Checkpoint: Passed

We made it!!! Our three-month integration period has officially ended. Do I feel completely integrated? No way. But it's a continual process, and I definitely feel like I am at a good place with my community. Obviously there have been high and low points - picture me on good days frolicking in my nagua along a mountaintop path and on bad days hiding in my bedroom furiously shoving cookies into my mouth. But my mental state is good overall, and somehow I've managed to stay remarkably healthy so far in site.

Remember my last few days in Santa Rita, when my host mom gave birth and I had to help with a lot of the cooking in the house? So my last week with my host fam in Gallina was somewhat similar. My host mom went out of town and decided to trust the gringa in the kitchen, leaving me with food to cook for my host dad and brothers. I ended up cooking two breakfasts, three lunches and a dinner over the course of the last week. The first meal I made - rice and red beans - took 3.5 hours and it didn't even taste good! I felt embarrassed giving it to my host dad. It's a tough life, cooking here in the Comarca with a fogón. Generally fathers find logs, carry them to the house, and chop em up into firewood. Then the mothers are responsible for starting the fire (which I absolutely suck at) with the limited materials in the house, usually getting it going by burning plastic bags, preparing all the food, cooking, and doing the dishes. And my host family has to carry all of the water used for cooking and washing in jugs and buckets from the creek down a steep hill from the house. By the end of cooking that first meal, my eyes were stinging from all of the smoke, and I was exhausted and dirty. But I was glad I had the experience. I have so much respect for all of the hard work my community goes through daily to eat, and I have a better understanding of why some families only eat two giant meals a day instead of the three meals typical in our culture. It takes tremendous effort to cook, why do it more than you have to?

I had my final community meeting before my jefa from the Peace Corps office visits Gallina in a few weeks for a community presentation. I had the attendees work together to create and present to me a list of their top priorities for the next two years: on what projects do they want to work with Peace Corps? One of them was getting the water committee up and running again -woohoo! That's what I like to hear. Another was seminars on organic composting, which is also awesome, not really in my realm of knowledge but I have lots of agriculture volunteer friends who can hopefully help. The third was my help in planning community-wide events and holiday celebrations. Since the churches, school, bigger tiendas, sports teams, etc are all next door in Mesa, my community members have to go there for all of the meetings and holiday events put on by the school. Nothing really happens here in Gallina. So I am super stoked that they have the desire to bring the community together and do some much-needed Gallina pride-building - I had been hoping to work on same thing!

This past Tuesday I dumped all of my stuff into my new house, then left site for two days of Ngäbere training in San Felix, which was very helpful. Then I headed to Cerro Punta in the Chiriquí highlands and spent two nights at an eco-lodge with 140-some other PC Panama volunteers, catching up with friends, playing trivia and volleyball, biking, dancing, cooking, laughing, and eating the largest and best Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's dinner I could have ever dreamed of. I'm heading back to site tomorrow and can't wait to spend my first night in the volunteer house! Then in less than a week, a group of Comarca friends are visiting me in Gallina to celebrate Christmas. I hope that you are all having a wonderful holiday season back in the US!

Fotos Aleatorias

 Vidal and Yeya with the tail and hoof of the cow my host family slaughtered

 Waiting...and waiting...for people to show up to my meetings in the rancho

More kids on rooftops

Roderik "Chong" and Pedro "Tito" eating lunch we cooked, the chickens and dogs constantly hang around hoping for a bite or two

Pumpkin soup over rice that I made for lunch! Plus a very interested hen. Definitely the tastiest meal I've cooked

Host sister Pricila (on the right) and her cousin on the way to school

I hardly took any photos at the holiday party :( but I had to snap a photo of my friends being typical PC volunteers by bringing tupperware to Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers

Cerro Punta from our morning bike ride! It was hard to capture the beauty of this place.

