Farewell to the Summer Holiday (with movie!)

Rob put together a video of the shots and clips we've taken during the summer holiday - going on outings with the kids, learning new things together at workshops and eating lots!

The background songs are by Tim Hughes...!

Enjoy :)

Fun Fun Fun!

Here is a selection of the photos taken of the various summer activities and outings we had with the kids at CFA. Enjoy!

Human Trafficking

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

Last week during a bumpy three-hour drive to a waterfall with some visitors from Germany I listened to an mp3 of a talk which Gary Haugen gave at Holy Trinity Brompton on human trafficking. Gary Haugen, a DC lawyer, is an excellent speaker and his talk brought home to me again the reality of this problem in today’s world. He is the head of International Justice Mission, a Christian organisation dedicated to the rescue of people who have been oppressed or unjustly treated, including those who have been trafficked, and the prosecution of the perpetrators, so that justice may be realised and injustice stopped.

You can listen to the talk HERE.

It’s been said many times before but I still get shocked when I hear that there are more people held in slavery now than more than 200 years ago, before the abolition of the slave trade.

Over lunch, we asked Harald, the German pastor who started CFA some 18 years ago, about the problem of human trafficking in Cebu. Having worked in Cebu for almost two decades, he said the city is actually more dangerous than Manila in terms of children being tricked into being trafficked. He told us the story of one of the girls at CFA. Her family was very poor and lived in one of the feeding areas where CFA visited (and still visits). One day her mother announced, with pride, to one of the CFA staff who was visiting the area, that her daughter had been given a job in Manila. The staff’s suspicions were confirmed as it transpired after much probing that the mother had been persuaded by a stranger to let her daughter go to Manila to work, and in return she would be given some money. In CFA’s experience, instead of the promised new life, the girl would most likely be sold into a brothel. The mother did not intend to sell her daughter into the sex trade, but was unable to support her daughter along with the her many other children. Thankfully the girl was taken into CFA’s care before she left for Manila and she is now a smiling teenager who is petrified of being tickled!

I think the biggest problem that many of us face when it comes to thinking about these things isn’t apathy, but paralysis by despair. We feel overwhelmed by the statistics, dragged down by the facts and helpless because we think the problem is too vast or we don’t know where to begin.

Sometimes I still feel this way, but I’m reminded once and again that:

- if everyone does something, it will count eventually!

- ultimately, it’s a choice that we make, whether we choose to live life as if such things do not happen, or we choose to do what we can to help stop injustice.

So what can we actually do?

Well, I’m not an expert but I think there are at least a few things for starters:

1. We can educate ourselves more about such issues so we can decide what best we can do, and also to tell others about the issues. Here are some good sites - UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, Stop the Traffik

2. Stop the Traffik has a campaign where people are encouraged to only buy trafficking-free chocolate (on top of fair trade) and to urge chocolate producers to ensure that the cocoa they use does not involve exploitation of trafficked labour. And you can even hold your own traffick-free chocolate fondue party! See Stop the Traffik for more information.

3. Support organisations such as STT and IJM in their efforts to combat trafficking and other acts of injustice – by telling others about them and by giving financially.

4. If you’re a Christian, I would say PRAY! Pray for God to intervene to bring justice and restored lives out of these places of darkness and despair. Personally, I found that it was as I began praying, I felt more strength to get more involved in points 1-3 above too.

My obsession with Dust, Sweat and What Not

I think one of the things that most amuse (and infuriate) Rob since our married life started 8 months ago was my (irrational) obsession with dust, sweat, insects and the like. Perhaps many women (and men) wouldn’t find my behaviour abnormal, but certainly Rob has struggled to understand it, whilst over the months I’ve actually found it hard to render a good explanation for it. These “principles” have been such a core part of me that are second nature and hence, to me, the most logical way of life.

Living in a less economically developed country now (albeit in a relatively nice environment), one can imagine that some of these things are even more unavoidable.

Principle 1: If you drop food on the floor (even the cleanest concrete floor), don’t eat it. Depending on what it is, and the state of the cleanliness of the floor, you could possibly rinse it properly under (clean) running water before consuming it.

What is wrong with the floor? Dust? Dust doesn’t kill. There’s dust everywhere.

