Since I have been back in California, and especially on campus in Monterey, people have approached me about how my trip was to the Philippines. Many people are curious about the food, culture, and the scenery. Occasionally people would ask about our work in Mindanao. Surprisingly, most people were interested in hearing about the dynamics of our group that went.
I suppose it is an interesting dynamic. We were a group of twelve participants from two different colleges, one highly experienced professor, an interpreter, and a driver. The most notable aspect of our group is that we were predominantly women, with only one male participant. This was certainly an interesting dynamic for the people we were meeting with, as I’m sure that we were not the group they were expecting. I imagine it would be intimidating for some groups that we met to watch twelve strong women pile in.
We spent over forty hours traveling in a van around Mindanao, which became an integral part of our trip. This was the place that we were able to immediately digest the day’s information . Our group used different coping mechanisms in the space of the van at different. Some played music and enjoyed quiet time. Others spent the time joking around. All of us spent the time to get to know each other and our backgrounds. All of us did our own kind of processing and healing, in our own way, in that van.