Producer Soup

One of my favorite parts about Cerro Gallina so far has been the chance to work with a newly formed "grupo de productores" of 16 families. So far, I've been to four juntas (communal work days) for this group. We macheted several parcels, planted rows and rows of yucca, banana, rice, and herbs, and prepared rice tanks for future planting. The idea is that each family shares in the work and each will receive a portion of the food produced. The instigator of this group, Marcelino, is a very motivated guy. Since I've been in site, he has traveled to several conferences and events around Panama to learn about organic farming techniques, eco-stoves, endangered sea turtle protection - all kinds of environmental topics. The goal is for this whole endeavor to be done completely organically. The work days are fun! As I'm still getting used to the whole Panama time thing (every event seems to start between 1-2 hours after the scheduled start time) I am usually the first to arrive in the morning. We'll all gather, everyone brings their contribution for lunch (rice, vegetables, soup broth, coffee, sugar, etc) and someone is put in charge of cooking the meal. Then we work - chopping, digging, planting, giant gallon jugs of coffee and chicha are passed around, men salimar, women get right in there hacking the ground with garden hoes, everyone gossips, I listen along and try to get the gist of the half Ngäbere-half Spanish conversations. This past Tuesday, Adriana asked if I wanted to be in charge of cooking lunch with her for the day at Elsa's house. I've been helping out with cooking meals at my host family house lately, so I jumped at the chance to show off my new fogón cooking skills. No, I'm kidding - did you really think they trust the gringa to cook their meals over an open fire? I do help a lot, especially when Walter, my little brother cooks dinner. But he always delegates to me the tasks that don't actually require cooking. "Bei, go pick and slice peppers from the bush" "Bei, rinse this rice" "Bei, wash this spoon" "Bei, open this can of sardines" Yep, I get bossed around by a 10-year-old in the kitchen. Anyways, on Tuesday Adriana took charge of the actual cooking and put me to work peeling and slicing. We made a paila of rice and porotos (type of bean that is in season) and a paila of soup with uyama (like a squashy pumpkin), bodá (stringy green vegetable), ñame & ñampi (potato-like root veggies), onion, bell pepper, garlic, and a bunch of herbs. Elsa kept running to her garden and picking more herbs to throw in - culantro (like cilantro, but better), oregano, parsley, celery leaves. As the soup was simmering, we the cooks snacked on bread and the ever-flowing coffee. Elsa had the radio tuned to a station with American music (!!), there was a cool breeze blowing through the rancho, the sun was peeking out, the women talked and laughed and I listened, and the smell of garlic and oregano wafted through the air. I think it was one of the moments I have felt the most content in my whole almost-five months in Panama so far. And the soup was the best dish I have eaten in the Comarca, hands-down. Not just because I helped make it, really...I never wanted my bowl to end. As I slurped down mouthfuls of soup with rice and beans, I thought about how almost every ingredient in the meal was grown right here by the community, or if not, at least from this region of Panama. Switching from 22 years in the heart of the consumer class to living now in the heart of the producer class has definitely been a tough adjustment at times, but this meal was a reminder of how incredible and admirable of a life this is. Though it wasn't Thanksgiving back home...I sure was thankful for this day!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone in the States! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. In just 2.5 weeks, I head to San Felix for several days of additional Ngäbere training with fellow Comarca volunteers, then to Cerro Punta for the Peace Corps holiday party, then when I get back to site I will officially be moved into my own house. Finally!!! I love my host family but I cannot wait to have my own space. I am continuing visiting door-to-door, helping around the house and in my host family's finca, attending work days and meetings and celebrations, and trying to and get to know Gallina and all of the people that make it up. At several community members' request, I decided to start a small informal English class on Monday afternoons, and my first class had four eager participants :) I hope the motivation stays up. My mental list of ideas for the community continues to grow and become ever-more complex the more I talk to people and learn about family dynamics, the history of the community and the Comarca itself, and the local economy. This Friday I have my next Peace Corps meeting, in which we'll hopefully dive a bit deeper and start solidifying and developing plans for some of these ideas. Or we'll just drink cacao and go way off-topic and not accomplish anything. Who knows??

Photos!

 Handwashing seminar in Kaboy

 Ya know, just almuerzo on the roof

 Handwashing day at the school in Mesa

 Manuel and Gabriel

 Daily walks through corn fields in the clouds

Sledding Comarca style: pulling babies in cooking pailas

School marching band at the Comarca Panamanian Independence from Columbia Day parade

p.s. changed my blog header background - I took this photo from right outside my future house!

Facepalm Moment, Integration Status, Quotes, and Poop Tidbit

Once again, I did something silly and became the subject of Gallina bochinche. My host parents, brothers, and I went to go harvest rice in a part of their finca I hadn’t been to before. The winding path to get there included a hike through a cornfield, across several creeks, under a couple fences, etc… After working for a few hours, the clouds rolled in and an aguacero (downpour) was imminent. They filled a giant chácara with rice - probably the biggest one they own, you could carry a full-size adult human in there. They asked if I could carry it home, and wanting to appear strong I said I could. They helped me hoist the strap onto my head and the bag onto my back, and sent me off alone, because they know I walk much slower than them and needed more time to get home… I stumbled off and shortly realized that the bag was way too heavy for me. I had to take a rest, realized that the strap was ripping my hair out. So I tried to carry it around around my shoulders, kept trudging on, it started to rain, and then I realized that the path I was following was starting to look less like a path and more like me just forging through the brush. It began to downpour, and I slipped and the chácara fell and I could not get it back on. I would try, and then I would fall over backwards or sideways; I was exhausted. The rice was getting wet - my family are subsistence farmers, soaking and ruining their rice is like burning their money! I started to panic. I realized how lost I was, trying to lug the bag back the way I came, not finding the path. I couldn’t just leave the bag of rice and find my host family, because what if I couldn’t find it again? But I couldn’t carry it anymore. I started to salimar (a specific Tarzan-like yell that everyone does here to greet each other) at the top of my lungs, and screaming “Ayúdame!” repeatedly. Oh man, I must have been quite the site to see. I kept this up for probably at least 20 minutes, continuing to freak out, until my host dad finally answers my calls and hacks through the brush to find me. Luckily, he seemed more amused than anything. I surrendered the bag to him, and made it home. “This is the path, Bei. There is only one path. Where were you going?” Of course, everyone hears about this incident, and the following days I hear sentiments such as “When are you going to the finca next, Bei? Do you need a guide to make it back okay? Ha ha ha…” 

