Empty street on my first early morning in Davao.
(Written on January 6th, 2015)
We have just arrived in Davao and thankfully I had two very lovely companions – Myshel and Zarina – that received a warm Davao welcome by Madonna’s “Material girl” (there is a certain irony to that). Our taxi driver was a bit terrified by the amount of luggage we (Me!) had and to load it into the car. The weather and the lush greenery is hard to put in words, you really have to see it for yourself. I think I was especially nervous because as I said in my earlier post, I had no idea what to expect. At that very moment when I was wondering what I think I will see or may experience, our taxi driver turned around asked the three of us: “Are you a missionary?” So many different emotions came up and I got a glimpse of what people in Davao may think of Americans coming into Davao, doing missionary work. We told him that we were students doing research on the peace building process and he gave us that look that said, “So you are missionaries!”
The reason for me writing about this is because it was striking to see the expectations others may have of us as we come into their community asking a myriad of questions. I am curious as to what the people that we meet will expect from us when telling us about certain aspects of this conflict in their community. May be I am being overly exhaustive over this subject of expectations of different people – the insiders and the outsiders – but I think it is important to consider because it can help in comprehensively understand the stories and information we will be told. I am very excited to see how different stakeholders present the conflict to us but at the same time I keep thinking what compels people to speak about such painful experiences with us? Then, off course, I am reminded of what Dr. Iyer had said to us in her Fieldwork and reporting class, that people want to share their stories because no one asks them about their struggle and when someone cares enough to learn about, they are very willing to give us their point of view.
I really have no idea how the question about being a missionary led me to thinking about the many different expectations of me. I hope I haven’t overthought this whole thing but I do believe this is going to be a very humbling and informative trip. I am excited to learn a lot and to put everything I have read into context. Depending on the availability of Internet, we all will post more on our experiences and what we learn. I should also mention at this point that I do have a topic that I have chosen to explore during this trip (along with the main topic of the class: “challenges to peace building in Mindanao”), I will be exploring the displacement patterns of people in the entire Mindanao region and how they have changed since the peace building process began.
