Start your engines.

ReeerrrrReeeeerrrReeeeerrrrrReeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrr....... How do you spell the noise a car makes when its engine won't turn over?

Today I took a taxi from Makati to San Juan to visit the White Cross Children's Home (read: orphanage) in San Juan.

We made it there just fine. After some explaining, the guard let us in, and we drove in past boys in blue uniforms playing by the gate. The cab driver, a man named Alito, parked out front, and I went inside.

Two young women were having lunch in the hall when I entered the building.

Since I was so clearly out of place, their attention was quickly on me. "Sorry to bother you," I said. "Can I speak to someone in charge?"

One of the women, who I later found out was a nursing student from a local university, offered to walk me to the office and I accepted.

The nursing student connected me with a social worker, a Filipina woman, older, with a warm smile. Her name is Glory.

“What brings you to White Cross?” she asked.

I hadn't prepared an answer to this question.

My goal, originally, was to explore Manila. To get to know it: its issues, its people, the impacts of its economy on Filipinos, old and young. To write about these things. So, when I rode past this place a couple days ago, I thought: Stop by. Say hello. Ask for an interview.

But now that I was sitting in this office with Glory, and her gentle smile, with children in their light blue uniforms playing in the sun on the patios, I said, “I’d like to ask about volunteering.”

Most of the children at the home were under six, although there were some kids at the center who were seven and eight. “We work hard to find them good homes by that age,” Glory explained.

Some of the children were there temporarily. “Sometimes a single mother will have to bring her children, because of money or other things,” said Glory, “But if we know that she wants them back, we’ll work with her to make that happen.”

“That’s good,” I said.

We agreed that I would send a letter of intent to the director with my availability.

When I came back out into yard, Alito was standing over his engine with a napkin in hand.

“Can you give me the address of the next place?” he asked, playing it really cool.

Sure. I climbed in the back seat, and he into the driver’s seat.

He turned the key: REeeeeeerrrrrrr…..Reeeeeeerrrrrrrrr……

He got out and fiddled with some part of the engine and then came back and tried again.

REeeerrrrr…reeer…reeer…REEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

I didn’t want to say, I think you’re flooding it. Neither did I want to sit in the back like a princess. I got out and looked at the engine (fyi: if I ever look at your engine, its to empathize with you, because I don't know).

He went to the trunk, and got another rag. Used the rag to tap some things.

I could sense his anxiety level increasing. “It will start,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” I said.

And then it did start, on the next go round. Just like that. It worked.

I've sent out emails, made phone calls, and am still trying for appointments with NGOs I want to write about. I've been held up by traffic, bad information, decision makers being out of the office on vacation or sick, and my own lack of knowledge.

But I keep pounding pavement.

It will start. Don't worry.