Good news: I am definitely feeling more integrated in my community. People are getting used to seeing me wander around Gallina. I learned to tejer and knit my first chácara! People are so excited because know how to make chácaras and chakiras (bracelets) now, and I’m currently learning to sew dientes by hand with the local artisan group. I just need to learn to sew naguas! I’m getting used to seeing six-year-olds wielding machetes almost as tall as they are, seventy-something grandmothers scaling ridiculously steep hills in flip-flops, and three-year-olds drinking huge cups of coffee. I’m becoming closer with my host family. Although they may not quite understand it yet, at least they know I do have a sense of humor. I am appreciating the slow daily pace of life, the sweaty days in the fields planting yucca and beans, the simple diet, and the ever-abundant natural beauty that surrounds us. I have been continuing to check out ojos de agua, asking a lot of questions about where their water comes from, getting people excited about re-forming the currently nonfunctioning water committee, and scoping out what kind of projects people are interested in collaborating with Peace Corps on. 

Some favorite quotes… neighbor kids are playing with this toy gun that lights up and makes a noise. He points it straight at his friend and yells, “¡Dame su cédula!” A cédula is an identification card that all Panamanian citizens have. So instead of “Gimme your money!” it’s like yelling “Gimme your social security number!” It made me laugh. 

People have asked me quite a few times about indigenous culture in the United States. I’m trying to brush up my knowledge, especially about the indigenous people that live in my own state, so I can give them better answers. One of the questions was “Do they have normal skin, or white skin like yours?” which also made me chuckle, another reminder of how weird my looks are here. “They have normal skin,” I answered.

And a poop update (sorry, WASH volunteer necessity)…I finally had a tiny bit of diarrhea. Just one time, and it wasn’t bad at all. Many of my PC friends have not been so lucky, lots of them have had to visit the clinic in the city for amoebas, Giardia, parasites… However, the chronic constipation continues. I’ll be constipated for days and days, and then all of a sudden I’m off somewhere hiking to visit families and the urge to poop will just hit me like a wave, and I’ll have drop what I’m doing to find a place to relieve myself immediately. Living the Peace Corps campo life.

Scrapbook: first five weeks

Vidal, my neighbor, crossing the sketchy bamboo bridge to Salto Dupí.

Adrián laughing at how I freaked out when they shoved their parrot in my face and it started squawking.

Second community meeting! They got really into drawing a map of the community, which was super fun to watch.

Two of my favorite muchachas. Beche, on the left, is my Ngäbe spirit animal.

 Manuel and his siblings always love posing for pictures and videos.

 Gorgeous waterfall near Cerro Piedra! Day trip with some Peace Corps pals :)

Chidäni, my neighbor, heading back along the ridgeline from Piedra to Gallina.

Things are going well in Cerro Gallina. My first community-wide meeting didn't go very well, as I invited 37 families and only seven people showed up, but the second one went much better. I had at least 20 people there! I also provided a whole cubo of cacao, which was gulped down quickly. My community wants to meet with me every three weeks, something that they suggested and I was really impressed with! Next meeting is on November 8^th. I had somewhat of a wakeup call last Saturday, when during a cacao session a bunch of people called me out on my slow progress in Ngäbere. I realized that even though I've been studying my Ngäbere manual, I haven't been putting 100% into my speaking. So now I'm working on throwing in whatever phrases I know into conversation when possible. People seem to appreciate it!

She has strange colored eyes, skin, and hair, wears weird Jesus sandals, loves dumping hot sauce on her food and drinking coffee WITHOUT sugar, and lets cats fall asleep in her lap. What kind of odd human being were we ''lucky'' enough to receive?!

I have no shortage of time to wonder what my community thinks about me...

