Last night wasn’t so good. I’m not sure why, but I had a faint stomachache when I went to bed. I thought it was just gas, but about 3 hours later I had to make a run for the toilet to ride the number two train to Brown Town for about 30 minutes. Once my stomach felt fairly stable I went back to bed. I woke up with a little remnant of the stomach pain, but no sign of the “train”. This made the morning very bad. I didn’t have an appetite for breakfast so I didn’t eat much and then that lead to me feeling weak on the job while I was relocating the water pipe under the house.

After lunch I took a quick nap and then reluctantly headed back across the river. I had just finished gluing all the PVC together just as it started to rain. We scrambled to get all the tools in and electronics covered up. There wasn’t any part of the roof done and the tarps we had up were gathering water and then dumping inside the house. We got one smaller tarp on the roof so it would shed water outside the house and that made it better in that one section. Of course, soon after we got the tarp situated, it stopped raining. The owner of the house was very upset and frustrated that so much of his electronic equipment had gotten wet. Sandy and Larry got on the roof and started putting the Metalplas down to assuage his frustration. I helped him clean up the wet stuff then jumped back and forth getting stuff for Andy/Sam, and Larry/Sandy.

Around 4:30 pm it started to sprinkle again, so I got on the roof with the last tarp we had and started spreading it out just as it started to downpour. Andy and Sam came over and helped and in about 45 minutes we had it all situated. It was pretty surprising that it was so pleasant to work in a downpour like that. Walking back to the house it rained even harder. We were all in good spirits by then and I was feeling much better after having my stomach back to normal and being cooled off by the heavy rain.

Back at the house, one of the missionaries was bathing under the water falling off his roof. Since I was already soaked from the downpour, I did the same and soaped up while the Palawano kids watched with curiosity. For dinner we had sweet and sour pork, garlic rice, cabbage in some sort of soy sauce, and bread. It was the best meal yet. Probably mostly because we had worked hard and I hadn’t been feeling well all day. We were short-handed today because the village water pump broke, so some of the guys went over to fix it and it took them the whole day. They were Gerry, Jim, Ed, Carol, and one of the missionaries. If we would have had them on the roof today, we may have been able to get a whole section done. Oh well, the villagers need water so that became a priority. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to take any pictures today.

We were up for breakfast (cereal and sticky buns) around 7 am. The milk for the cereal is from New Zealand so it tastes a little bit different. I wouldn’t just drink a glass of it, but it’s ok on cereal.

We had another devotion by Larry and then off to work around 8 am to start repairing the framing. A lot of the wood on the roof had rotted away and wasn’t stable to walk on, so you really had to be careful where you were stepping. There were huge carpenter bees that are about the size of a humming bird. They bore holes into the lumber on the house that looks like someone drilled a perfectly round hole about an inch in diameter. They leave their eggs and a worm in each hole and then seal it up. When the egg hatches, the new bee eats the worm and then bores its way out. There were several of these holes on one of the beams over the water pump, so we had to replace the whole beam because it sounded as though it might be hollow from all the holes and boring.

We had egg salad sandwiches for lunch, then back to work. Some of the roof started getting some Metalplas (corrugated plastic roofing material) on it. Larry and Sandy were working very well together while Gerry and Jim were struggling to get anything done. Jim was cutting the lumber and handing it up to Gerry who would then nail it into place. We called it a day around 5 pm and headed back to shower and eat dinner.

The two best parts of the workday are going to lunch and going to dinner. This is because you have to cross a river to get to and from the job site, so you take off your shoes and wade across perfectly cool and refreshing water. It feels so good on your feet. There is a part near the village shore where the rice paddies drain into the river. For some reason it is about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the river. That’s the best of the best.

Nilo hung around the job site pretty much everyday. He often came over with Liezel when she brought merienda (snack). He asked her one day, “Are you going to feed me today?” It broke her heart, but he’s known as the village beggar, so we were instructed by the missionary to not perpetuate his tendency to rely on handouts to survive.

Richard discovered my PSP and has not stopped bugging me to play it since. I let him play it one evening, and when his dad walked in, Richard called for his attention, “Look, Dad, this is Playstation! It’s so cool!” His dad replied to him, “Well, enjoy it while Casey’s here, cause I’m not buying you one!”

Andy and Sam were playing chess and we had a disagreement about castling on the king’s side. A seasoned player cleared it up and said I was wrong, so I decided to get a second opinion. After further review, the call still stands with me being wrong. I must have been taught the wrong rules back in 6th grade. That’s not too hard to believe.

