The Home Stretch

***Warning, this post contains photos and a graphic description of a skin parasite 😝

Hello from the USA! I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and banana that doesn't taste nearly as authentic as the bananas straight off the plant in Panama (common misconception, bananas don't technically grow on trees, rather on herbaceous flowering plants). I've been home at my parents' house for a little over two weeks now. I guess you could say I am re-adjusting to the US, although I'm feeling a little restless in this period of limbo. I'm still waiting for the final clearance for my new job out in Washington. While it feels weird to be here and not working, I'm still a bit unsure how the transition to a 40 hour work week is going to go, haha... In the meantime I've been training for the Detroit half marathon in two weeks, spending time with friends and family, and enjoying the Michigan fall weather that I've missed so much!!

The final week in Panama was joyful and melancholy at the same time, bittersweet I suppose. It was sad leaving the Comarca for the last time, and saying goodbye to all the volunteers and neighbors. Eduardo and his son Ehinar came by on my last night in San Felix, and it was very sweet. It seemed fitting, closing out my service with the first person I ever met from Cerro Gallina back in August 2016. I will admit there was a tiny bit of relief leaving the RL house, and leaving the tropical climate that I had become so accustomed to, but not immune to its unforgivingness.

On that note, I had one last fun medical adventure. I thought I had another nacido (a boil, in English, caused by staph bacteria) on my right leg, but the morning I left San Felix it dawned on me that this was something else. It had a tiny hole in the center that wasn't scabbing over. Over the past two weeks, it had been leaking drops of blood and clear liquid, leaving spots on my shorts and naguas. I grabbed my flashlight and got up close, and waited. And there it was, a tiny, tiny white dot poking in and out of the hole to breathe.
Bot fly! 
Our Peace Corps physicians had showed us human bot fly videos at one of our first medical sessions during training, and I still remember the collective gasp when we realized that they were about to pull larvae out from underneath this guy's skin. I believe this is the exact video they showed, and he got his bot flies in Panama too. The bot fly, or dermatobia hominis, lays its eggs under the skin of mammals (in humans it often uses the mosquito as a vector), which develop into larva. If you left it in, it would grow for about 8 weeks and then drop out to continue its metamorphosis into an adult fly. But leaving it in risks infection, and it hurt! Every couple days I felt a sudden shooting pain, which I realized was the larva moving. Living in close proximity to horses, cows, dogs, and unfortunately small children who frequently get bot flies, it's honestly a wonder that I hadn't had one before. The doc at the hospital first covered the hole with adhesive tape for a half hour to suffocate the larva, made a small incision, and pulled it out. "It's a boy!" he announced (humor). There were three nurses who had never seen a botfly extraction before and were watching the whole thing in fascination, haha. They let me take it -- photos below -- and Mr. Botfly went to his final resting place in his sample cup coffin somewhere in a Panama City landfill. Exciting times!

I have one final post for this blog that I'm working on, a sort-of summary of my three years in Panama with biggest takeaways/lessons learned. I will post that when it's ready.

The views from Cerro Caña are amazing!

Saying goodbye to my gente one last time, caught them mid-laugh

After three years I still never got the serious face right. Also, my host mom surprised me by gifting me this blue nagua, one of her old ones. I specifically remember commenting three years ago (!!) when I had recently arrived how much I liked the colors of this nagua!

Last night's dinner dishes drying in the sun to prevent mold

The adorable Sonny resting on his perch outside the house

Dionicio showed up out of the blue to play Samy y Sandra on my speaker and take about 50 selfies in various parts of the house while I was rushing around trying to clean and make lunch

Brought my host family in Santa Rita a giant kra! As of July 20th, Panama banned single-use plastic bags in supermarkets. In my eyes, it was an overwhelmingly positive effort to reduce waste. It's amazing seeing everyone at the store with their reusable bags! Milvia is going to use this one for grocery runs now.

Carrying Loraine in the kra, it is huge! 

Chelsea, Kiersten, Daniel, Kaitlyn, and me. The Regional Leaders with our supervisor!

We're doonnnneeee

The 19 of us that COSed together on September 18th.