But overall, I am feeling good. Muy buena gente here in Gallina. I've been invited to late night cacao drinking sessions, juntas (communal work days), birthday parties, and a lot of people have asked me about potential projects. It's still early to tell, but there are at least five different groups of families spread out throughout the community that have expressed interest in my help with aqueducts. So it looks like I have WORK ahead of me! Next week I suppose I am starting some official WASH work, as I volunteered Zach and I to spend a day giving handwashing seminars to the entire elementary school in Cerro Mesa. I have yet to plan it (shhh) but I love working with kids so I can't wait! 

Is Pifá a Carb?

''...Yes.''

One day last week, I was served bread for breakfast, yuca at Clemente’s house, pifá (peach palm, a starchy potato-like fruit) at Dioselina & Valentín’s house, returned to Clemente’s for a bowl of rice, and then chicheme (kind of like an oatmeal drink, but made of corn). Five different carbs/starches all before dinner! And then on October 3rd (hope you got the reference in the post title) it was 6 pm and I had eaten nothing but two bowls of plain rice all day. I was at Isaiah & Casilda’s house in a hungry, bad mood - and then they bring out a bowl of rice with onions and a piece of chicken! It was the first Gallinan chicken I had eaten in Cerro Gallina. Seeing my excitement, Isaiah exclaimed “Your first pollo de patio! A gift from God!” And indeed, it was. It was exactly what I needed.

I’ve now been in site for a little over three weeks, minus two days out for the Comarca regional meeting and a meeting with MINSA (Ministerio de Salud, or Ministry of Health). Most days, I’ve been pasearing. There are 37 households in the community, and I’ve visited each home at least once so far. I’ve been trying to get everyone’s names down and do a rough census. So far I’ve counted about 200 people, but I’m sure my estimate is on the low end. Most houses are a mixture of parents, kids, grandkids, and random relatives. There always seem to be visitors from afuera and neighbors over so it’s hard to tell who lives where. At one house, it was basically eight kids and a grandpa just staring at me while I tried to make conversation. And then someone pulled out their cameraphone and took a video of me sitting there struggling to talk to all of these blank faces. That was kind of painful. But then there are other houses where I’ve stayed for several hours chatting with the families! I’ve been read Bible passages. I’ve been given a Bible in Ngäbere and told to read it out loud. I’ve given and received a lot of impromptu English/Ngäbere lessons. People have asked me to explain everything from the differences between North and South Korea to why Jews keep Sabbath on Saturday. Countless people have asked me if I want to be set up with a Ngäbe boyfriend, upon hearing that I’m single. I’ve been fed yuca soup so delicious I wanted to cry and gluey crema so bad that tears were actually rolling down my face as I tried to gulp it down. I hiked with a family to a high school in a neighboring community for a festival and ended up judging a cooking competition. I went to a soccer tournament with my host brothers and got hit really hard in the face with a ball, which then became the local bochinche. “We heard you got hit in the face, Bei! Ha ha ha ha” I spent a morning macheteing the church yard. I went to a work junta and harvested rice. I helped a family take flow measurements for a potential ojo de agua. I’ve gotten helplessly lost in the middle of a rice field during a thunderstorm trying to hike from one house to another. I took a wrong path one day and wound up in another community on the next ridgeline…

My life is so bizarre, you guys.

The Ngäbe people are blunt. They don’t give or take any shit. People have told me that I have a huge head, that I would look much prettier if I had long hair, that my pronunciation is really bad. Learning Ngäbere has been slow going, and I get scolded multiple times a day for my lack of progress. Historically, it is an oral language. Only when missionaries came to study the population was the written language created. There’s not really any need to write Ngäbere because all official writing is done in Spanish, and the kids only speak, read, and write Spanish in schools. I am 100% a visual learner, so learning it orally has been tricky for me. But Peace Corps gave us a dictionary and basic grammar guide, which have been helpful.

Tonight I’m spending the night at the Peace Corps house in San Felix. We don’t get vacation the first three months, but we can take a couple of personal days a month to do whatever we need to do out of site. I definitely needed today to recharge: my mind and body, my electronics, my snack supply…:) Coming up, I have scheduled and invited everyone to my first community-wide meeting (!!) this Thursday, I’m going to visit the artesian group in Cerro Mesa, going to help a family with some water-level land surveying next week, hiking to my neighbor Michael’s site to help him with a handwashing charla later this month, but mostly just continuing on the pasear grind!