We had sticky buns and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We had a gecko in our room last night. They make a pretty loud call that sounds like they’re saying ‘ge-ko’. I was told that each individual gecko says it the same number of times every time, however, this couldn’t be true unless there were at least 5 or 6 geckos living in our room. The first night it made the call 7 1/2 times, but other nights it was 4, 11, and other amounts. It seemed to like to make it’s call around midnight or 1 am, unfortunately. It woke me up nearly every night. I actually started to expect it each night and almost look forward to it. When I’m at home, I usually don’t get up in the middle of the night for anything. However, since I’ve been drinking so much water here, I need to get up every night around midnight or 1 am to visit the “little boys room”. The live-in gecko usually reminds me that I need to get up before the flood gates burst. That might be “TMI” for some people, so I apologize. Moving on.

Church was at 9 am and Al, Gerry, and Ed got up to speak while someone translated from English to Palawano. Gerry read two Psalms while both Al and Ed gave their testimonies of how they became Christians. We sang several Palawano songs that I recognized as English songs translated into Palawano. Nilo finally had some clothes on at church. Liezel gave him some of her clothes, and although they were clearly too large for him, it was a welcome sight to have him dressed properly. It isn’t common or culturally acceptable to the Palawanos for a 12-year-old boy to go running around naked, so I’m sure several of the villagers were also quite thankful for Liezel’s generosity.

After church, several boys from the village and most of the guys from our team went to the local water hole for a swim to cool off. It was a very hot day. Some of the Palawano boys stripped down to their “birthday suits” while others kept their shorts on to swim. The water was cool and very refreshing. It had a green color to it and wasn’t clear so I couldn’t see the rocky bottom. I sustained a minor cut on my right ankle. The little trail going there led us through some minor jungle and there were little stickers (hitchhikers) along the trail. The boys were picking them off and throwing them at the boy in front to stick in his hair. Al Al (a Palawano boy) threw a handful at my shirt and all 15 of them stuck like crazy glue.

We came back and went to the kindergarten graduation for the Palawano kids. Lynn is the teacher and made sure that every student got an award for something (best at math, best at counting, best behaved, etc.). It’s very bad to be “left out” in Palawano culture–more so than in the U.S. They are the cutest kids and they were so proud of their awards from Lynn. I took several pictures (here & here) walking back some of the older kids asked me to take some pictures of them. I later learned almost all of their names, but at this point, I hadn’t even been introduced. The girls of the village are very shy.

My camera proved to be the most valuable relational tool I had since I didn’t speak Palawano. I put my camera down and we started playing soccer with the boys. After soccer we played tackle football. Good fun and almost the whole village was out watching our sporting events. It was like the village olympics. Afterwards we went to the swimming hole again to cool off and bathe with soap and shampoo. I came back to find Nilo learning how to shave with Larry. Then we had a good dinner (potatoes, mashed potatoes, veggies, and pork) and then went to bed around 8:45 pm.

This morning we got up at about 7 am and ate then had a devotional by Larry. Every morning while we were in the village, Larry would give a 20-30 minute devotional. It was a great way to set the team morale in the right direction at the beginning of each day. When Larry was done, Sandy ran us through the way things were gonna work on the job site. There was to be shoes worn at all times, no careless throwing of tools or materials off of the roof without a ground spotter, small cuts/injuries were to be treated immediately to avoid infection, and most importantly, everyone was to drink more water than they could possibly imagine to avoid dehydration.

After the devotional and safety briefing, we headed across the river and began tearing off the tin roof around 9 am. It was probably around 95F with about 75% humidity. After about 10 minutes on the roof, I got dizzy and my legs began to shake. Sandy ordered me off the roof and told me to drink lots of water and “cool down”. About 2 liters of water later, I was feeling better, but not perfect. I didn’t go back on the roof, but instead I helped a missionary work on the water tower. We were replacing some rotted support beams that held up the four blue drums that provided the house with running water. There were tons of termites and rotted wood. Ants crawling all over the structure were the biggest I’ve ever seen. The new lumber we put up there was super dense and heavy. All the lumber came from trees that were cut down in the surrounding jungle, then 2×2, 2×4, and 2×8 pieces of lumber were shaped by a chain saw, then planed with an electrical planer before being used on the house. I�m not sure what kind of wood it was, but it took extra strength and extra hits with a hammer to get a nail to go into it. Water and sap were squirting out of where the nail went into the wood as we pounded away.

