Sylvia's Journal

Today was the final day of the basic wheelchair service training and the participants got to apply everything their learned on 6 people who were badly in need of a good wheelchair. Each of them had a condition that required a unique fitting: a young boy with TB who had a bone infection and needed his leg straight for a year; an older gentleman who had had a stroke and needed much support; two women with spinal cord injury, one of them with pressure sores, a man who had contracted polio and a double amputee.

It’s a complicated undertaking requiring good measurement, selecting the right chair and then making the adjustments. There is also the art of making the right seat cushion and foam wedges to relieve pressures that, if not corrected, create pressure sores; in warm and humid places such sores can easily get infected.

I have developed a new appreciation and much respect for these wheelchair folks. As I watch the trainers help their trainees focus on the safety and comfort of their clients I am quite moved. I suppose these people are lucky, to get this kind of service.

Just as the trainees are finishing their course I start to get to know them, hear their stories, especially of those who are wheelchair users themselves. From their personal experiences the plight of disabled people in the Philippines becomes very real – the hardship, the daily challenges, the misperceptions and misguided actions of the able-bodied.

One is a marathon wheelchair athlete whose dream it is to wheel himself to the Boston marathon finish line. To make that possible he has to be invited; and to be invited you have to be really good. He is working on that in regional marathons. We talked briefly about last year’s marathon – he watched it all, and will watch again this year, hopefully enjoying the accomplishments rather than the dramatic turn of events near the finish line.

The closing was touching. After several brief speeches, certificates, much applause and picture taking it was time to part. When everyone was gone the many supplies and wheelchairs were packed up: two sample chairs that will go to each trainee’s place of work, and the practicum supplies that will accompany the Philippina lead trainer and M who are off to Vietnam, for a similar course after we complete our events next week.

And then we piled into a bus with the exhausted but happy trainers and sat in traffic (only for an hour this time) to join a US/Canadian research team that is part of the larger USAID initiative to provide quality products and services mobility services to those who need them. They are staying in an even fancier hotel that was full of other celebrants. It is graduation in the Philippines and apparently families go out for birthday,judging from the singing and clapping that happened all around us.

Tonight I had my second massage in only four days. I am trying out the enormous variety and supply of massage places – with prices so low I could have one every day. M had scheduled her 3 hour indulgence but then backed off, having to work when our office in Washington wakes up. In hindsight this was a good decision (not the long work day but the quality of the massage). I stuck with my plan, a two hour event, first a foot massage then hot stones.

It was the first massage for my recovering left foot, so I requested a gentle touch and the foot was relieved. The hot stone massage was not quite like the soothing and gauzy massage in our previous hotel. It wasn’t the heat of the stones (the masseuse handled them under loud ‘ouches’) but rather the power of the masseuse. Moderate touch was more than I could bear, even ‘soft’ was pretty darn intense. I think I’ll try my next massage in one of the other twenty or so places in the neighborhood.

The massage parlor was just heating up when I was done around 10:30 PM. I was surprised about the number of men among its clientele, some with their women, who came in for a foot massage. It was clearly an outing, with plenty of room for a party of six or eight. They seemed to have a jolly time, drinking coffee and texting incessantly. One couple came in with what looked like his or her mother in law. Imagine that, taking your mother in law and your spouse out for a massage on Thursday evening. Well, why not?

My posts may suggest that only M is working hard (she is) but that is the nature of her assignment (getting everyone and everything to the right place at the right time in the right quantities and in full compliance with all the rules and regulations – no small feat!). In between all these indulgences work is being done as I am starting to ramp up and getting into gear for a very busy next week.

Our fancy hotel has a butler service. He first showed up virtually on my TV screen – only his body, above the knees and below the neck – wonder why he is headless. Maybe this allows us to fantasize that he is our favorite guy?

