I’ve been in Los Baños for just over a month now – almost long enough to consider myself a local I’d say . Los Baños is a University town located about an hour and a half south of Manila (on good traffic days). It is situated at the base of a dormant volcano, Mount Makiling, which gives the town some beautiful scenery, and lots of hiking options. The University of the Philippines in Los Baños was built on the sloping hills of the mountain. The other CAPI intern Matt and myself settled into a nice townhouse on campus, owned by the company that owns our office, SEARCA (South East Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture). It’s a three bedroom, two story place that Matt and I share with a French student working on her master’s thesis, Juliette.

Since it’s located at the back of the university up the mountain side, we enjoy a pretty view and a quiet location; it also happens to be a short walk from work which is an added bonus. The only downfall is that it is a bit of a trek to town, which can be a hassle. Being located a bit farther out of town means that our daily sounds of jeepneys, motorcycles, and car horns are replaced by the more rural noises of dogs barking, children playing, and birds chirping. Like almost every town in the Philippines the people are very friendly, and waving or saying hello to people on the street is a regular occurrence.

We have five regular meals a day, with two or three “snacks” depending on who you’re with. They are: breakfast-8am; morning snack-10am; lunch-12pm; marienda-3pm; and dinner at around 6pm, but times may vary. Sometimes there is also an 8 to 9pm snack and a –don’t tell anyone but I’m sneaking more food– snack around 11 to 12am. Rice is your main dish with the side plates varying on what time of day it is. We tend to eat out a lot as it is usually the same price as staying at home and cooking; the cheapest lunch being 40 pesos (or around 90 cents), and the most expensive at around 200 Pesos ($4.50). That being said, it’s very difficult to get vegetables with your meals as they’re mostly just meat and rice; so we found that it’s better to buy greens at the market and cook them at home (I’ve heard it’s almost impossible to be a vegetarian here).

Our organization is called WorldFish, and I’ve already talked a bit about what they do in my previous podcast (listen in!).  There are 15 of us that work at the office; our main boss Ma’am Maripaz is the head director for all of South-East Asia; and under her is Sir Len, who Matt and I report to on a day-to-day basis as he shares our office room. They are all very hard workers, but still know how to laugh and have fun in the office, especially during marienda, which makes it a very nice and welcoming atmosphere.

One of my specific tasks for the moment is to help with a poverty assessment project that they are doing for three separate regions in the country. It is part of a massive program to improve the lives of 15 million poor and vulnerable people over the next six years and they are planning to have that number increased to 50 million by 2022. They are working on three aquatic agricultural systems: Asia’s mega deltas; the Coral Triangle region of the South Pacific; and the freshwater floodplains, rivers and lakes of sub-Saharan Africa. There is a conference in Malaysia on July 19th that we’re working towards.

My assigned area in this project is a province in Mindanao called Surigao Del Sur. My job is to get a good overview of poverty indicators and make a poverty map of the region. Once we have the poverty map we then find all the materials we can on anti-poverty programs, livelihood programs or government support programs that are already implemented in the area. It’s cool, but the work is tiring. I have never had to sit at a computer and search the internet for around nine hours a day before. It has made me realize that I never want to have a job where I just sit around and stare at a screen! After we submit our proposals we’ve been told that we can visit our sites, but since Surigao del Sur is in Mindanao (off limits for Canadian intern travel) I don’t think I’ll be able to go, which is unfortunate.

My main project (the one I will be working on throughout the six months) is researching food security and food safety. The first month will be just literature searching; I will find out things like what the test requirements for food processing plants are for Canada, the US and the EU, then I will submit a draft report on those topics. My next five months will be spent in three different food processing plants in the country. I will be documenting food testing and standards, how it has evolved from previous testing methods, and how it compares to the Canadian, European, and American standards. If it doesn’t make the requirements, I will explore and suggest new methods so that the Filipino fish markets can export their products to different countries while still being competitive enough to compete with other countries’ products. After or during my research I will write a paper documenting my findings, mostly highlighting the improvements from the past, and comparing them to American standards and subsequently giving advice on how to implement new tests in order to be able to compete in the international market.

We also experienced our first typhoon since being here, it was called Typhoon Conson. It was strange because no one seemed to know about it. We were okay in our house, but a massive tree took out the power lines down the road so we were without power for just over 24 hours. One of our co-workers also experienced flooding in her house. We found out later that 23 people died and 59 were reported missing. It was a pretty big eye opener in that even though we may have been safe, there are lots of people who weren’t so lucky. It makes you realize how serious the situation can get, and how lucky we are to have a house, and live where we do.

It’s strange to be back here in the Philippines after five years. There are still many similarities but also a lot of differences. I find it easier to slip back into the culture and remember things that I thought were forgotten forever. The language is coming back easier than expected which is also nice. Things like food, the heat, and the culture are easy to re-adapt to; but there are some other things that I didn’t expect. It’s strange being back in the country in a working capacity instead of a studying one; and to be treated as an adult instead of a child is also interesting (last time I was only 17). There are completely different dynamics for some aspects of Filipino living/culture that I was completely oblivious to the first time around.

All in all, it is amazing to be back. The work that I have ahead of me will be challenging in more ways than one, and I’m going to have to push myself harder than I have in the past. But I think that in return I’m in for an incredible five months – better even than I expected.

Until next time,

Ingat, (Take Care, in Tagalog)

-Steph