some background: i'm off to tacloban
in the philippines with 3 of my classmates for a 2 month clerkship in global
health! all of my classmates are somewhere in the developing world for these 2
months. this is the capstone of my medical school's global health curriculum,
and being that global health is the reason that most of my classmates chose the
school we're at, this is something that we've all been looking forward to with
eager anticipation! i had a quick layover in tokyo, just long enough to leave
the airport, eat a bunch of sashimi off a conveyor belt, and take a dump while
sitting on heated toilet seat and subsequently have my bunghole rinsed clean by
a pressurized stream of hot water.
in manila, i quickly began to learn
about filipino public transportation. the primary mode is the jeepney, extra-long
world war 2 era jeeps with benches in the back. we stayed in a hostel in
malate, which is apparently the red light district of manila. not so bad
though, really. we were allotted a week in manila to complete the registration
formalities with the university of the philippines. we explored intramuros, a
remnant of colonial manila, which is home to a selection of centuries-old
catholic churches.
we arrived in the philippines at
around the same time as pope francis, and the place is going insane. 80% of the
philippine’s population of 100 million is catholic, making it the third most populous
catholic country in the world. add to that the rock-star status of this pope
and his particular penchant for the poor and destitute, whose prevalence here
is high, and you’ve got chaos of epic proportions. roads in a many-kilometer
radius are closed for days in anticipation, the airports shut down for hours
when he is transiting through, and the entire duration of his stay was declared
a national holiday. 25 000 police officers were brought in from around the
country to line the streets; only a few of them had to be fired for taking
selfies as the pope passed. i set out to glimpse his motorcade in the pouring
rain, and was almost crushed. its got to be tough being elderly or a child! i
found myself on the second level of a mcdonalds with hundreds of screaming fans
pushing against a glass wall to catch a glimpse of the pope-mobile. thankfully
the glass wall remained intact. he came to tacloban, the site of our clerkship,
to express solidarity with the survivors of typhoon haiyan, the worst natural
disaster in modern filipino history. more about the rebuilding of tacloban in a
future post, to be sure.
the pope also held a mass at what
they say is the largest mall in the philippines, the "mall of asia."
in our experience we think we found much more extensive malls in manila. this country,
like the rest of southeast asia, is absolutely obsessed with shopping malls,
and very little could excite me more than that fact. actually, religion and
malls have a unique symbiotic relationship here, as chapels are ubiquitous in
the malls, with multiple daily masses which are remarkably well attended by
shoppers carrying their bags of merchandise; the sound of the liturgy being
poignantly broadcast throughout the mall in much the same way as the muslim
call to prayer echoes through the alleyways of much of the middle east. it is
special:)
we spent most of our 4 days in
manila wandering around amazing shopping malls, interspersed by a quick
impromptu trip to taiwan. our flight to tacloban was cancelled and delayed
repeatedly, so i spent an extra night in a hotel where i appeared to be the
only customer not paying by the hour. a mouse shared the tiny room with me
until i was finally about to scare it out the door. i was able to spend a night
(yes, a night – I was picked up at midnight and dropped off at 6 am) with my
good friend prajjwal from college - he now attends medical school in the
philippines. turns out ihop pancakes at 3am in manila are just as good as you'd
expect!