Aspirante --> Voluntaria

Tomorrow! We swear in to the Peace Corps and officially become volunteers. We moved out of Santa Rita on Monday morning and are now in Ciudad del Saber for a few nights. My last two weeks in Santa Rita were actually full of learning and new experiences - we had Ngäbere lessons, cooked a huge feast for the 24 of us and our facilitators, performed the cup song in English & Spanish in front of a bunch of community members, learned & performed the traditional Baile de Mariposas, I cooked a meal of Thai-style pasta and salad for my host family, we built tippy taps and learned to machete, and my host mom had her baby! In the first few days she was home from the hospital, I ended up doing a lot of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. On Sunday, I actually prepared all three meals for the family! I was not expecting that, haha. I accidentally flooded the whole back room while using the washing machine, and I almost set myself on fire several times trying to work the gas stove. I was cooking chuletas and at one point there was a flame taller than my head…the stove is waist-high…yeah. But I was grateful for the experience and my host family laughed along with me, and seemed to appreciate the help. I had some great conversations with my host mom and grandpa in particular the last week - I will really miss them!! But I’m sure I’ll be back to visit when I’m in the area. I left Santa Rita feeling very welcomed and at home in the Latino culture, and I can only try my best to have a similar experience in the Comarca.

What’s next? After the swear-in ceremony, we're going to spend the evening celebrating in Casco Viejo, and then Thursday we’re all going to have a last G79 hurrah at a beach in Coclé, travel Friday and I’ll be in Cerro Gallina by Saturday morning. And from there, it’s all up to me. The reality of the challenge that lies ahead of me is daunting. Being the only English speaking strange American outsider in the whole community is going to be really tough for me - and for my mental health I am going to take a social media break for a while. I know myself well enough to know that scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed is going to depress me, and I don’t need that. However, having people to talk/vent/cry to when I’m having a bad day is very important to me, and thanks to my awesome 3G signal in site, please don’t hesitate to send me a WhatsApp message! I’ll be checking my phone daily, provided my solar panel functions as expected, and I’d love to hear from you. See the Contact Me tab. 

Kwitubtä

I didn’t have a long list of expectations for my community - I hoped it would be small, indigenous, and have aqueduct work to be done. And I hoped it would be challenging. Not that there are “easy” communities in the Peace Corps, but I hoped that my community would have aspects that would be challenging to me personally. And let me say that Cerro Gallina (Kwitubtä in Ngäbere) did not disappoint! The week was a roller coaster, my thoughts ranged from “this is the coolest place ever” to “how in the world am I going to survive here” but if I made it through five nights I can survive two years, right?!? Really, I just need to get through the first three months, which will undoubtedly be difficult as I’ll be living with my host family and my primary goal will be building a relationship with my community. My host fam can speak Spanish, but they pretty much only speak Ngäbere with each other. To be honest, I felt like a circus freak the whole week. I hardly got a word out of my 16 and 21-year old host brother and sister, who both have children already, even after purposely making fun of myself to try to get them to laugh. They did laugh AT me several times- when I attempted to pilar and rice went flying everywhere, when my Spanish made no sense, even when I said my thank you’s and goodbyes before leaving. My goodbye was met with blank stares and no replies, but as soon as I turned and walked about 10 feet they burst out laughing. Nothing against them - I would’t know how to connect with a culturally clueless, clumsy, freakishly pale-skinned girl either if I were in their shoes!! Luckily my 8 and 10-year old host sibs were awesome, and they’ve already asked me how to say a bunch of phrases in English. I love that age group - ideas are already forming in my head for kids’ English book club, environmental club, music club...

The first volunteer in my site, John Michael, left the community for good on Saturday. He took me pasearing on Wednesday, Thursday we had his despedida party, and Friday I paseared with my host brother. I met a lot of the community, was offered too much overly sugared coffee and cacao, learned a *little* bit about the current state of things - water systems, family feuds, agriculture, religion... The women, in general, are incredibly quiet, while the men are more talkative. John Michael is basically fluent in Ngäbere, and it was so impressive. People kept telling me how fast he learned it...hint hint...looks like I will be working my butt off trying to learn this language in the first couple months, because it is clear that there are some community members who won't truly accept me until I do. I was named Bei (pronounce it like a middle school girl might say "my bae") and drank > 4 cups of cacao to rid me of chogali (demons). I saw the ojos de agua - there are at least five of them amongst the four neighborhoods, no large-scale aqueduct system, huge issues with drought during the January-April dry season, not many latrines, basically: a lot of potential WASH work!

A favorite of mine:

“Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when you judge them, you’re a mile away. And you have their shoes.” :)

In Peace Corps terms, this metaphorical mile is our two years here. I saw a lot of things in my community in five short days that disturbed me, things I couldn't make any sense of, but I know that with time, with the confianza we will build, I will hopefully be able to get to the roots of these behaviors and understand. I really think that this is why everyone in our world seems to hate each other - because we don't spend the time learning about other cultures. Even studying, visiting for a week or two is not really going to make you understand. Growing up I never imagined I'd get the chance to live hombro a hombro with an indigenous group I had never heard of. As wild as Peace Corps is, it is really the coolest job.