The butler also is behind button #1 on my phone and shows up, this time a woman, to check my room, bring my room service and what not. I wonder whether all live butlers are women. Serving is an art that the Filipinos have mastered well, male and female alike: my masseuse in Kabul and those in many other places of the world hail from here; my colleague’s mom is a nurse, one of the Philippines major exports; even the brother of our taxi driver who lives in LA is, he told us, “taking care of someone over there.”

Yesterday we arrived too late at our new hotel, after completing our third trip across town, to eat a meal at any of the hotel restaurants. Too pooped to explore the neighborhood eateries I ordered the only appealing item on the room service menu, beer-batter fish sticks and a local beer. After that I took a seas salt bath and watched TV right from the tub.

Breakfast on the 21st floor was arranged for all time zones and for people from other countries who only eat their own food. As a result it looked like breakfast, lunch and dinner were all served at the same time. I sampled pieces of Chinese, Arab, Japanese, and French breakfasts and left the restaurant too full for comfort. Buffets require such discipline.

The luxuries that surround us contrast starkly with the street kids that hang around McDonalds down the street and an enormous mall that is obscenely opulent with more food than whole villages could consume in a week or maybe even a month. The kids are barefoot and smoke what appear to be cigarettes. When a loud honking Jollybee (a McDonald wannabee chain) parade came by the children clapped. But none of the Jollybee people whose heads were hidden underneath giant plastic hamburgers and chicken patties, handed them anything edible.

The mall is big (though not the biggest one in Asia which I am told is nearby) and rather intense if you don’t like loud blaring music, cellphone company frenzies or frantic food courts. We were looking for a printing place, like Copycat or Kinkos but all we could find was a sketchy internet café – it looked liked a great source for viruses.

Lunch and dinner were Japanese – I am in seventh heaven as Japanese is my favorite cuisine. We are clearly in the biosphere of Japan with restaurants serving all my favorite foods both inside and outside the hotel, in the mall, take out, eat in and for breakfast.

After lunch we traveled across town to pick up the course certificates which DHL had delivered to our new hotel on the other side of town. We had not quite planned it that way but one of the signatories, staying in the old hotel, is travelling tomorrow early in the morning and needs to sign them tonight. This required a 3 hour round trip which took up the entire afternoon. When the day is over and we are settled in our posh rooms we will have spent more than four hours motoring across town.

The ride to our new hotel seemed interminable but at least we got to see what Manila looks like. Each time we saw a clump of posh high rises we perked up hoping we had reached our destination. But there are many clumps like that, alternated by low rise popular neighborhoods. Sometimes it felt like we were going around in circles, alternating posh and not posh. We were looking for a sign of the ocean but only occasionally seeing dirty and water-hyacinth-infested waterways.

My colleague M gets car sick in stop and go traffic – an occupational hazard in our line of work. She has to have a carbonated drink handy, and ideally a waterproof baggie. She held her head up high staring at points in front of us while I babbled along telling her all the great sights she missed on the side.

Back at our old hotel, while M took care of very slowly conducted financial transactions, I met with a formidable disability rights advocate who rolled herself into the restaurant with the same determination that she has apparently used to get to her present senior government position. This was supposed to be a brief meeting about next week’s program which she will open and close. She kept us spellbound for hours about how she got to her current place in the hierarchy in spite of all the obstacles put in her way. Later we learned that her teenage daughter had been waiting in the car outside. I could just hear her say, “mo-om, what took you so long!” followed by a long face for the rest of the ride home.

This morning we checked out of the hotel to move into phase two of our stay here. We are going from a three star to a five star hotel, moving up from a run down (but not unsafe) commercial neighborhood to a near oceanfront high rise surrounded by a shopping-mall, countless Pacific Rim restaurants and night clubs.

Our friendly wanna-be posh three star hotel was perfectly fine although the doors to our apartments (a kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom) were a bit too flimsy and some elementary things like bedside lamps and outlets missing. The place is awash with uniformed staff, all very friendly and well trained to serve. As if there weren’t enough people to serve us, there are hospitality industry trainees everywhere; all young women, petite, gorgeous, and well groomed. They stand in bunches at the reception, at the business center and in back of the training room, always smiling and saying hello every time you pass by them. They wear name tags that say ‘trainee’ underneath their cute or exotic names (Twinkle, Apple, Berneice (no typo), Fernyl).

