So I’m sitting on the floor at Gate 10 in the Manila Airport, my bag much heavier now than upon arrival due to all the packets and readings materials all our hosts gave us over the two weeks. I think my high school English teachers would appreciate my need to make that into a metaphor for how much heavier my brain also feels after all the work we’ve done. The last leg of the trip was really a challenge: between the lack of sleep, hot humid weather, long days and the constant struggle to stay hydrated, morning conversations between Evyn and me in the last couple of days disintegrated into either giggles or whines. I found myself day dreaming about Mexican food and Netflix, about sleeping in my own bed. But of course now that I’m in the airport, about to leave the Philippines for the foreseeable future, I kind of don’t want to leave.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just because of the pre-semester jitters. But I’ve spent the last two weeks head-to-toe immersed in nothing but Mindanao and the Mindanao conflict, talking about the implementation of the Bangsamoro Basic Law, women’s rights and political participation, the New People’s Army, tri-people, rido, and international mining companies. Even during our meals, if we didn’t have a dinner meeting, we would ask clarifying questions to James or at least make small talk about what interesting cultural difference we’d experienced that day. In all honesty, I’m not sure if I’m ready to think about other subjects. Other than classes, I have preparations for work to start back up next week, a friend visiting from Spain in March, and all these other tasks coming up that are worlds away and simply don’t fit into my Mindanao mentality. In the short time I’ve been here I’ve normalized the schedule, the information, the food, and the weather of our time in Mindanao, and now it’s over as suddenly as it began.
But of course the work doesn’t end. As I spoke to briefly in my past blog post (as I’m sure others have in theirs) we’ll be continuing with this information well into the spring semester. Even though I’m out of Mindanao, I’ll keep posting, so keep checking to see more details about the conflict and how we end up processing all of what we saw, including more of the nitty-gritty and meat of the topics. I’m thinking the next post will probably be more in depth about my area of interest– the zones of peace– so watch out!
Guess which gate was mine?