I have much more I’d like to say here, but I’ve got two whole years to write about Cerro Gallina. Three weeks from today, I'll be living there!

Until next time, 

Bei Kwitubu <3

S-s-s-site placement

Current volunteers, PC staff, Panamanians and Americans packed the Peace Corps office to find out where the 45 trainees (we've lost a few from the original 48) would be placed in a somewhat drawn-out and over-hyped site announcement ceremony. Emotions ran high; people were squealing with happiness and others were almost in tears. We're spread out across the country - from Bocas del Toro bordering Costa Rica, the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé, Veraguas, Cocle to the Darién bordering Colombia. 

Drumroll....I will be living in the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé in a small community called Cerro Gallina! Which translates to "Chicken Hill". I know very little about this place yet so I'll keep this short, but I will be the second volunteer to live there, the population is ~200, it's located in the mountains with a 60-minute hike to public transportation, the community is interested in my help with aqueduct construction, latrines, health charlas, working with water committees, and side work with cacao, agriculture, a women's artisan group, youth sports and gender development work. Wowwww I am so excited! It sounds like the place for me.

This weekend we built a latrine on Saturday, went to Albrook for some shopping Sunday, went to a huge birthday party at my neighbor's house for a 1-year-old, and this morning we got up at 4 AM to come to the Peace Corps office. I met a man from my community, Eduardo, who came all the way here to Panama City (his first time!) to meet me and go through an all-day community entry conference with all of the other G79 volunteers and their community guides. He was shy but friendly, apparently the community is stoked to get a female volunteer so I can't wait to get there! I'll be staying for five nights and don't really know what I'll be doing the whole time (hopefully just tons of pasearing). Tonight we're in the Ciudad del Saber dorms, bright and early tomorrow we head to the Comarca!

Some of my host family in Bajo Gavilan

"We wash our hands" in three languages

Post-piñata with José Ismael - piñatas here are filled with flour in addition to candy

Ships going through Miraflores Locks!

Bocas shufflin' and campo life

Tech week in Bajo Gavilan, Bocas del Toro! As far as technical stuff goes, we worked on latrines - creating the form of the plancha, cutting rebar, mixing and pouring concrete, making the ferrocement seat, etc - helped create the form for a 3500-gallon tank for a gravity-fed aqueduct that will serve half a community, hiked up the mountain to the spring source that will feed the aqueduct, got to practice thermoforming PVC pipe, made soap from scratch, and gave a handwashing charla to a classroom of elementary schoolers. It was great to get a realistic look at how projects are actually carried out in a Peace Corps community. All week we had community members working alongside us, and that was a huge help - mixing concrete with shovels on a tarp in the blazing sun in the middle of the rainforest is not easy, but the hombres definitely made it look easy! Probably the most fun part of the week was hiking down the mountain from the ojo de agua (spring source) in a downpour - it was more like slipping/sliding/skiing the entire way down. People were faceplanting into mud, wiping out left and right, and tears were flowing from laughing so hard. Bocas is notoriously muddy and mountainous, you learn to do “the Bocas shuffle” to avoid landing in the mud on hikes.

After tech week we spent a night at Las Lajas in the Chiriquí province. It was beautiful there, walking down the beach at night watching thunderstorms in the distance over the ocean, seeing bioluminescence, swimming in the warmest water I’ve ever experienced, eating delicious food and drinking cold Balboa with great people, sleeping in my little tent on the sand under the stars. It was lovely to have a mini 24-hour vacation!

Coming back to Santa Rita brought an unexpected realization. My host family was out in the city, so I got to spend the afternoon with my host grandpa. We watched the Olympics on TV and chatted, and he bought us these delicious fruit pastries from the van that drives around. Then my host family returned, they had been at a birthday party so they brought me back arroz con pollo and purple potato salad - Panamanian fiesta food. And sitting at the dinner table it hit me like a wave - life here in Santa Rita is downright luxurious, comfortable, a piece of cake compared to what I’m going to experience in the campo. Living with a host family during tech week was humbling. We were treated like queens - served meat with every dinner, given our own room with beds, had a cooler with treated water. My host parents were incredibly kind and my five host sisters were so sweet and fun. But the special treatment given to us gringos was striking - my host family slept on the floor, many people were in poor health and almost all the children had rotten teeth, my family never ate in our presence - I caught a glimpse of one my my sisters eating a bowl of plain rice one time all week. When I accepted my Peace Corps invitation and promised to live at the level of my community, I didn’t give it much thought. Sure, I can do that. But now, that phrase has taken on a whole new meaning. In all honesty I’m not sure I’m ready yet to live how they live - like really live like them, eat, sleep, work, clean, behave, speak like them, become a member of the family instead of a guest. The living conditions - I can adjust to those. The language - my Spanish is getting lots better, I love languages, not my biggest problem. The technical stuff - I’m excited, bring on the projects. But integrating into the community - it’s going to be hard and I’m trying to prepare myself while I’m still here in Santa Rita. I have a profound respect for the people I met and stayed with in the campo and my fear of integrating stems from fear that I am not strong, compassionate, humble, selfless, tough enough to be like them.

