Wow, there’s so much to say! I’ve actually been here now for about 6 or 7 weeks, but am only just finding the time to write stuff down….

My first few days in Cebu were a bit crazy, working really long hours, and getting up so early every day – my first night in Cebu after I got off the plane I had to get up at 4am to travel straight out to the north to Daan Bantayan to do some livelihoods assessments, and then I only came back to Cebu for 2 nights before I headed back up there for a hygiene kit distribution and more market assessments.

I was getting up so early the first few days (well, in the middle of the night really), that it took me about a week before I noticed that my hotel room didn’t have any windows!

One Wednesday night (20th November) I had worked a really long day, and my colleague P and I only just climbed into bed knackered at 11.45pm, knowing that I had to get up again at 3.15am to go and load the trucks ready to leave for the distribution. We had just turned out the light, and I was so tired, I felt the bed vibrating slightly. I thought it was rather relaxing, until P’s voice from the other bed said

“Erm, by the way Maya, you do realise that’s an earthquake right?”.

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