I was wondering how they learned during their internship. I never saw them doing anything; they were always just standing there with their hands folded figleave style. And yet, when I asked them questions about their school, exams and internship they appeared to be quite advanced in their studies. They are learning by standing around and observing. It is one way, I suppose, to learn about ‘serving the customer.’

Our exposure to Manila, which we already knew is not the Philippines, has been very limited. The first two days of the wheelchair workshop kept us inside a windowless conference room. The practicum is taking place the remaining three days at the premises of a social enterprise located at the edge of Metro Manila. The place is run nearly entirely by people in wheelchairs. The core business is wheelchair manufacture and rehabilitation. But they do much more than that and the enterprise is constantly looking for employment opportunities for its graduates with the message that people in wheelchairs are perfectly capable to participate in the economy. Some grow hydroponic lettuce which is sold in the market; others provide data entry services for a Japanese company to name just a few of its income generating activities.

The wheelchair providers in the course are very animated as they apply their skills to real life challenges and dilemmas such as ramps and stairs. They also have to test their skills on people they don’t know, assessing them and then choosing the best chair and adjusting it for a perfect fit. People are excited as they learn things that are relevant to their job and important for their clients. It’s a very good course.

Lunch at the practicum venue is less fancy than at the hotel. We eat what the kitchen prepared, still copious but served camp style. This is not a place for vegetarians. Pork seems to be the source of animal protein of choice (at least for Christians) and is prepared in a thousand different ways: knuckles, skin with layers of fat alternated with meat, pork bellies, chops, rinds, ribs,etc. Second place is for fish, usually deep fried – a little greasy for breakfast. And then of course there is always rice.

The flight from Detroit to Nagoya took about 15 hours. It felt like an eternity; only the two hours that I slept went quickly. I was lucky to have garnered an aisle seat, albeit it way in the back of a very full plane, a double decker Boeing. I was one of many people who had asked for a wheelchair. This meant that an army of wheelchair handlers were waiting for us at the jetway in Nagoya. With the dozen or so cleaners who descended on our plane it was quite a crowd that welcomed us, with deep bows, smiles and words of welcome. The Japanese have this way of making you very welcome.

The wait in Japan was short, so was the last leg of the trip, a mere three hours in southwesterly direction. After the orderliness of the Japanese airport experience, Manila was the opposite – the worst airport in Asia said the hotel driver with a smile as if he was proud of the qualification (I am actually not sure it is true – the experience was comparable to old Delhi airport).

It seemed like all the jumbos from Asia and Europe had landed in Manila at the same time. Hordes of people thronged towards the immigration booths and filled all the empty spaces around the luggage carousels. The wheelchair was a godsend as I was able to sit through the next two hours, which is how long it took to get through immigration, waiting for luggage in a huge, hot and cacophonous hall and then waiting for the hotel pick-up bus outside in a traffic jam of luggage carts in the hot and humid night air. By 1:30 AM Monday morning (12:30 PM Sunday Boston time) I tumbled into bed, 29 hours after I left home.

And now it is the end of Monday here in the Philippines while the day is just starting at home. We observed day one of a five-day training for wheelchair providers, the program for which I designed a deck of training of trainers cards a year ago. I did not experience much of the Philippines, having been most of the day in a conference room that only has the illusion of daylight (yellow fluorescent lights behind opaque windows). Outside it was overcast and raining which I discovered when getting out to acquire a simcard at the local Mini Mart. This was not a great experience because of poor customer service combined with me being impatient.

The highlight of the day is yet to come. I scheduled a 90 minute massage after dinner. The challenge is staying up until 7:30. If I succeed I surely will fall asleep during the massage.