Principle 2: Don’t sit on the bed whilst in the clothes that you have just worn after a whole day of being outside. The bed should be kept as clean and dirt/sweat-free as possible, otherwise it may attract insects at night!

Again, a bit of dust from the day won’t kill you, and it is nice to be able to relax by sitting on the bed.

Principle 3: The sacredness of the towel. Where we are staying at the moment, there are numerous hooks on the bathroom wall. Dirty clothes should not be hung next to a towel, lest the dirty clothes touch the towel which is meant for drying oneself after a nice shower.

....no harm done by a bit of dust from the day!

Principle 4: If the bathroom is wet and you’re barefooted and your feet are not 100% clean, avoid walking on the wet bits. Instead, tiptoe around them to get to where you want to if possible. If you do walk on the wet bits and start making a mess of the floor (because the water on the floor “dissolves” the dirt on your feet), then please splash some water over the mess and keep the floor clean.

....What a palaver!!

Principle 5: Be on the run as soon as you see any moth/flying ant/flying cockroach/lizard approaching. These are abominable things, and if they land on you, you could get bitten or develop a skin disorder.

These things are friendly and won’t hurt. They are probably more scared of you, this giant human compared to them, than you are afraid of them.

And I could go on and on, about why we shouldn’t hug when one or both of us are sweaty, washing our feet before going to bed, covering the toilet seat when flushing...

Oh the joys of married life!


I should add though, that to his credit, Rob has made tremendous concessions, and we have both made considerable progress moving towards each other’s position.

And it's worth noting that Rob does not always look like the photo at the top - that was taken after a particularly sweaty day cycling down a dusty road in Cambodia!

Taking the Kids Out

When we first arrived in Cebu, we weren't sure what exactly we might get involved with, as we arrived during the children's summer holiday, and the school where we were hoping to help out was closed during the break.

Over a week, it became obvious to us that perhaps we should try to see if we can make the summer holiday for the children a bit more exciting - as their current daily routine seems to only consist of watching endless TV and pirated movies! Unlike a normal home with more finances to spare, CFA does not have the resources to arrange for special activities for the children during the school holidays. Also, as many of these children, delightful as they are, still have many issues to deal with, it is not always a good idea to let them go out on their own.

So we wracked our brains and came up with a month of summer activities before the children go back to school on June 14! For starters we will play games like Pictionary, have competitions in Scrabble, Volleyball, Badminton etc, and running some workshops for those who are interested (Christine: painting, Rob: writing, etc!). We also thought it would be nice to take the children out in smaller groups to hang out - and watch a movie or go bowling or something.

Even though the cost of things in the Philippines is much lower than that in the UK, multiplying anything by 60 (kids) will add up eventually! We've been really blessed though that some friends have given us some money for use towards the children in Cebu. This way we can pay for the outings as well as some materials for the summer activities.

The first outing we went on we took our first group of children to see Iron Man 2. It was heartening to see that even though (I think) the teenagers didn't fully understand the plot, they thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were very grateful for our efforts. For us who grew up with so much, it was a shock that the children had never been to the cinema to see a movie before.

By the time the movie ended most of the eating places were shut except the Filipinos' version of McDonalds, called Jollibee! So we went in for some fried chicken, spaghetti and burgers - there was quite a range of choices I have to say. We gave them a budget to work with when ordering their meals. I was taken aback when even the 16 year olds suddenly became incredibly shy at the thought of ordering their meals over the counter - and then I realised that most, if not all, of them, would not have had any opportunity to eat out, and even if an adult took them out for a meal, they might not have been asked to order the food themselves. So there we were, coaxing and encouraging them to just pick a meal out of the 10 meals shown on the board, whilst they giggled, hid behind each other and looked perplexed at the many choices. I was so proud when they finally made up their minds and managed to tell the person behind the counter what they would like to eat, even though they tended to copy each other and ended up ordering the same thing!

Beautiful One

We arrived in Cebu less than two weeks ago and already I’m feeling as if I had never left in the first place.