 Here he is, Mr. Botfly larva that made his home in my right thigh

Another view of the little bugger

Becoming a hummingbird

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver

When I first got my invitation to be a Peace Corps Volunteer, I read a lot of blogs by Panama PCVs. The first one I found was from a volunteer serving in the Darien, and ever since then I've dreamed of going to Darien, the province closest to Colombia. It's famous for its untouched rainforest, bird species, Guna, Emberá, and Wounaan indigenous people, and the Darien Gap (read more about that here), the only break in the pan-American highway that stretches from Alaska to Argentina. There are no public roads between Panama and Colombia, in part due to violence by the FARC and drug trafficking...pretty fascinating.

Anyways, I finally got the chance to go to the Darien this month. There are only five volunteers out there and they don't have a regional leader, so I got to do a mid-service RL visit for an agriculture volunteer, Nick, better known to his gente as Bichichi, the Emberá word for a type of small brown and white monkey. To get to his community from Panama City, you have to take a 6-hour bus, 30 minute busito, a 2.5-hour boat ride through river & ocean, catch a 30-minute ride on the back of a pickup truck, then hike for an hour. But once you get there, you quickly understand that this community is a place so idyllic & self-sufficient that you would almost never need nor want to leave!! We met one of Nick's counterparts and he almost immediately decided that I was going to be called Imbisuwena, which means lady hummingbird in Emberá. Since I was only going to be there for two days I wasn't even expecting to receive a name, so I was happily surprised. I relate to hummingbirds for many reasons (always flying around busily being one lol), so for him to see me and immediately think 'hummingbird' was pretty cool. Nick lives in a bamboo house on stilts with a palm thatch roof, a typical style for the community. All of the houses there were spacious and felt like treehouses, and each one had a log with footholds carved in to climb up into the house. I had to shakily climb with both hands, and I watched women swiftly glide up the ladder hands-free, carrying huge pailas or babies...

The community is primarily dedicated to agriculture, just like the Ngäbe communities we work in. But there are many interesting differences in how the communities function. The Emberá population is much smaller than the Ngäbe population (maybe about an eighth of the size? I have to fact check this) and it seems like each community has a lot of projects from various agencies going on, whereas in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé projects tend to be concentrated in the big communities along the roads. In this tiny site of only 20-some households, they have a reforestation project where they were caring for baby trees in a nursery to sell to a nearby Latino community that struggles with deforestation caused by all the cow pastures. They had recently built a solar dryer, mostly for coffee but also for drying other fruits and grains. They have a women's artisan group, an environmental conservation group, a tourism project with houses for passing backpackers to rent, a water committee, and a coffee producers group with a generator-powered piladora (hulling machine). The amazing thing is that the projects are all locally led.

The isolation of the community causes them to rely mostly on what they grow, forage, and catch for food, another difference from the CNB where a lot of food nowadays is bought. In the two days I was there we ate locally grown tomatoes and okra, shrimp and fish from the river, rice and plantain from the finca, and locally raised pork and beef. I was completely overwhelmed with all of the protein! The houses are all clustered around a central area with a school and soccer field, and right next to a river. The river is used for bathing, dishes, washing clothes, etc, and is a very social area. This is a sharp contrast to what I'm used to, with most of the sites we work in in the Comarca being very spread out and higher up in the mountains, using individual streams instead of a big shared river. Nick spoke amazing Emberá and seemed to be truly thriving there, it was fun to visit. He knows a ton about bird and plant species and identified almost every bird we saw and interesting flower and tree we passed, not to show off, just out of habit. It was pretty impressive, and cool to see all of the biodiversity there.

So what else have I been up to?!?
In June I finished up site preparation for the new group that arrived in county mid-June, went to a conference with Comarca leaders and some American and Canadian universities, visited volunteers in their sites, and got to march in the Panamanian Pride Parade with the US Embassy. In July, I went home to Michigan and Wisconsin for about two weeks to see friends and family and attend Abby's and Sana's weddings! I also had two job interviews for post-PC positions, more on that below...

After I got back to Panama I jumped right into action coordinating the delivery of letters to the fifteen communities that were selected to receive volunteers in August. That had me running around for a couple weeks and making lots of phone calls back and forth to make sure the host families had the new volunteers' bedrooms all constructed and secured (a lot of families have to build brand-new bedrooms because most houses are not divided, everyone sleeps in the same room). Then we went to the city for site announcement. It was actually really satisfying seeing all of the site prep work I've dedicated myself to since January pay off as the trainees excitedly received their site placements!!

