Impressions of the Philippines
Carol Roth — Campbell Croft, ON
Imagine:
- Beautiful, gentle, dark-eyed, black-haired children who with shyness, gratefulness, joy, excitement, and exuberance look into my eyes and soul while blessing me and bringing to my heart such humility and indescribable emotions.
- The overwhelming numbers of families living in extreme poverty and the joy and thankfulness of the parents for your gift of love for their children.
- The determination of the Filipinos to survive in a difficult environment (heat, humidity, earthquakes, and volcanoes) with hope to improve their life and the lives of their children.
- The politeness and respect shown by the children and adults not only at distribution sites, but in local stores and restaurants as well.
- Incredible traffic — especially in Manila — with few stop lights and five and six lanes of trucks, buses, cars, vans, tricycles, bicycles, mopeds, jeepneys, and pedestrians all swerving to change lanes at the fastest speed possible.
- Police escorts (three motorbikes) to a distribution site leading us through the maze of traffic with sirens blaring and cutting off oncoming traffic by serpentining down the middle lane and banging on the vehicles to move over so we could travel on the opposite side or even the middle of the street.
- The incredible organization and hospitality of the overseas volunteers led by Dr. Ito Torres, who made sure we had thirty to fifty additional volunteers at every distribution site so all would run smoothly and safely.
- Our Canadian travelling volunteer team, a group who were new to each other but worked so well together with fun and enthusiasm.
