Week 2

A week with interesting impressions and sometimes emotional ups and downs, but overall very good:

More home visits

We are pleased that many parents or sometimes the children themselves request support from Batulong - after they have completed the registration form and attached copies of their report cards, we visit them. Everyone is poor, but some are so destitute that we are admitting all their children at Batulong, which we don't normally do. Currently, we are dealing with the case of a 30-year-old woman who is with a 64-year-old man. Both are sick, his heart and her condition from the hospital is not completely clear. It is certain that she has tapeworms, her gallbladder is enlarged, and she has problems with her kidneys. Since the copy of the doctor's prescription cannot be read anymore, our social worker Cherry will go to the hospital next week with Daisy again and try to get an appointment. All of their children will be supported by Batulong and will receive a daily lunch to ensure that they are adequately nourished.

Shoe Recyclers

During our home visits, we encounter some people on a small street in the resettlement area who recycle shoes from the used clothing collection. The shoes are scrubbed and washed in front of the houses and dried in the sun. And now comes the most exciting part: online sales/auctions of the shoes take place twice a week in the house. The sellers show the shoes from all sides in a mobile video broadcast and point out their advantages or defects. A few minutes later, the finalization takes place. It's great that these shoes find new owners! Unfortunately, there is no sewage system here and the soapy water goes directly into a water channel. The sight of all the waste is unfortunately normal here - the less privileged Filipinos don't seem to be bothered by the waste...

Marivic

We visit Marivic (schizophrenic) and talk to her parents and her teenage daughters. Marivic herself is lying in her shack (still chained up ;-( ) and doesn't want to talk to us, she turns her back on us. She mumbles something from time to time (she wants Mäge to lie down next to her !!), but not related to our conversation. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that she is more mentally impaired than we thought. Nevertheless, we will attempt to have her eat at our center next week. For this, we will engage two escorts (our caretaker's husband and Batulong board member Jelyn) who will pick her up at 12 and drive her to the Batulong center, "guard" her during the meal, and then take her back home. If she behaves, doesn't break anything, and doesn't attack anyone, we can repeat these outings.

P.N.Roa meeting

We meet with the president of the homeowners' association, a representative of the original landowners, and one of our neighbors, a wealthy businessman, for a discussion regarding the entrance gate to our street. It is an surprisingly good meeting without much blah blah. Our concern that the children and parents have access to our Batulong center is well understood. However, their main concern is safety, and our Yakal street is special because it is adjacent to the resettlement area. Unfortunately, things are occasionally destroyed or garbage is thrown onto our street. At the moment, it is particularly important that unauthorized people do not enter the residential area. A cost estimate for a new, better gate will be made and Batulong will contribute to the material costs.

Accounting

It's time for Cherry Mae to learn the accounting part of Batulong's work: After a short Excel introduction from me, Keno introduces the new all-rounder to the first steps of bookkeeping. The goal is for her to be able to continue our charity work independently in case Keno is absent.

Generally, our staff members have a good understanding and correctly carry out the work steps in our Batulong daily routine. But there are situations where we realize that they didn't understand an instruction at all (e.g. cyber security in email communication), even though we talked about it for a long time. We also can't really understand why, for example, Keno, with a university degree, listens to an older woman's advice rather than quickly googling! He seems to have swallowed a lot of hot air and now gives up eating chicken because our caretaker told him so! There are probably still old cultural patterns at play, that one follows the advice of the "elders." People believe stories more than facts, so one of our biggest concerns is to combat misinformation, for example regarding contraception.

But there are unfortunately also situations where we have to surrender because someone is not willing to change their perspective. That Thata only allowed a diagnosis 2 years later, when the metastases were causing problems, despite knowing about her breast cancer, and that the chemotherapy could then be initiated much too late and an operation is not an option for Thata, she still considers the right path in retrospect.

New Batulong children

It's nice to see many applications for support coming in again. Very rarely do we have to reject an application because the applicant's monthly income is too high (more than 170 Swiss francs per month). When we return in a week, there will be many home visits again!

Vacation

Mäge and I are taking a week's vacation on Camiguin. Unfortunately, Mäge gets sick and has had a fever for a few days now (without any other symptoms). We hope it's just a kind of cold due to the air-conditioned bus ride and that the fever will soon go down! For the friends of diving pictures, there will be a separate blog entry 😊