My last few weeks in Panama I'm spending visiting the 14 G83 volunteers for their mid-service visits. It has been amazing to see how they've grown since I did their initial visits last October, and it's fun hanging out with them in their sites, visiting their best friends in site and seeing how much the neighborhood kids adore them, and cooking bomb food in their campo kitchens. Last weekend during a visit I noticed that a bug bite on my thigh was getting swollen and was starting to hurt. I showed it to a couple other volunteers who recognized it as a nacido, a skin infection that can swell really big, and they told me to call our PC doctors asap. So they sent me to the clinic for antibiotics, no problem. But then it kept growing into a very swollen, purple colored abscess that hurt every step I took. So they sent me back to the clinic, where they gave me even stronger antibiotics and local anesthesia, punctured the abscess, drained it, cleaned it, bandaged it, and gave me a bunch of meds to take home. The pain went away immediately after this, and as always I gave thanks for my access to healthcare. I had seen various community members get these, and not always have resources to go see a doctor. Panama, you never fail to keep me on my toes!!!

Oh also, I wanted to mention that my Chacos broke so for the rest of my service my shoes of choice are my off-brand Crocs - I have been doing basically all my hiking in these $3 shoes and love them -- why did it take me so long to catch on?

Finally, I accepted a job post-Peace Corps! I haven't gotten my official legal clearance yet, so I won't give many details and I don't have a start date, but hopefully around early November I'll be cleared to begin. Dios primero, I will be working as an environmental engineer for the federal government in the Seattle, Washington area & I'm very excited!

Photo dump:

Nick's community in the Darien

Huge tree, there were so many of these. I rarely ever see trees this big in the Comarca

Pretty waterfall and swimming hole we hiked to. I jumped off the ledge (20 ft or so?) to the left of the waterfall. Mildly terrifying but exhilarating

Another view of the community. It's very close-knit, you can walk to most houses within 15 minutes. It even has a sidewalk!

Typical Emberá house with parumas hanging out to dry (brightly colored wrap skits in floral, animal, and geometric designs that all of the women wear)

Anti-drug trafficking poster at Nick's host fam's house

Tree nursery for the reforestation project

One of my favorite families, these guys were always fun to hang out with and there was ALWAYS a paila of cacao at their house

Although I try to convince myself and others that I'm too healthy to eat salchicha (hot dogs), I admit that I get a teeny bit excited when I go to an event and see salchicha guisada & bollos for breakfast

Marching in the Pride Parade in Panama City. This march was not to protest or push for legislation, only to show support to the LGBTQ+ community. It made me a little emotional, seeing all of the couples holding hands and wearing matching rainbow outfits, enjoying the only afternoon of the year in Panama that they could openly be themselves and have their love celebrated, not condemned.

Sign making and t-shirt decorating in the PC office the day before the parade, with Aziza.

Súper ofi invite to an event from an agricultural agency (notice my painted hands & feet from the Darien)

I got to be a guest judge for a science fair at a nearby bilingual elementary school, all of the kids presented their projects in English! Very brave students.

Visiting Chantal in her site with Shellee and our boss Daniel!

Helped facilitate a charla on gender roles and inclusion for a women's group. This is Doris, a very outspoken woman and lifesaving Ngäbere translator for us, presenting the results of an activity to the group.

Doing a dinámica led by Corina in a brand-new super motivated community that just welcomed their first WASH volunteer

Corbyn shaving off the green part of the agave plant with the dull side of a machete, to separate the internal fibers which will be used to make thread to weave chácaras (the woman in the turquoise nagua was very impressed by his knack for it)

Helping Elena with a water committee seminar

Casual shopping trip with Abby for a dinner to feed 25 in Boquete

Facilitating my final Elige Tu Vida in Hato Pilón with Ian and Lucy. This was one of my favorite seminars to give here in Panama. If I'm counting right, I think I facilitated it 14 times!

Another water committee seminar!

I asked Ian's host family if they wanted a family photo and it turned into a half-hour photoshoot along with several outfit changes haha, here are two of his three siblings (my hands are green because I was painting a world map the day before and it was hard to get the paint off haha)

Visiting Courtney, she's showing some gente her worm compost bucket

Some of the Comarca volunteers at our goodbye party for the volunteers finishing their service in August and September

Feeling grateful for this life I get to live for two more weeks. I fly home September 19th! Chao, pesca'os.

Unas Novelas

Just a quick post, a list of books I’ve read during Peace Corps that have been inspirational and/or eye-opening (definitely not a complete list of what I’ve read). Books that captivated me, resonated in me, spoke to my heart in some way. Chicken Soup for the Peace Corps Volunteer’s Soul, if you will. Listed in the order that I read them. Enjoy!

1. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
2. Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
3. An Indigenous People’s History of the United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
4. What is the What - Dave Eggers
5. What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
7. Blindness - José Saramago
8. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
9. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
10. Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins (this book blew my mind, I think it’s a must-read for anyone who does development work, particularly in Latin America)
11. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
12. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
13. Becoming - Michelle Obama
14. The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama
15. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

The Other Comarca

I’ve been doing a bad job at posting regularly on this blog. I frequently want to write about something, but then tell myself that whatever it is isn’t blog-worthy. I’m sure that readers in the States might find events of my daily life and work interesting, but living here has become so normal to me that I feel almost silly blogging about it! So today I’ll write about something a little different, a trip I took at the end of May.

The day after my birthday and Regional Meeting, I headed with Kaitlyn, Kiersten, and Shellee to Panama City. RM included a lot of planning and a bit of stress, so I was excited for a vacation. We ate Indian food, packed some snacks for the trip, and went to bed early. A driver picked us up at 5 AM the next day and drove us out of the city, through the lowlands of Panama Este, and over the forested cordillera to the checkpoint at the entrance of the Comarca Guna Yala. Anyone who is not ethnic Guna has to pay a $20 fee to enter the Comarca at the checkpoint. However, we only had to pay $5 per person because of the diplomatic status stamps in our passports.

Panama has five Comarcas, three belonging to the Guna people, one to the Emberá and Wounaan, and one to the Ngäbe and Buglé (the largest and most populated, where I lived). The Guna Yala is by far the most well-known Comarca amongst foreigners, because of its developed tourism businesses and relatively easy access to Panama City - at least the tourist islands, the further islands can only be reached by plane or by 5+ hour boat rides along the coast.

We took a boat from the mainland port to the small island of Asseryaladup, or Isla Aroma in Spanish, where we left our bags in the cabañas. The cabins have bamboo walls, palm thatch roofs, and sand floors. The whole island is sand and coconut trees, no other vegetation. I imagined it to be the natural state of the island, but we learned that mangroves are torn out and coconuts are planted in their place on tourist islands, curated specifically for visitors. We left our Chacos and didn’t wear shoes again for the next 48 hours, which was pretty cool. The island has a generator-powered water pump for showers. It’s brackish water, because the roots of the palm trees help filter some of the salt out. We had to bring all of our own drinking water with us.

The whole island isn’t bigger than probably two football fields.

The lancha motorboat that transports passengers between islands.

The next three days we spent cruising on a lancha and visiting a few islands each day. Some of the islands had beautiful coral reefs, and we all took turns using Shellee’s snorkel! We swam, read books, and kayaked around one of the islands. We ate breakfast and dinner on Isla Aroma with other tourists, and the guides blew on a conch shell to call us into the dining hut. Kind of like a Caribbean version of summer camp, I loved it. The second night Shellee’s boyfriend Blanco, who is a tour guide, and some other guides invited the four of us to drink some beer on the beach (imagine a campfire but without the fire) and they told us stories and bits of history of the Guna Yala.

Some history…the Guna people migrated to Panama’s Caribbean coast from the mountains of Colombia. Modern-day Bogotá was Guna homeland. The Columbian government established the semi-autonomous Comarca Tulenega for the Guna in 1870, which included most of the current territory and also some Guna areas in present-day northern Columbia. In 1903, Panama declared independence from Colombia (subconscious Manifest Destiny check here: did you know that the US under the Teddy Roosevelt admin basically facilitated the succession of Panama for our own gain, aka control of the Canal Zone? I didn’t know this until I moved here.) The brand-new Panamanian government no longer recognized the Comarca Tulenega. Therefore, outsiders started coming to the islands, intent to claim natural resources like gold, sea turtles, bananas, and rubber trees since they were no longer legally owned. The Guna resisted the exploitation, and of course the government responded by sending in police to “tame” the Guna by violence. In 1925, the people had had enough, and carried out a planned attack on the colonial police occupying the islands. In the following days, a peace treaty was reached, creating the Comarca Guna Yala. In exchange, the government was allowed some limited influence on the islands, notably creation of public schools.

This is the Guna flag.

