The end of my first week at site!

I know that many people read this post regularly and want to hear what I have to say, but I am only one person and can only get to the internet so often (this week it was 5 times...giggle).

Now that I have been sworn-in officially as a volunteer, I have moved in with a new host family. Peace Corps requires that I live with them for the first 3 months of service, although "living with" is a bit of a relative term in this case. The family I am living with is a college professor, her mid 60's father and the house help. The time I spend with them has sofar been limited to meals because she works a ton and so do I; there is little family time, unlike the Francias (my host family from training).

Many people have been quoted as saying that the kids are the best part of Peace Corps. Wherever you are in the world, children are happy and unaware. My project is not particularly grassroots development and such, I will not get to work with that many kids. I really feel as though I am working at a US office, but living here in the Philippines. It is nice, but I think it will be more of a challenge to make friends when my times is mostly spent at a job not near my community.

My job. It is awesome. I feel like some kind of superhero out of a movie. A character Tom Cruise might play (or that Julia Roberts did play). During the first week, I was thrown into the mix of things and told what my project is and given very important work.

[Names have been changed to prevent detection of my exact location by potentially interested parties]

There is a mine owned by Bill's Mining Company. Bill's Mining Company has a contract with the local government to operate their mine while maintaining locally required environmental standards. Recently, a whole lot of fish died on the island of Punga-Punga where the mine is located. Local reactions say it is due to the mercury and cyanide being leeched into the groundwater through improper environmental controls.

A commission at my university is organized and recommends, through its findings, that the mine have its environmental license revoked and it be shut down. Bill's Mining Company says "Billshit! We don't even use mercury for our mining (even though it is the preferred reactant for the extraction of precious metals in the mining industry)! We have been an upstanding young mine who is just looking to make a dollar in this harsh world of ours!" The commission's recommendation is passed to our beloved president Georgiana Madeline Areyousleeping who, by the way, has not had a hint of corruption on her record except that pesky tape that accused her of vote buying surfaced this year. GMA says "Nope. I think it is in the best interests of the Philippines [Read Philippine Businesses not people] that the mine stay open. Sorry local fisherman, you guys are SOL!"

Meanwhile, no one will buy any of the fish from Punga-Punga because all the local sellers and consumers are afraid of that big scary "M" word contaminating the breakfasts, lunches and dinners of their children. And we know that when push comes to shove, it is all about the children anyway. So, the fisherman are out of business and another study done by my university has shown that the water sources on the end of the island near the mine have tested positive for Mercury and Cyanide (don't forget, Bill's Mining Company denied any sort of mercury use on the island)

Enter Page. The superhero. Or at least the newbie environmental engineer who has a degree, a pocket full of dreams and a set of sandals that smell oddly like corn chips that have been in someone's armpit for a couple of months.
Page says "I can't go faster than a speeding bullet, but I can help you test, scientifically, all the wells on the island. We can show that the bastards at the bastard mining company are lying through their bastard teeth about local contamination. We can make a study that could potentially be used in court (depending on how we design it)."
Page's university says "Yay! Now can you get my kitten out of that tree?"
Page says "No. The nature of sustainable development is that you are helping people help themselves (Translation: I am afraid of heights, get your own damn kitty)."

The long and the short of things are that I need to help them design and implement a study that could potentially be used in court against the mine, or at the very least be good information for the citizenry of Punga-Punga and the surrounding province.

This is the first project. I have been here a week. God this job is gonna be awesome.