Eugene Macalinga

Sunrise was at 5:59am today.

Our group is not yet used to earlier mornings. Sunrise before 6 in the morning is unheard of and not usually experienced in Singapore.

Our day started with early breakfast at 7:30. By 8:30 we were off to our 1st ocular visit (recci for reconnaissance as more popularly used in Singapore) at Cabug site. We inspected our construction site, had a short briefing about the use of technology to improved the housing structure against the environment and strong typhoon. We also visited the houses we help built 5 years ago and with our trip banner, we took a group photo with the GK houses as our background.

We spent another hour mingling with the house beneficiaries and a lady even freshly picked papaya from her house garden and peeled it for us. Such generosity from someone who has so much less :) On the side, students were so amused with the scenery and the animals freely roaming in the farms and in the sugarcane plantation. Chickens, goats, water buffaloes, dogs, and whatnot were not in cages, my students were amazed as they were more familiar seeing these animals inside the zoo.

Then we visited the ICM site, a mix of GK houses and informal settlers. The walk thru was an eye opener for most of my students as some of them had not seen a slum area before. As a feedback, some said that they've never seen so much divide in socio-economic status. They described it as the left side of the street as slum area, and right side of the street as a gated community with huge mansions.

The afternoon was spent for reflection and debrief. A quick visit to the grocery before a sumptuous dinner. Building our 1st house tomorrow!Read more