The Guna are still incredibly proud of the revolution (there are some cool commemorative street murals in Panama City, I will try to get a photo before I leave) and I have found average non-indigenous Panamanians to be very supportive of the Guna people’s right to their autonomous territory. The Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé is also partly autonomous, but not to the extent of the Guna Yala. I think this has to do with the traditional government. The Guna had a casique (chief) and general congress system in place before the revolution, where the Ngäbes were traditionally organized into nomadic family groups and didn’t have an overarching government structure when they achieved their Comarca. Now the CNB has a “traditional” leadership system that was modeled off the Guna system, although right now it’s not functioning very smoothly, haha. Think: dispute over who are the legitimate casiques…

The Comarcas also elect members to the national Parliament in Panama City. The first Guna woman was just elected to Parliament this year! The swear-in was on July 1st, and I got to watch a bit of it on TV. All diputados (like a Senator or Representative, member of the single-body legislative chamber, la Asamblea Nacional) had to wear all white on the first day, except for the one Guna woman, who had gotten permission to wear her traditional colorful dress of mola blouse and chakiras, which are beads worn on the arms and legs. I teared up a little, the image of her standing in the midst of mostly men in white during the national anthem was beautiful. I don’t have any personal photos of women Guna clothing out of respect for their privacy, but you should Google it if you haven’t seen it before!

On our way back to the port, we stopped a non-tourist island for a tour of a Guna town. As Blanco was explaining the function of a traditional meeting house, two American missionaries who live on the island too stopped in and interrupted him to give us their own spiel on the culture of the island. It was very rude. I am wary of missionaries – I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they have good intentions…but I have seen the damage they’ve inflicted on the cultural spirit of the Ngäbe, convincing many Ngäbe that their own traditions like balsería, jeki, and chichería are evil. :( And now it is more important than ever that the Guna maintain their cultural identity, because of climate change. The islands are at sea level, and the sea is rising by centimeters each year. Unlike many people in power, they do not deny the seriousness of the crisis and know that in the next couple of generations they'll have to move back to the mainland and abandon the soon-to-be-underwater islands. It sounds completely overwhelming to me, but I have no doubt that the Guna people will overcome this challenge with their strong collective will.

It was a wonderful trip and I am grateful I got to go! And more photos:

Blanco surprised us with a lobster for Shellee’s birthday!

Viene la lluvia

The four of us

I always keep my eye out for sand dollars when snorkeling.

Amazing sunset.

Glitch?

Hello and my apologies to those that receive email updates when I make a new blog post - it appears that a draft post and a random post from 2017 were sent out over the past couple of days. I'm not sure why, I think it may be a glitch in my blogging platform or possibly my laptop's touch pad, which is starting to go kaput. I'm actually quite surprised that my computer has lasted three years in Panama, almost all of my fellow volunteers have lost at least one computer to the humidity/general living conditions haha.

New post coming in the next couple of days!

Cumpleaños dorado

As a pre-teen I imagined that at 25 I'd have a car, an apartment, and a fiancé or maybe even a husband. I would be settled into a professional job, wearing slacks to work, going to classy bars on the weekend, all youthful frivolities behind me.

Well, that's clearly exactly what I've achieved. When my birthday officially began at midnight, I was crouched behind a giant log on the beach, playing Sardines with all of the volunteers. Last Friday night was spent alone at home, chopping up my veggies that were on the cusp of going bad for a stir fry, watching Jane the Virgin, and trying to shoo a giant grasshopper out of my house. My work consists of slipping down mud paths wearing rubber boots and homemade floor-length dresses, to sit and talk with families in huts with palm thatch roofs. I travel by bus, in the back of converted pickup trucks, or by foot. Occasionally I splurge on wine or a beer. I haven't gone on a date in over three years, haha.

I thought that at 25 I would be "all grown up", but honestly, I still feel so young. And that's a good thing.

The past week I spent a couple days facilitating a seminar that my fellow volunteer Eliana planned. It was for an association of botanical doctors and midwives in the Comarca. The idea was to help the members understand the science of HIV/AIDS and how it is treated, recognize potential cases of HIV or AIDS in their communities based on symptoms and health history, promote preventative behaviors, and create a better connection between the Ministry of Health and the association. The participants brainstormed strategies to deal with people who believe HIV can be cured by God or traditional remedies alone, different types of record-keeping systems for their patients, and ways to record information to send along with patients to the hospital. Often times, people arrive in the hospital without a health history and a low Spanish level, which makes it really difficult to accurately diagnose them. Hopefully these medicine men and women can help bridge this gap.

