Well, I have yet to see any coverage about the landslide on television, but it’s made the rounds on the internet. Just about every person who knows that I’m going to the Philippines has called, emailed or sent up smoke signals to me and my immediate family. Everyone seems to be terrified that this could happen to me!!!
I think it’s important to remember that any living environment has its dangers and that peace corps works to keep us as safe as possible- they invest a lot of money in us to let us live in danger. There’s a google group for peace corps volunteers in the Philippines (past, present and future) and a RPCV, Diannah, has some words of wisdom that I’d like to share:
Please don’t let the publicity around the landslides (or any other calamity) keep you out of the Peace Corps or the Philippines. That would be a huge, unnecessary shame. Instead, it reinforces the value and need for Peace Corps in developing countries.
The disasters do happen and (in my opinion) are not exaggerated by the press. The “exaggeration” tends to be more in the implication that every Philippine event that hits the press includes the whole country. Disasters are usually isolated to a particular high-risk area. And Peace Corps is very vigilant about keeping us out of high-risk areas and in monitoring our safety.
Natural disasters that, in the U.S., might cause 50 fatalities can cause 1,500 in the Philippines. People are forced by poverty to live in situations that aren’t safe, such as flood-prone areas (read: a slum on the river). Peace Corps Volunteers aren’t.
I was in Manila during an earthquake that made U.S. news and was epicentered near Manila. I woke up with vague memories of wishing the girl in the upper bunk at the Pension would hurry up and get settled in. I found out later in the day via Internet that a building undergoing construction somewhere in Manila had dropped some junk on passers-by. I wouldn’t even have known about it except for the Internet.
Every major calamity I “encountered” in the Philippines was about like that: close to a non-event. I experienced tornadoes in Oklahoma that were far worse than anything that happened to me in the Philippines.
The Philippines has very poor disaster preparedness, prevention, and recovery. Landslides, for instance, are usually caused by illegal (environmentally careless) logging. A large element of Filipinos’ willingness to engage in illegal logging is poverty and exploitation of that poverty by non-impoverished businessmen. Poverty IS why Peace Corps is in developing countries.
Diannah Neal
Bicol 2003-05