Several kids from the village were hanging around the job site when we started throwing off large sheets of rusted metal roofing. They weren’t in any danger, but one of the parents came over and was concerned that they might be injured so she shoed them back across the river and we had no more audience.

Lunch was tacos and merienda (snack) was crackers with cheese or peanut butter and iced tea. It rained during and after lunch, so we digested and waited for a clearing. Several of the guys took a siesta (nap).

Andy (a 21-year-old German missionary), Sam (Sandy’s 17-year-old son), and I have been talking a lot about different cultures and customs. The funniest so far was when Sam was talking about the beginning of the movie Gladiator and how the Romans defeated the Germans. When Sam brought this up, Andy very frankly rebutted, “No, I think that was the French.” Sam and I laughed so hard that it became a running joke with Sam and I to poke fun at Andy. Pretty much anything negative that we talked about from that point on, we teasingly say must have been done by/caused by/said by/made by the French. Andy claims that Germans don’t get along well with the French, and that most Germans view French men as gay. This became a source of much laughter throughout the trip as we would tease Andy about how silly it was to stereotype people in this way. The best razzing came when we found out that Andy was very into cars, especially German-made cars. His favorite is Porsche, so naturally, we used his line, “No, I think Porsche is made by the French.” He was utterly amazed that we would insult the Porsche name by claiming it was French. I think he caught onto our sarcastic tone after about 10 minutes. He’s a good guy to put up with our teasing. He also is very good at picking up English after speaking it for only 4 months.

We finished working about 5:15 pm. We had completed the removal of the metal roof, replaced the framing over the water pump, and built the first bracing around the water tower. Sam and I got our first experience with a Saws All (a tool name that is very difficult for Andy to say with his German accent, it sounds like he’s saying “sars-are”). We both cut small slices off of the bracing on the water tower, but Sam’s line was crooked and mine was worse yet.

One of the missionaries kicked off his shoes after lunch and said, “I hate shoes. I can’t work in them.” It made me very nervous because there were so many nails in the grass. Luckily he didn’t step on any the whole trip, but I did. It stuck in the bottom of my shoe but I felt it before I put all my weight on that foot. If I hadn’t felt it, I would have had to get a tetanus shot for sure. It left a little cut on the bottom of my foot, but I didn’t notice it until two days later. After we got back to the village, I took lots of pictures of the kids. Most of them were reluctant to smile and one boy in yellow clothes would not get into the picture without much persistent coaxing. For dinner we had fish, corn, rice, and salad. We went to bed around 9 pm.

We got up at 4 am to eat breakfast and pack the bus. The ride down to the airfield was long, but nice. We got to see a lot of the countryside and people in the smaller settlements/towns. We stopped every once in a while to check the bus and to let Sam get some air cause he was sick. The road was sometimes paved, sometimes gravel, and sometimes paved in the middle but with gravel on the sides. Mounds of dirt piled on one side of the road made for interesting passing with oncoming traffic. We got to the grass airstrip in about 4 hours and 45 minutes.

The weather at the airfield was more pleasant than it was in Puerto. No rain yet. The plane wasn’t back when we arrived, so we unloaded the bus and weighed ourselves and cargo. The plane could only carry 400 kg per trip so the cargo has to be very accurate. Gary is the pilot. His wife Cynthia had several treats for us to eat and drink while we waited. Banana bread, sticky rice, bananas, roasted peanuts, and pineapple. The plane needed 4 trips to the tribe to get all the people and gear transferred. The home at the airfield was very nice and “tropical feeling”. I flew in on the last flight with Al and Larry. It was a very smooth flight from liftoff to landing. Gary, the pilot, made the landing more interesting by coming in from the west where the hill at the end of the landing strip made a straight landing impossible. We swooped in from the side and straightened out at the moment just before touchdown. The stall buzzer went off just before landing, just as Larry had talked about on our way to LAX.

We unloaded and crossed the river into the village. Lots of helpers, mostly children, came to help carry gear and say hello. Sam, Larry, Andy, and Richard were playing catch with a football. The villagers were watching timidly and with occasional smiles when the ball was dropped or landed in the stream. I met Nilo who I would later find out was a 12 year old boy here and is very unfortunate health-wise and money-wise. Nonetheless he is very friendly (the most friendly) and smiles a lot. He is wearing only a cotton vest that barely covers his private parts. Not at all when he is jumping around or rolling on the ground. I also met Jun Jun who seemed a little standoffish. He looks about 15 or 16 (I later found out that he was 16). We ate dinner and it was Filipino food. It was very good Pancit Canton and Pancit Behon. We all went to bed after dinner at about 8:30 pm.