It was amazing teaching and learning from these people. There was one part where we passed out cards with symptoms, and they had to write down what types of natural medicines they would use to treat the symptoms, or decide if it was serious enough to refer a patient to the hospital. One man in my small group immediately recalled a plant for each symptom - fever, headache, infected wound, night sweats. Example - for an infected wound, you have to harvest a certain leaf, but only the baby green ones because the mature leaves are poisonous, chop it up to make a paste and apply it to the wound. It was so impressive, getting a little taste of the vast amount of botanical medical knowledge he has memorized. Before Peace Corps I never dreamed I would have the chance to participate in something like this, much less be ABLE to facilitate a seminar in Spanish.

Life is unexpected but reality is much more exciting than any of the plans I could have made for myself. Here's to 25. Happy golden birthday to me. :)

My last Regional Meeting!

LOL thanks to my boss Daniel for this surprise graphic

Dinámica at the seminar - hula hoop pass.

The midwives and botanical doctors doing an activity, classifying common illnesses. 

Drought, Pickles, Worms, Democracy

Since the beginning of February, my main job has been visiting communities to prepare them to receive new volunteers in August. Right now, we have twenty-two (!!!) hopeful sites on the list. It started with 23, but we had to eliminate one because we showed up for their second meeting to two police cars and three barricades (see photo). The community had blocked in the teachers' car to protest the delayed construction of the school, and their demonstration had made the news, so the governor of the Comarca showed up along with the police at the exact time our meeting was supposed to be. We were really impressed by the will of the people, but had to leave this community for maybe next year, when there isn't so much political tension.

I went back to Cerro Gallina twice with the Sustainable Agriculture Systems (SAS) staff. As you may remember they did not get a follow-up WASH volunteer last year upon my departure for various reasons, one being that there was too much division amongst families for a water or sanitation project to be successful, but the gente wanted an agriculture volunteer. The meetings went well, and I hope they are able to get a volunteer because I see lots of potential in the areas of cacao, corn, and bean production, home gardens, and marketing of their products. But going back to my site was shocking... it was so dry. Sooooo dry. Because of the drought and wind, multiple routine finca fires had gotten out of control, burning aqueduct tubes and getting dangerously close to houses. The area in front of Eduardo and Luisa's house looked like a nuclear wasteland, pure black ash. The namesake Hen Hill, above the community, was half burned. It used to be completely tree covered, and now it is half trees and half charred stumps. I asked my gente about this, in dismay, and turns out some people from Cerro Mesa burned here so they could plant. But if they cut down the trees, all of the water in your springs is gonna dry up! I cried. This can't be legal, this hill should be protected land where no one is allowed to burn. My gente agreed, but what can we do at this point? Then we hiked down to the spring, where I got all of my water last year. Although the flow was reduced in the dryest months, I was still always able to fill up my buckets. This time, it was barely trickling. I couldn't believe it, it would take hours to fill a single bucket at this rate. If it had been this dry last year....man oh man. I honestly may have thrown in the towel and said, "I'm outta here. I can't do this anymore."

The meeting in Gallina was on Thursday April 4th. For the next few days I couldn't get the image of the dry spring out of my mind. I cursed the summer and prayed please God, make it rain!!! On Sunday April 7th it started to rain. And just like that, it was winter again. It's a temporary consolation... I am relieved I never have to withstand a hot, dusty Panamanian summer again, but my gente have to deal with it every year, and it's going to keep getting longer and dryer as climate change continues to accelerate. :( :(

When I have time off from site ID I have been continuing to experiment in the kitchen, mainly with yeast breads and fermented drinks. A new vegetable stand opened up in San Felix last October, and the women who run it are amazing, bringing colorful produce from the Chiriquí highlands. They even have some of my favorites that are harder to find, like spinach and eggplant. They brought me fresh dill on special request so I made three jars of homemade dill pickles and they were so good.

I acquired some California red worms from a SAS volunteer who has a compost project going in her site and have started worm composting at my house, and I love it. I toss in small handfuls of food scraps chopped into tiny bits, egg shells, coffee grounds, etc and the worms eat it up, then their byproduct (worm poop!) becomes a rich compost. My idea is that once they reproduce enough to have sizable population in my bucket, volunteers can take handfuls of worms to their sites to start their own buckets, then pass worms on to their gente too. Why toss food scraps when they can be turned into free organic fertilizer?!

