Meeting With the Governor of Albay Province, Philippines

Well, this was a day to remember! Thank goodness I am leaving town!

My hosts arranged for a meeting with the governor of the province, Governor Joey Salceda. Mainly, we wanted to acquaint him with the hospital. But, we did want to bring up the fact that a container full of donated medical supplies and medicines sat on the dock in Manila for a year and a half before it was released.

Instead, the governor announced his most important issue was global warming and preceded to talk non-stop about that. And then about how everyone had access to health care (NOT), and how everyone had a free education through college (NOT), and how he was a delegate to WTO and had been to Seattle. He rambled on about being arrogant (Not, Not!) and then told us how busy he was. Pretty busy, I guessed, as I noticed he apparently had no time to put on his socks.

Well, basically, I said nothing but answer his question, "What party do you belong to?" I answered, "Republican." To which he responded, "That's OK. We're good hosts."
Joey is a leftist. I didn't know that going into the meeting. Actually, he was pretty scary. I noticed that with first eye contact. He is leaving in the middle of his term to go to the Harvard School of Government. (Nice that we educate guys like this.) And after we help him get his PhD. look for him to return to the Philippines to run for president. It was universal on the street that the people on the outside don't like him. We did not know that until after the visit.

We left the room and I was surrounded by Philippine Press!!! They were waiting for me and I don't even know how they knew I was in there! They wanted to know what I thought about their economy, what I thought about climate change. I just wanted to say please let us give you containers!This guy seemed pretty powerful as well as scary so the fact we would soon be catching a plane and returning to Manila seemed welome.

Our group consisted of Jessie and Dr. Expedita Castro (my hosts who reside in Lakewood, WA), their son, Dr. Rico Castro who directs the hospital here, Dr. Chris Bernado, a volunteer from Manila, grand-daughter Sofia Woolery, and grandson, Mike Castro.