It’s much hotter at this time of year than on my previous visits, in the 30Cs, though a bit cooler at night. April to June is also the summer holidays for the kids. The morning rays beam through the windows at about 6am, so we’re getting used to waking up and going to bed earlier. The roosters in the neighbours’ backyards which used to annoy me are slowly becoming part of the pleasant background noise against which we sleep in the early morning.

These few days feel much more relaxed than the first week we were here – the first three days we were thrown into the middle of the kids’ summer holiday camp where the schedule was jam packed with activities ranging from basketball tournaments to worship sessions to jewellery-making classes. We gave ourselves the excuse of having arrived mid-week, so we didn’t get up at 5am like the rest of the camp. Very often the evening sessions of Bible teaching, worshipping and a time of ministry (where we all prayed and waited on what God might be saying) ended past 11pm, so everyone was exhausted. However, the exhaustion didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s mood or enthusiasm, and in between the sessions several of the kids would follow us around wanting to play Scrabble!

It was amazing to see how these kids, many of who didn’t start proper education at the normal age of 6 (many of them have a late start in life), were creative, knew many excellent words, were patient with each other and overall played very well - though the kids were so enthusiastic that Rob and I were rather “Scrabbled out” by the end of the week!

After the summer camp, we went straight onto a 4-day outreach trip in nearby Astorias in the south of Cebu, where we went round with the kids to different communities to share with them the love of God through music, drama, dancing and sharing of the kids’ own stories of being rescued from the streets and of finding healing from their past hurts. It was hard not to be moved watching many of the acts.

On the second day of the outreach, whilst the older girls (teens) were performing their beautiful dance with tambourines (to the tune of Beautiful One by Tim Hughes) in a dimly lit community hall, it suddenly struck me that these girls would not be where they were now if they had remained on the streets. It’s more likely that at least some of them would have resorted to prostitution or have had several pregnancies by now, and certainly they would not be the happy, talented and radiant girls dancing before our eyes – children with huge potential and dreams that could actually be realised.

Tomorrow we will go on a feeding trip in the slums of Cebu which will be our first together.

Back in the Land of Smiles

For the first time ever I was looking for signs for slums as our plane descended on Cebu City while the sun was setting. It escaped me why I never paid attention in the past, but this time we could see clearly that they dotted the circumference of the islands. You can tell it’s a slum by the tin roofs, usually silvery in colour, but sometimes they’re of rusty red or yellow. The odd thing was, maybe because they were so many, they seemed to blend in with the rest of the islands.
We walked off the plane and into the luggage hall, and whilst waiting for our bags I was slightly amused at the sight of people holding big bags of boxes of KrispyKreme – we had flown in from Manila – perhaps this is the latest fashion in the capital. One woman had three gigantic boxes of 12.

Outside the airport, To To, one of the workers in Nehemiah House and a former street kid himself, was there to pick us up. It has been just over two years since I was last here, when I was taking a career break after the City. I joked about his longer and curlier hair, and we were happy to see each other again.

It felt rather surreal being back on the streets of Cebu again. There seemed to be more lights, more billboards promoting mobile phones, and there are still the endless rows of stalls selling aromatic barbequed meat, and the random long queue of people outside a bank for cash machines. As we crossed the big bridge connecting the airport to the rest of Cebu, we could see a sprawling city lit up in parts by orange lights. Then, suddenly, as we neared the busier streets, we were bombarded by different smells – the exhaust from the hundreds of jeepneys cruising in and out of the undefined lanes, the enticing BBQ aroma, and the occasional open sewage.

Crossing a big intersection with huge blinking billboards just like in Piccadilly Circus, I was suddenly struck by a sense of apathy. The voice inside my head was literally saying – why bother to get involved with anything? The world will go on and the problems will be resolved slowly but ultimately. One can tell that there is a lot of wealth in this country – not least from the billboards, the Krispykremes, the big SUVs with black-out windows, so maybe the prosperity will ultimately save the rest of the country.

What can we, small potatoes as we are, actually do? What difference can we make?

Then, I was reminded of a serious saying – when I think of what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think that there are no little things (Bruce Barton - extracted from Rob’s motivational talk!), and a lighter one which I found on the fridge of some good friends – if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try being in bed with a mosquito!

I have a feeling it’s going to a real battle of ideologies as we volunteer on the street children project for the next three months.