Bakungan

On September 9, 2009 (090909!) Marcus, Lyn-Lyn and I accompanied a group of Palawan State University second year nursing students on one of their outreach trips to a Barangay called Bakungan. Bakungan is about a 40 minute drive from the center of Puerto Princesa, and is a somewhat rural location. The nursing students have been conducting survey work in this Barangay all semester and have been going from house to house interviewing residents and carrying out basic health checks (like checking blood pressure). We wanted to get an idea of what some of these rural households look like so we shadowed some of the students as they carried out their work.

Palawan’s National Highway is a pretty good road and is paved most of the way to Sabang – location of the underground river, Palawan’s number 1 tourist attraction. Bakungan is about halfway to Sabang, so the roads were great up until the turnoff for the Barangay. Once we got off the National Highway, we were on unpaved, muddy dirt roads. We drove to a community center hut within the Barangay and watched as the students prepared their survey materials and got ready to begin their work. Many of the students rolled up their pants, took off their shoes and changed into flip flops, as some of them had to wade through a stream in order to get to some of the households.

The Barangay church

Every Barangay in the Philippines has a basketball court! Loved this makeshift one...

In the first household our group went to, the students interviewed a woman caring for an 8 year old boy who is her youngest child as well as a 4 year old girl who is her granddaughter. The woman looked older than her 42 years and seemed tired, though happy to speak with the students.

Her husband supports their family of 9 on P8,000 pesos a month – the equivalent of about $165. The woman said she practiced family planning and used birth control pills, though right after reporting this, said that she had 6 children. I wished that the nursing students asked a follow up question of whether those 6 pregnancies were planned but unfortunately this question wasn’t part of their survey tool. Many Filipinas I’ve met use the pill, but don’t use it regularly. If money is tight, it is understandably spent on food rather than on contraception.

In another household we visited, a 38 year old woman was caring for her 6 year old son and her 10-month old daughter. Again, this woman reported practicing family planning, and said that she had 5 children. Her husband is the household breadwinner and supports the family on P7,000 pesos a month.

I came away from this trip with a feeling of guilt at how much I have and how little many of the people in this community have. I cannot imagine a family of 9 living off P8,000 a month, but these families do it, and hard as it is to imagine, these families are better off than many others. I really wished I could have asked the women more questions about their desired family size and their contraceptive use and any education they had and about any desires to work. When we do our own data collection in the community we are going to work in, I will definitely speak with women about these things.

One thing from this trip that really made an impression on me and Marcus was the effort that people in the community put into taking care of their homes. All the homes we saw were very simple and sparse, but they were clean and tidy and a lot of thought had been put into decorating the spaces with whatever materials could be found. Also, the homes all had lovely gardens with lots of flowers and pretty plants. I know this sounds terribly cliché but it really reminded us to be thankful for all that we have, and it left us with a desire to try to simplify our lives and do more with less stuff. As my mom always liked to tell me as I was growing up, “Live simply that others may simply live.”