GK Bonbon and Joyland

I know that Josh already posted a bit about our first experience with a GK site, GK Mangrove Village in Ducatan, but we didn't take any pictures there, so I'll try to describe it a little bit. (Scroll down and read his post first, if you haven't already!) The homes there are built right on the shore, so they are set up on stilts to prevent flooding at high tide. While most GK villages are made of cinder block and concrete, the houses there are made of wood as termites aren't an issue in the salty soil. The floors are made of split pieces of bamboo and the houses are painted in GK's signature bright colors. Dogs freely roam the island here, and Ducatan is no exception. There were dogs and puppies everywhere, some that looked well cared for and others that were decidedly street dogs. There are signs everywhere around here warning about the dangers of rabies, so it alarmed me a bit to see these unkempt dogs playing with the children here. Ducatan also has a school building (the children sang their "ABCs" to Josh and I through the window) and a health clinic provided by GK.

Upon leaving Ducatan we went and had lunch at an excellent chicken barbecue restaurant with the group that we were accompanying. We were there with our friends Emma (pictured above), Ricky (pictured left), Mikmik and Paolo. Mikmik and Paolo (pictured together, below) work directly for GK. If I remember correctly, Mikmik is specifically overseeing projects here in Negros Occidental and Paolo oversees projects for the entire region of the Visayas. The restaurant we went to was decidedly not fast food, and we spent more time there than we had originally planned. When we finally finished up, we piled back into Emma’s truck and headed off to our second GK village of the day, GK Bonbon.

GK Bonbon is an area within a larger resettlement area. Tito Ricky mentioned to us back at the first site that some of the most successful GK villages are resettlements, where people are given new land away from the slum area where they previously lived. It was startling to see the difference between the GK houses and the non-GK houses (pictured, right) in the resettlement area. The GK houses were quite solid, beautifully painted and carefully landscaped, whereas the non-GK houses directly across the street were quite a bit more makeshift.

As we pulled up to the village, we noticed that there was a large group of people sitting under a tarp that had been hung out in front of one of the GK houses. Tito Ricky turned back to us in the car and explained that this meant someone had recently died and they were gathered together to support one another. I felt incredibly awkward in this situation, as simply arriving to anyone’s home unannounced is something I prefer not to do, let alone arriving as a stranger and a foreigner to someone’s wake. Emma told us that the gathered people playing cards out front were actually gambling to raise money for the funeral.

We set off down the road a bit, where Tito Ricky introduced us to a woman who was standing out in front of her beautiful blue house. She had carefully planted pepper plants and other indigenous fruit trees out in her tiny front lawn. She took us inside, where her house had been carefully divided into three small rooms and a bathroom, with her cooking area out the back door. She lives there with her husband and five children, the youngest of which sleeps in the bedroom with her, while three of the other children share the other bedroom and the fifth sleeps right inside the front door. Keep in mind that even with an area of only 235 square feet, these houses are huge steps up from how the villagers lived previously.

On our way out of GK Bonbon, Emma’s truck became stuck in the mud right outside the house of mourning. In an instant, a group of men and children from the wake surrounded the truck and pushed us out. We were quickly back on our way, and headed to Joyland.

Joyland is a school and orphanage that's been founded by Emma's pastors, Rick and Suzette. Rick is an Australian and his wife, Suzette, is a Filipina. After spending about 15 years living and pastoring in Oz, they've returned to the Philippines. They were the most recent tenants of the house where Josh and I now live (along with their son, Ben, who Josh mentioned in his post), and about three months ago they moved on to the campus of Joyland.

Joyland is a beautiful community they've established that serves many local needs. While it is indeed an orphange, it is also a school for local children. As Suzette explained it to me, "If a child's family can pay for them to go to school, they pay. If they can't pay, they pay in sweat, and if we take them in, the tuition is free." Suzette and Rick have a very well thought-out plan here, and they've put a lot of love into the project.

Currently the campus has five buildings, one classroom (pictured above), one office which will eventually be the mess hall (pictured below), two dormitories that fit 30 kids each (these will be more classrooms, once they are able to build smaller huts for the students), and Rick and Suzette's family home (which will eventually be the office, as they will also be living in the student huts).

The purpose of their education is really to make them employable by the time they are old enough to leave school. Knowing that a new International airport is being built in Silay right down the road from their campus, Suzette is planning to have courses available in hotel/restaurant management in anticipation of the need for hospitality workers that will come with the new airport. Already, she has a couple of her laborers taking lessons in cooking, in order to one day start a small restaurant on campus that will use the organic produce that they grow. Rick and Suzette have put absolutely all of their personal savings into this venture and have more yet to do. As Rick told us, "If you wait for all of the funding to come in, you'll never get started, so when God gives you a task to do you just have to do it. The money will come."

We stayed at Joyland longer than we had planned and didn't make it to the other GK sites we had set out to visit that afternoon. We needed to get back to Talisay so that Emma could pick up her kids from school. On our way home from Joyland, we passed this ox-cart that was being driven by a young boy. Emma pulled over - well, it's more correct to say that Emma parked in the road and Josh opened the truck's back door to take this picture. He just missed getting one of the boy and his friends waving back at us.