Province of Iloilo

Woke up a bit earlier today, excited to try out a day of family medicine. This is basically providing community healthcare to people in rural places and covering GP types of things. We met Joy at the work the world office at 8am and went to the family medicine office with her to meet the doctor we would be with. He wasn’t there so she told us to wait there. Got to about 9am and still no sign of him. We were given a booklet about animal bites management to read by one of the other doctors in there so we looked at that to pass some time. Eventually at about 9.20am he showed up. We then followed him out to a taxi to take us to the bus terminal. We then got on a bus to take us to another town. This bus was a lot less fancy than the ones we had been using for Boracay, no aircon or WiFi sadly. We arrived at a town (of which I don’t know the name) and then picked up some snacks before getting on a trike to take us to the actually community place. The trike had very little space and Emma and I had to really squeeze in together. After struggling up a few hills we finally got to our destination. Here we found a tiny church with a clinic room attached to the back of it. We were properly out in the middle of nowhere. We were introduced to the person who runs the clinics and then told there weren’t actually any patients to be seen today, classic. We sat around for a while and then eventually headed off to another clinic further up the road. Also no patients here, apparently because of the “festival” that’s going on. From here we were taken to a view point which overlooked a river and was very pretty. However the doctor then told us that the reason students haven’t been allowed to do family medicine for the last couple of years is because rebels kept coming down into the towns and trying to kidnap people, great! We were told that they didn’t do that anymore so not to worry, too late!
Thankfully we left reasonably soon and headed back on a trike, this time to go to the festival.
Arrived at a town called Guimbal which is on the coast. Here we found boards of people all here to watch some boat racing. At this point we were told we were the only doctors here and that we were going to be the first aiders for the event! We were taken to a table and given some food and drinks, which the doctor wouldn’t let us pay for. We were then taken to sit with the other first aiders, a very surreal experience. We went to explore a bit and look around the festival. We were even more of a novelty here than at other places! Lots of waving children and people staring. After a while we were told to come sit on the beach with the other first aiders to watch the main event - the championship final boat race. It was all very exciting, some of the boats stalled and people would overtake, going round corners looked particularly tricky as they had to put their hands into the water to change the boat’s direction quickly. The race was won by the yellow boat and everyone seemed very happy!
We were then told to go and take a seat in the arena looking area ready to watch the show. We were given free chocolate ice creams and sat waiting excitedly. At this point they were watering the floor in the arena area and we weren’t really sure why. For some reason we were moved over to the other side of the arena which later became apparent that it was because we were moved to sit on the “celebrity” side along with various mayors and Secretaries of State! We then sat for a long time while various prizes were handed out, for the racing and some body and canvas paintings that had been done. We thought the show would then start... no! 2 guys came out with what looked like massive rakes and spent about 20 mins raking the pre watered sand, also have no idea why. Once this was done we thought surely the show would start. No, now it was time for the guest speaker. This was some secretary of state person who was first introduced for about 20 mins, then spoke himself for about 45 then someone else joined in. All in all they were talking for about 2 hours and it was basically all propaganda about what a good job they’d done! We were getting very fed up and wanted to leave at this point but this wasn’t an option as we weren’t even sure where we were. There was an odd moment of excitement when I felt something on my face, went to move it and realised it was a gecko crawling over me. It completely freaked me out and I may have screamed a bit and disturbed the speeches, oops!
Eventually the performance started. It was a reenactment of the Moro Raids (whatever they are). It was an award winning tribal dance from some competition last year. They were actually very good! Very dramatic, lots of crying and fake blood. This eventually finished at around 6 and so we were then able to start heading back. We had to get a trike to the main town, then a bus for 1 hour, then a taxi back to the house. Made it back at around 7.30 which was an hour late for dinner on bbq and karaoke night! We grabbed some food and then went to go shower and get ready because we had decided it was “extra night” where you had to dress up fancy. I wore my sequin dress and so did Aussie Emma so we were twinnies. We drank sangria, did karaoke and stayed up til midnight having fun playing cards and drinking games.Read more