Updates

This is just a bunch of updates that I feel I need to mention, because too much time has passed since the last one, and it's getting awkward.

So, I wrapped up my Doctors to the Barrios stint last January 2023 and started a new job at the Health Promotion Bureau of the Department of Health in April. In between jobs there was a lot of bumming, unemployment anxiety, family events, and dog walking. Those three months went by so quickly.

My current work at the DOH is my first ever office job, and first ever entry into the realm of high-level policy. My first thought when I started: everyone sounds SO. DAMN. SMART. and I feel like I know nothing. Intelligence is quite evenly distributed across the Health Promotion Bureau team members - hell, even our admin assistant has a masters degree! When I was in the barrios, I felt like brainpower was more concentrated in some people more than others (if you know, you know). 

And when I was in the barrios, people would make such a huge fuss over my presence. Like, uy papunta na si doktora dito, ano handa natin? For many community members, I was the first doctor they'd ever seen in their lives. I think my appearance also shocked them - I am a healthy young woman in her late 20s - far from their expectations of a greying, middle-aged man in the midst of a midlife crisis. In Central Office, people generally don't give a crap about doctors. They see doctors all the time. working in cubicles and filing paperwork, just like everyone else. My team is also led by a doctor - Doc Migo, also a former Doctor to the Barrio. On my first day he was very clear in saying that the team has "flat" organizational structure - as opposed to a traditional hospital setting where power imbalances lead to a lot of power tripping and abuse of authority. Doc Migo - he actually insisted I call him just Migo but it feels weird to do so in writing - encouraged me to speak openly with the team leaders and collaborate with them. 

So it's these two things I found most jarring: being part of a team where everyone is capable and contributes something meaningful and being part of a culture where doctors are considered average workers and not elevated to celebrity status. Taken together, I feel so relieved. No longer do I feel like I am singlehandedly carrying the burden of a municipality's entire public health system on my shoulders. No longer am I pressured to be the one doctor who has to bend over backwards to cater to everyone's problems. Starting April, I am an ordinary office worker who comes in at 8 and clocks out at 5, takes orders, and pushes paper - and now, nobody's life depends on me. 

Fantastic!

One of the things I also found radically different was the way people communicate with each other. Back in the munisipyo, if you wanted something done, like getting data from the budget office, or having another office review something you made, usually all you had to do was ask. In Central Office, you have to write a memo requesting for this-and-that, get that memo signed by 3 other people, wait for 2-3 weeks for those people to sign said memo, send an advanced copy of that memo to that office while waiting, all before the next office can begin to process your request. 

And it's not just the length of time it takes to communicate things, it's also the very language that is used. Barrio language is casual, accessible, and easy. Central Office language is formal, accessible only to technical elites, and complex. Things that are communicated in plain barrio language often take double the amount of words when translated to Central Office speak. For example:

• Paano ba to gawin? = What are your suggestions on how we can operationalize this?
• Anong part mo? Anong part nila? = What is the delineation of roles and responsibilities across the process owners?
• Pwede naman... = My preference is...
• Ilagay sa batas = Institutionalize 
• Hindi kaya = Not feasible given the current timeline and resources

So in the first couple of months, I found myself feeling embarrassed at how plainly I spoke. I felt like a country mouse coming into the big city for the first time. 

It's a familiar feeling. Changing. Growing up. Moving on to a new chapter. I've definitely been here before. 

I felt it the first time when I was 17, moving from my childhood home in Cagayan de Oro into a tiny dorm in Katipunan, eating Siomai House for dinner every day because I couldn't afford anything else, putting everything I had into each test, assignment, and grade, because my scholarship was on the line, and so was my future.

I felt it again with my first assignment as a Doctor to the Barrio, moving into uncharted territory (sometimes literally), feeling alienated by the local language despite coming from Mindanao myself, feeling so unsure and unconfident about my capabilities as a doctor and leader, but moving forward anyway because that was what was demanded of me by the public I served.

And now here I am, back in Manila, feeling like an alien once more. But I think having gone through all these things in my life - going "down from the hill" - I am definitely not the same country mouse I was at seventeen. DTTB has changed my life in ways I never would have imagined, and despite the many, many heartbreaks and growing pains, the daily questioning of bakit ba ganito ang Pilipinas, I think I'm coming back to Manila with some answers.