Philippines Capstone 2018: January 5th, The Start of Transcultural Nursing and Anthropology Museum

By Jenna Sands

We will call this the technical first day of our transcultural nursing experience seeing that we got in late the night before. I believe most of us got a decent night sleep despite the time difference and waking up at 7 AM because the room was a sauna-yes, we are in the Philippines. It’s going to be a long road ahead to adjust to this heat and humidity; I won’t speak for everyone else but I took about three ice cold showers.

We woke to a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with onions, mini bananas, rice (I have a feeling we will be consuming a lot of that), and some tasty Buns(pandesal)! In the dinning area we met a fourth year Mary Johnston student Shana (age 20). She was kind enough to give us a tour of the school. We went into a few classrooms and their skills lab which was very interesting (pictures inserted below); it’s crazy to compare the difference between our CSS lab to Mary Johnston. We rely heavily on technology, where as MJ using innovative ways to teach. There were dolls lined up on a shelf, and someone took the time to display the different types of cast and traction on each doll.

After some rest and lunch we boarded our beautiful bus with its eye catching yellow curtains to go to the National Museum of Anthropology. The bus ride was our first exposure to seeing Tondo, Manila in the day light. Tondo area is the slum district of Manila. Most of the people in this area earn their living by collecting recycleable materials that they can sell to the center. Ma'am Gina informed us that most residents of Tondo make their living by "dumpster diving" for thing that they can eat or sell in the markets. At night the trash gets sorted and during the day it all gets piled back onto sidewalks and get collected by the garbage trucks. It was evident that poverty surrounds this area. Many people living on the side of roads in make shifts houses made out of wood, cardboard, and any other material they can find.

The museum is a big beautiful building not far from MJ. It's four floors of historical and current cultural information about Filipinos. We saw hand made prayer rugs, jewelry, art work, history of ivory from elephant tusks, and lots and lots of pots! My personal favorite was the cave exhibit! Now my information could be slightly off but this was my understanding... Some European explorers found a cave of burial pots. These pots had heads and arms of them which signified the person whose bones were inside. The bigger the head, the more important the person; AKA Ma'am Gina is going to have a massive head on her burial pot ;) But sadly these explorers knocked off the heads because they thought there was gold inside of it.

After the museum we went to a nearby mall to try Halo Halo "Mix, Mix". Its an interesting mixture of ice cream, flan, sweetened beans, coconut, and chunks of jello. It was pretty tasty, if you can get past the different textures. Otherwise it was an awesome day but the jetlag is kicking in.