Mayor and project visit

As Kortrijk (my home town and town where we are all studying) has a city-to-city partnership with Cebu-city, Cathy (executive director of CPaG) thought it would be nice to visit the Mayor. He just got back from America where he got treated for cancer and is busy, busy with signing papers and so on. We sat there a little bit uncomfortable and chitchatting a bit about Kortrijk. Anyways, quickly take picture and that’s it.



When leaving the Mayor’s office we met a representative of Paktambayayong Foundation, an organization specialized in urban poor and social housing. As they have projects in cooperation with a Belgian organization, we were invited to visit these projects. We visited two communities.

In the first community, they just started a project. In January lots of houses were burned out and now they are building new houses out of stone. The idea is that they build two walls and the house-owners then have to build the other two. Why? Lack of money and a way stimulate the local residents in helping and not just getting everything for free.







In the second community the building of the houses already started 3 years ago and the last houses were set up one year ago. This is a place where the sea-gypsies live. They have been living here for about 40 years, but 8 years ago a fire burned down their houses and they were replaced to other sites in the Philippines. Three years ago there was another fire. Finally these new houses have been build so that they could return to their “home-town”. The strange thing is that they really live apart from the “real” Cebuanos. The separation between both is clear. They do mingle during daytime, but eventually they still live apart. However I really liked the place. It’s quite clean and there is enough space in-between the houses. The Foundation now has a program running around community development.



It was very nice to visit these projects…and maybe one day we’ll be able to go visit another project…on an island and with fisherman!



On the way back we used 2 types of transportation which I didn’t used before: a non motorized tricycle and some kind of coach (koets). The first one wasn’t that comfortable…we’d rather walk and on the other one we felt really bad for the horse…It was so skinny and it had to carry around 7 people…(finally we split-up…poor horse). Anyways it was something we still had to experience here…but I still prefere to walk, to take the djeepney or the motorized tricycle.










Going back home we passed some fortunetellers… why not try? Sarah was the first…and the last…:). Lots of guys are fighting for her, they all had a lot of money and wanted to marry her and finally she would have a lot of land…yeah sure :)