Site announcement is on Wednesday morning - we’ve all been anticipating this day for six weeks now and I’m just as excited as I am anxious. I’ll try to quickly post on Wednesday afternoon to let you all know where I’ll be living for the next two years! Thanks to all that have been reading these posts, feel free to leave a comment too - I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Ñan töro!

(Hello, in Ngäbere) My visit to Bocas was much needed after sitting through training sessions for three weeks - I got a glimpse of what it's actually like to be a PC volunteer in the campo, and it definitely made me more excited for my service. Here are a few observations from the small Ngöbe-Bugle community I stayed with: 

Language: I was amazed that my volunteer, Chelsea, could listen to older men mumble in half Spanish, half Ngäbere and understand exactly what they were saying. She started about the same intermediate level as me in Spanish, so I'm excited to reach the level of comfort she has with communication. She does an English/Spanish book club for the kids at her house, and I got to help out with that and even give a mini-charla (a charla is like an informational presentation that you'll hear me talking about a lot, there's no good English equivalent) on nutrition, which was fun! So far in Ngäbere I can say hello, goodbye, thank you, good/okay, my name is ___, and "I pooped". I was given a Ngöbe name: Besi. Many fellow volunteers have remarked that it sounds like a good name for a cow.

Community health: this was the hardest thing to see. Families with 10 kids will live in 3-room homes, no one wears shoes regularly, handwashing is not practiced, there are no latrines, the community doesn't treat their water, I saw many little kids with protruding bellies, the diet is primarily rice and bananas, girls commonly get pregnant in their mid-late teens and drop out of school, the few that are still in school at this age. There are some interesting myths that people believe in - like adding chlorine to water makes you sick instead of preventing it, and rainwater is dirtier than water from rivers people poop in. I can see that behavior change is going to be as difficult, or possibly much MORE difficult, than physical infrastructure development. 

WASH projects: Right now Chelsea's just getting started with a rainwater catchment tank project for 10 homes in the community. She already has one at her house and there's one at the school. She's also considering constructing a composting latrine and seeing if the community is into that. We hiked to the tank and tomas for the aqueduct a neighboring volunteer, Alex, had designed and built with her gente. This week in tech class we've finally started more techy stuff: going over latrine construction, surveying methods, and aqueduct data collection. I'd be happy to work with any of it but truthfully I really want to build an aqueduct :) I requested that in my site placement interview so we'll see!

By far the most important part of the visit, though, was seeing how Chelsea thrives in her community. Her house is wonderful - decorated, clean, homey, sustainable. She has a huge herb & veggie garden, compost bin, and is recycling all of her trash to use for a big art project at the school.  We cooked some bomb meals in her kitchen - omelets, stir fry, guacamole, garlic bread, homemade juices from oranges straight from the tree. She loves and trusts her community members and they look up to her. This is what I will strive for. 

I'm writing this post on the bus to San Felix (I snagged some cell data gratis today, score) where all 24 WASHers are staying tonight before heading back to Bocas del Toro tomorrow for TECH WEEK! We finally get to do some excavating, constructing, data collection, etc as well as health charlas we have prepared for elementary school students. And then we have a free night on the way back to Santa Rita, so we're going to the beach! 

P.s. Still haven't gotten diarrhea, though the enormous daily quantity of rice and minimal fiber has given me the opposite problem. I've stocked up on dried fruits like prunes and raisins and they've been helping me out with that :) 

Foto time

After almost four weeks in country I have finally figured out where I can get an internet signal strong enough to post photos. I just returned from a wonderful visit to Bocas del Toro which I don't have time to write about today but will later, for now, some photos!


My host brother, José Ismael, putting together a puzzle


Panama City skyline


Chelsea reading a dual Spanish/English book to the kids at her site in Bocas. She runs a regular afternoon book club that I got to help out with!


Campo breakfast at Chelsea's home: coffee, coconut water (I macheted the coconut open myself!), mango right from the tree, veggie omelet.


The tiny, wonderful hillside Ngöbe community of Renacimiento, with the Caribbean Sea in the background!


