Evacu-cation!

As no doubt many of you have heard, the "World's Largest Pimple" (aka. Mt. Mayon) has reached alert level 4. Whenever a Philippine volcano reaches level 5, we say it is "pulling a 'tubo," as in Pinatubo. That is local street slang for losing your cool. No one wants to be caught in public pulling a 'tubo; imagine your girlfriend finding out you have skid-marks on the night you planned to propose. But I digress.

The mountain has started doing its thing and as a result, Peace Corps started doing their's: I have been evacuated from lovely, sunny, pollution-and-tricycle-free Legazpi City to Donsol. Donsol, as you may know, is the Whale-Shark capitol of the Philippines. It is also home to many quiet, peaceful beach resorts far from earshot of anything but the gentle lull of the "Inside Sea," for lack of a better name. As a result of this much more desirable locale, I have been spending most of my days sitting in a hammock, reading or doing some design work on one of my many proverbial "irons in the fire."

The official line is that, while the volcano itself may not pose any immediate danger to my place of residence, the hordes of panicky people in the event of a serious catastrophe would pose a grave danger considering how poorly I blend in here.

Although I am not doing real, honest, sit-down-and-wrack-your-brain-until-it-hurts kinda work, I have been learning about cultural quirks while sitting on the beach. During the calmer weather of the summer months, the ocean water surrounding the Philippines appear as large sheets of glass, occasionally disturbed by a passing Butanding (read: Whale Shark). The smooth seas make smooth sailing and easy fishing a regular part of life. When the winds pick up, at least in Sorsogon, the locals call it "Habagat" (I think that is how it is spelled). Habagat, while I don't know the origins, could easily serve as a worthy synonym for hunger and/or poverty.

When the water is choppy the fish hide and the fisherman follow suit. When the fish are no longer plentiful, the fish markets have little to sell. When the fish markets try to raise their prices to counteract the increased demand, the stubborn local consumer refuses to buy fish that are even 10 pesos more expensive and so the market cannot sell. There are no fish, the local commerce is screwed, and the words "poor" and "hungry" become rather prevalent all over town.

Now, to sound like an asshole tourist, I should point out that while the locals are having issues with the bare necessities, the weather is actually rather pleasant. There is a constant on-shore breeze, the skies are cloudy and, honestly, it is the perfect temperature for sitting in a hammock reading a book. I empathize, and I am actually trying to get some work done to help people out instead of sitting around like a bump on a log, but that doesn't change the fact that this is probably the perfect time to have been evacuated.

Oh well, back to the hammock for me.

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