Pinipig and Ylang-Ylang

Quite a full week in the Philippines. We headed out of Manila on Wednesday up the General MacArthur highway (yes, that General MacArthur)first up to Angeles to pay a visit to the Regional Health Director of Tarlac Province. Angeles is quite an interesting place- and in my guide book says that Angeles is synonymous with sex in the Philippines. Why you ask? Well Clark Air Force Base used to operate here from 1903 to 1991 and was at its peak the largest American base overseas. In its heyday it obviously had a lot of American military officers there which prompted a large bar and "gentlemen's club" scene in Angeles. Unfortunately, the gentlemen's club culture still remains in Angeles even though the base has been closed for nearly 20 years. The hotel where we stayed was like a throw-back to the late 50's and early 60's in the U.S. The architecture and layout, the surrounding houses with carports. You could almost imagine what it would have been like.

On Thursday we drove up to Tarlac City- the capital of the Province. Interestingly the route we took from Angeles to Tarlac was also the route of the Bataan Death March that occurred in 1942. My father's biological father, Wilbur Kelly Smith, survived the Bataan Death March- he was a Japanese prisoner of war and survived the 60 mile trek where he and fellow servicemen (American and Filipinos) endured horrible torture. It was meaningful for me to be able to be here in the Philippines and imagine what he must have gone through in April of 1942. Read more here: Wikipedia Bataan Death March entry.

We made it to Tarlac and headed out to visit a few health facilities in the morning and afternoon. My team of four visited the municipalities of Paniqui and Anao. In Paniqui we visited a small Rural Health Unit staffed all by women- nurses, midwives, and one doctor. We spoke with them about the availability of family planning commodities (contraceptives)- of which they had very little. Fortunately, there are private pharmacies in Paniqui where women can buy contraceptives, but those women who are poor and can't afford those cannot receive free products at the Health Unit because the Health Unit doesn't have any. It's a situation that my colleague and I in conjunction with the Dept of Health here are trying to remedy. After our visit, our lovely hosts treated us to Pinipig (basically sticky rice that is burnt and then combined with coconut milk and wrapped in a banana leaf) and Buko juice (coconut juice/water- with pieces of young coconut meat in it). What a treat!

After lunch in Paniqui, we drove to Anao- a smaller municipality in Tarlac province. Driving into Anao the roads were lined with Ylang-ylang trees (in the Philippines they pronounce this E-Long e-long). Central to Anao's economic industry is the production of ylang-ylang oil from the flowers of the trees; the oil is exported all over the world as a primary ingredient for many perfumes. We again were greeted by a very lovely staff of female midwives and nurses and one doctor at the Rural Health Unit in Anao. They faced similar commodity availability problems just like Paniqui- though in Anao they were receiving some free donations of oral contraceptives and injectable contraceptives from UNFPA. Our hostesses were so warm and welcoming and left us with a little souvenir- a bottle of ylang-ylang perfume! How lucky was I! Not only to have met and learned from these wonderful, hard-working women but to also have been graced with their warm welcome. I hope that we can do good work here to repay those wonderful women and to serve all the women in need here.