Sylvia's Journal

It was a nice reunion at breakfast where I found both my US colleague and my Filipina co-conspirators – the same team I worked with in Cambodia earlier this year when Massachusetts was still covered under lots of snow.

I love breakfasts in Asian hotels because they serve both Asian and western breakfasts and I get to sample a lot of different foods. I started with sticky rice rolled in some sort of leaf, eaten with caramel and roasted coconut. Then I had a crepe, again with caramel and this time with banana slices, and of course lots of fresh fruit.

After breakfast we reviewed our plan, divided roles and I started to prepare for the sessions I am running. M. and I went to the mall for lunch and to hunt for flipcharts but we got sidetracked after an overdose on Japanese food – M. had a facial and I had my toenails done in a nail spa that reeked of toxic liquids but made my nails presentable again.

It is weekend here and in the rainy season, or maybe any season, it is mall time. The place was filled with Filipinos who are visibly doing well. But on the way to the mall you have to dodge the street urchins, some younger than Faro, who have already learned the rules of street life. A young mother held on to the littlest of her brood of four, five? I wondered about her story. It was a very sad and disturbing sight, just steps away from the good life.

Later I met a new member of the team,  a young Mexican physical therapist who was one of the trainers of last week’s intermediate wheelchair fitting course. She is also representing the newly founded International Society of Wheelchair Providers, supported, like all of us here, by the American taxpayer via USAID. We plan to lay the foundation this week for a local society, and possibly future affiliate of the international society.

For dinner (there is always a reason to eat here) we went back to one of our favorite places during our last visit, a shabu-shabu restaurant (akin to Mongolian hotpot). We had our Filipina colleagues do the ordering to avoid the fish lips and other weird edibles that M. and I ordered last time, not knowing what was what. For desert they had brought the fruit durian. I was amazed that the restaurant was OK with us bringing in our own dessert, and, even more amazing, something that had a rather pungent aroma that wafted through the place as soon as the Tupperware container was un wrapped. We all got to try a piece – not bad actually, until the burps set in. We also got to try malang, another tropical fruit, small white globules, a little like lychees, that made a very nice ending to the meal, and that may also have contributed to the not so great burps.