a “more beautiful” rice mill. Just like men with their cars in the western world, the rice mill was clearly a source of pride and they wanted a pretty one.

Our stay in Buneg was rounded off with a party. The thick dark “basi” was an alcoholic beverage made from sugar cane juice, and left to ferment for three years. I can only describe it as like the worst red wine imaginable. We were shown the local dance and did our best to replicate it. The theme of the dance revolved around catching an eagle, with the woman as the eagle and the man trying to ensnare her in his “net”, a towel. However, rather than just chasing the poor girl with a towel, you have to gain her consent and offer your hand to see if she will accept. We had a great time. Furthermore we were expected to introduce ourselves and sing a song. I went with “Blaze of Glory” and for the medley numbers, James, Marcus and I led with “Don’t Stop Me Now” and then just for giggles, “God Save The Queen”. 

James catching a local bird

The next morning we bounced back down the valley to Bubog, where we met up with Ian again. It is a beautiful little village of 48 people, with a well-managed Micro Hydro System which provides household lighting and powers a rice mill. Here, I got chatting to a school teacher who was just visiting some relatives in the village. She told me her name was Lolita, and a tear came to my eye as I remembered my Laotian motorbike. I love you Lolita, wherever you are now. The human Lolita told me the most interesting thing I heard all week.

“You know, since the inauguration of the project 10 years ago, the number of children in the primary school has dropped to just 7.”

“What? Why is this? Are people no longer sending their children?” I replied.

“Well, now that we have more light in the evening, people are having less children!”

It was astounding. This idea hadn’t crossed my mind at all. Given that a low birthrate is a key part of development this was good news, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor farmers who were getting less nookie as a result of this project!

The next morning we had a meeting with the local bigwigs to gain info about possible projects. Same as before, they were more interested in machinery to bring in extra cash rather than household appliances. I asked about the impact of the system on their lives. Everyone was very grateful that they no longer relied on kerosene – it is dangerous to respiratory health, causes skin problems, can burn your house down and most of all it is expensive. A woman also said that thanks to the electric lighting, she was able to weave in the evening, enabling her to bring a bit more money in. After lunch, we were handed an enormous amount of fruit – three types of banana, rambutans and delicious lanzones to take home with us, and sent on our way back to Lapat.

In Lapat we did much the same, inspect the MHP, consult with the locals to gauge their opinions and desires, it was fairly standard procedure by now. On the evening of our arrival we got – to borrow a phrase from Florence Welch this time – Hurricane Drunk. That is to say that our preparations for Super Typhoon Usagi that has wreaked havoc across the Asia Pacific region was to stock up on gin and have a jolly good time. James fell asleep on the steps, and Marcus in the kitchen.  Bloody freshers. The next day it rained all day, and I just wanted to bring the duvet downstairs, curl up on the sofa with sky sports and mums apple crumble. But it was not to be, so I made do with the hammock and a blanket. For dinner, someone from the village brought us a bat. Which was fun, but I do not recommend bat. 

At least Jeda looks pleased. 

After a week in the cordillera, we descended to Jedas cousins house in Tabuk, complete with heavenly mattresses and an internet café across the road. I slept like a log and the next day was able to stream two episodes of Breaking Bad while waiting for the bus to take Jeda and I back to Manila (the Imperial team flew). Bring on the finale! Just before boarding, I had a bit of a calamity at a food stall buying some deep fried fish balls. They were 2 pieces for one peso. I asked for 20 pieces. The lady thought I said 20 pesos, and handed me an enormous box. The bus tooted its horn ready to leave and I thought screw it and ran off, grabbing my stuff. When I got on the bus, Jeda laughed at me and said “why do you have that?” I looked in my left hand. I didn’t have my water bottle, but the vinegar bottle from the counter! Tail between my legs, I retreated back to the stall and the gaggle of school children had a good old laugh at the silly white man.

Overall, a smashing week. Thanks for reading this far, and please donate to EWB, not for my benefit, but so EWB can continue to send engineers to the developing world. Let’s see what the Imperial team can come up with. 

ADMIRE MY PHOTOS HERE! https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106608639711482833981/albums

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