Outreach to the Bukid!

This is long overdue, but I finally have time to sit down are recap on my amazing adventure to the bukid. We were traveling through the mountains (bukid) for 5 days. I can defiantly say this is one of the highlights of my time here so far!

We left on a Monday and let's just say we had a rough start considering 3 of the other girls had to work the night shift the night before and I was just getting over the flu. Eventually we caught the bus, jeepney, and then met Mary Jean who had moter's and drivers for us to go to her village Tagpopoot.

Here is an action shot of our ride up the mountains. The moter rides were a highlight of the trip, it was like hours of off roadin'!

Here we go!

Our drivers were friends of Mercy and they drove us to the 3 villages through out the week. They are super talented drivers to able to balance those bikes up the mountain roads in rain, shine, mud, and night time!

The "trunk"

Late night working on our health teachings

These 3 had been up for over 24 hours! Hannah conked..

Waiting for the motor's to take us up to the mountains!

Our transportation

I don't know why this is on here twice but I can't get it off for some reason

How cute is the inside of Mary Jeans house! She is a midwife who works for the government and travels to villages Monday-Friday to reach the women who without her would not have any care.

The view from Mary Jeans porch in her village of Tagpopoot

We love mosquito nets!

Community well--super cute!

Me being buntis

After an hour motorcycle ride up, up, up the mountains we reached the health center in Gupipan.

We set up right away and started our heath teaching on Filarisis and nutrition

Here I am being a healthy buntis who eats lots of protein and veggies. The community really loves to watch us act and it is an efficient way to teach even if there is a language barrier. After health teaching we did prenatal exams for the pregnant women for about 4 hours then packed up and drove a couple hours on our motors to the next village

Our second village stop, Ocapan

Our bags and sleeping room in Ocapan

Ate Mary Jean and our drivers Kuya Juney and Kuya Ronnie cooked every meal for us!

Tropical rain is intense and defiantly does not help our drying laundry

This is Princess, we stayed at her house at the second village we went to, Ocapan

Health teaching in Ocapan

This little girl is an orphan and being raised by the village women-- how stinkin' cute is she?

Here we are doing a skit about health nutrition for the "buntis" (pregnant). I have a healthy size baby.

And here is my healthy sized baby...they thought this was sooo funny

They loved our skits :)

We went swimming at this pool on our last day here, it had been raining all day and I felt cold for my first time here...I can't tell if I liked that or not...

Karaoke is ever popular here and there is no avoiding it...I think I am singing "We are the World" here which makes me think of Alison Tinsley b/c she loved this song and would play it on repeat in our apartment in Morehead!

Hannah, Willow and me eating the fruit off cocoa seeds

The next day we packed up and stopped by the mayors office to thank him for letting us into his villages. He served us coffee which was a treat and thanked us for our time and work. We then made the 3 hour trip back to Mercy. Overall it was such an eye opening experience and I really felt like I got to experience the beauty of the Filipino culture.