This past Sunday was Panama's quinquennial election. Official campaigning is not allowed until two months out from voting, so on March 5th empezó la locura - political party flags appeared, posters and banners were everywhere, and ads for candidates even began popping up on my Facebook newsfeed. One day I was waiting near Hato Pilón for a chiva and a truck full of Cambio Democrático party members stopped. They appeared to be joyriding up and down the mountain, shouting and waving their flags. They gave me a free ride, so that was nice. Since every position from president to mayor is up for (re)election at the same time, everyone and their neighbor seemed to be running for some office. Actually though, my next-door neighbor was running for representative. He was constantly running around leading up to the election, and surprised me when the night before he stopped and gave us a heartfelt speech on my porch about how he wanted to make the district of San Félix better for everyone, not just the wealthy and influential, and even if he lost he was going to continue fighting for equality. He ran as an independent and ended up losing, and apparently the political party of the winner was giving rides to the polls and bribing voters with $20 per vote for their candidate... On the topic of corruption, the 2009-2014 Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli was running for mayor of Panama City, and had quite a following. Recall that he was extradited from Miami to Panama in 2017 on embezzlement charges and awaits his trial in jail. But then soon before the election, it was determined that he was actually not eligible to run because he didn't meet the residency requirement for mayor, because he was in JAIL! It sounds ridiculous but it's true haha. The new president is Nito Cortizo from the Partido Revolucionario Democrático, the center-left party that was started by President Omar Torrijos in 1979. I am optimistic about Nito because he visited the Comarca multiple times during his campaign and really seems to care about indigenous people! Speaking of Omar Torrijos, I recently read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It gives a behind-the-scenes look into United States interventions in various countries, and has several chapters about Panama, Torrijos, and the events that transpired after the 1976 Torrijos-Carter treaties that turned control of the canal over to Panama. This book blew my mind and I couldn't put it down. You have to read it if you haven't yet, and please let me know if you do, I want to hear your thoughts!

Dad, Mom, and Brendan came to Panama! In Panama City, we hiked Cerro Ancón where we saw a baby sloth, visited the canal, Casco Viejo, the fish and artisan markets, and walked the Cinta Costera. We visited my host family in Santa Rita on the way to Santa Fé, where we stayed in a little bed & breakfast up in the misty mountains for a night. We hiked to see a waterfall which was underwhelming but the rainforest along the way was beautiful as always. Then we went to Santa Catalina, a little rustic surf town, where you can catch boats to Coiba National Park. We did some snorkeling at Coiba, saw two wild crocodiles, and tried surfing. It was a wonderful week of lots of delicious food, card games, and getting to share this country that has become home to me with my family!

And now, for some photos:

One of the three aforementioned barricades, the first two were made of fallen trees and this one was made of a miscellaneous assortment of things: PVC pipe, wheelbarrow, desk, rice pilón, metal crossbars... You can see the Ministry of Education car in the background, the new unfinished school to the left and the temporary school to the right. 

I finally made it to a balsería! This is a traditional celebration in the Comarca that takes place a few times each year during the dry months. Men "fight" by taking turns throwing logs at each other's legs and trying to dodge the incoming logs. Women also participate, but by fistfighting! Copious amounts of chicha fuerte are served and homemade horns made of conch shells and turtle shells are constantly blared. I went with a bunch of volunteers. We drank chicha out of totumas (miraculously I didn't get diarrhea, I think it was the fermentation), blew horns, and a couple of the guys even fought balsa! It was loud, dusty, chaotic, and hot as hell but quite worthwhile to experience this unique Ngäbe event. This photo is of a guy wearing a nagua over his clothes (to soften the blow when the balsa log gets hurled at your calf) and a typical backpack, made out of a stuffed wild feline.

Hiking to help out Colin and his water committee repair a toma.

Lunch with the fam and Dionicio in San Félix! One of many selfies snapped by Dionicio.

A hammock not made for normal-sized humans

Visiting Milvia in Santa Rita!

On the lancha to Isla Coiba.

Helped facilitate a Comarca WASH weekend retreat at the beach - we served pasta and salad in plastic storage bins because we didn't have bowls big enough for 16 people.

Hiking to a potential new community. I was in the clouds the whole way, felt like I was in a terrarium. So lovely.

Coiba Island! Fulfilling a Panamanian dream to visit here.

The four WASH RLs at site announcement for the new group of volunteers, G84.