it was an early sunday morning, a time when you should be sleeping in, but no, we both went to bed and woke up hours later for a day trip to Kalanggaman island. we had packed our bags the night before so we won’t have to rush our groggy, half-dead selves in the morning.
when we reached Palompon in Leyte, we were greeted with a welcome dance, and the Mayor gave a speech too. i was heartened by how he said it was youths that made him mayor; to me it was quite humbling that even after so many years as mayor, he remembers his roots and remembers the people that builded him up to where he is today. He spoke about disaster relief, early warning systems and how they discovered over the years that local mangroves are best suited to keep out natural hazards.
we then left for Kalanggaman island on a boat. it was a long ride, with wind coolly caressing our damp faces and summer sunshine dimpling our cheeks. and when we reached the island powdered with coconut trees and little huts and kayaking boats, we were stunned. profoundly. like mousedeers that accidentally wandered into an enchanted forest for the first time.
Li Zhe, Dorcas and I decided to have a quick lunch, and then go out to explore the island. When we were (FINALLY, as we ought to) feeling adventurous enough, we went swimming in the sea. I had goggles, which granted me a sort of privileged access to the biodiversity below. I saw corals, sea urchins, and shoals of fish of all stripes swimming past me. i first went canoeing with Susmita, and then later again with Li Zhe. the further we went out into sea, the brighter and more vibrant the corals seemed to be :”)
unfortunately, i also lost my specs into the sea at around this time…
i also played water games with the other delegates, and we played freeze tag in the sea, and had a mini swimming / running contest. then in the afternoon we played team-building games. during the treasure hunt, we talked about environmental education / policies in each of our own countries. the delegate from Brunei and me soon realised that we were really privileged in our own countries, where education is relatively affordable and accessible. i also felt ashamed when the Brunei delegate called the singaporean lifestyle a ‘me-for-me’. i’d never heard this phrase before, but it wasn’t hard to decipher what it means. and it was so sad that it wasn’t even coming from the singaporean but the bruneian; this internationally recognised trait of singaporeans now being blared out loud for all to hear.
i remember Susmita from Nepal sharing about how some girls quit school to collect water for their family, sometimes a few hours’ journey, sometimes even waiting for 24 hours in line. it’s almost unimaginable to me, an urbanite who gets water at the spin of a tap her whole life, that people wait for hours or days just for water, of girls my age who quit school for water.
and i thought, isn’t it urgent that we share the resources we have? but how do we share them, how do we cut across political boundaries to spread these, even if these are fundamental human needs? and i could not answer. we are definitely taking far too much, more than our fair share on this planet (singaporeans use like four earths’ worth of resources), how do we make it more equitable?
as much as i am grateful for so many of our basic human needs met in singapore, i also wonder about how many excesses we have that are not sustainable, and it shouldn’t be something we brandish for others to emulate. is it an inevitable truth that when poor countries develop, they become more pollutive? can we continue to hold fast to environmental values no matter which stage of development we are at, and always remain humble enough to remember our roots?
when night fell, i laid under the moonlight, silently pondering. as i gazed at the cloudy night sky and hoped for a star, i wondered, when was the last time i ever did that? lay down like that, with my head on nothing but a t-shirt, and my toes in sand? when did i last climb up a tree house?
i spoke to a few police officers for a while. coming from an activist background, i’ve tended to be slightly wary or sceptical of the police, but as i spoke with them that day i let these fears fall apart. i was amazed by their passion for their job and love for their country and people; Dorcas was also talking to one of them, and she shared later that the police were accompanying us throughout the trip as more of a hospitality thing, a concept foreign to us since in Singapore, we involve the police only when we’re in deep shit.
and with foggy eyesight i continued to gaze at the starless sky (or perhaps starfilled but starless to my eyes). the clouds formed spongebob, then a ballerina dancing, and i wondered, is this what it’s like to imagine and dream? when once-clear lines begin to fuzz and the truths we once knew start to waver in clarity, when our original ideas get disrupted, humans get creative and imaginative as they envision what building back better might look like.
and then i fell asleep, with these loose strands of thoughts swimming around in my head, disorganised; with tangy moonshine and breaths of the sea infusing warmth and love and peace.
(and woke up less than an hour later, with Dorcas saying we need to run because the waves were coming.)