Our waterfall & oh-so-clean swimming hole near Santa Rita


Casco Viejo, Panama City. Beautiful


The Sierra fish at the Mercado de Mariscos (hahaha)


My Ngöbe name: Besi


Edi, Bedi, Chinuare, y Besi in Quebrada Pastor :)

A Quick Hello!

I don't have too much time to write, as I'm currently using the computers at the volunteer lounge in the PC office, and we start our morning sessions in about 20 min. I have a lot of photos that I would love to post but alas, the wifi here is pretty awful and they're not going through. We finished our second week of training, and again it was a great week! The first few days here in Santa Rita I was feeling on top of the world, proud that I was able to communicate with my host family in Spanish - but this week I was definitely thrown off my rocker as I've been slowly realizing how much Spanish I DON'T know. My host mom is wonderful about speaking slowly and clearly with me, but when her friends and relatives come over and try to talk to me I am lost. My host grandfather asked me point-blank this week, "Why can't you speak?" So if anything, I want abuelito to be impressed with my speaking and comprehension by the end of the 10 weeks in Santa Rita. I've been working on expanding my vocab and re-learning complex verb tenses...

We've made several trips to the river to swing from a rope swing and in a waterfall, I've played soccer with a bunch of other aspirantes and local kids (10-year-olds wearing flip flops and skinny jeans kick my butt), we went to a Santa Rita water committee meeting and learned a little bit about some of the problems the community faces with their water supply, I watch the news every night and am way more caught up on what's happening in Panama than in the US, and on Friday a bunch of PCVs got together and I learned to dance the bachata. My host dad isn't around a lot and I haven't gotten to know him too well yet, but we had a nice lil bonding moment on Friday when I told them I was going to go dancing - he belted out "Thrillerrrrrr" and tried to do the dance - it has been a while since I learned the Thriller dance but I attempted to show him how it was actually done :) 

We went to Panama City for a scavenger hunt-type thing on Saturday and it was very fun! Checking out the downtown, visiting the mercado de mariscos for some ceviche, walking through the Old Town neighborhood, getting some great views of the city skyline, etc. Yesterday my family and our neighbors spent about five hours preparing arroz con pollo for my host mom's birthday, one of the more decadent dishes here in Panama. We made a pot that probably could have fed 30 people, and it was so good. I would totally eat that every day for dinner this week, but tonight I actually leave Ciudad del Saber and head to David, the provincial capital of Chiriquí, and then to the Bocas del Toro province tomorrow morning! I'm visiting a current volunteer, Chelsea, in her site for four nights. I am so excited to experience real campo life for the first time! 

That’s a bread truck & McDonalds is in my backyard

Hola! I’ve now been in Panamá for a little over a week. We spent four nights in Ciudad del Saber, which is where PC Panama HQ is located, and then moved in with our host families on Sunday. Days 1 and 2 were mostly administrative things, language placement interviews, health interviews, lots of icebreakers, etc. Ciudad del Saber is awesome. It used to be Fort Clayton (US army base) and now it is a retreat center, home to other countries’ embassies in Panama, an interdisciplinary research facility, and other uses that I’m not sure of. The dormitories we stayed in were LEED Gold-certified too, which was cool.

We went to Albrook terminal & mall, Panama City’s main bus & train terminal and the largest mall in Central America, to get some supplies and set up cell phones and whatnot. I now have a Panamanian cell number – if you want to contact me please do so through Whatsapp! It is cheaper (it’s all pay-as-you-go here) to talk through Whatsapp than text messages. On Saturday we visited a current volunteer, Sentel, in his site in the Cocle province. We got to hike to see what he is working on (constructing a tomba, rehabilitating a water distribution system), meet people from his community and even catch and kill the chickens we ate in our sopa for lunch. !! I didn’t catch or kill any…might take me a while to get comfortable with that.

I now reside in Santa Rita, with my host parents, José Luís and Milvia, and host brother José Ismael who is four. Actually, it’s a little strange because I’m 13 years younger than my host mom and 18 years older than little José so really I’m more of a parental age…? My host mom is awesome. She’s a great cook, and is trying to eat healthy because she’s 7 months pregnant with a little girl! She loves coffee and cares a lot about the environment (we’ve discussed solid waste management, water quality, food waste, recycling – rather she has talked and I’ve hardcore struggled along en español) so I already feel a connection with her :) Much of her extended family lives right here on the same street in Santa Rita, and her father runs the town barber shop in the house right behind ours. José Ismael and I have played cards, drawn pictures, done puzzles, and the first night we lost power so I gave him my phone to play with and now he follows me around whenever I’m home asking Tu celular? Tu celular? on repeat. My host fam speaks no English so it’s total Spanish immersion which is awesome. In the morning we have four hours of Spanish and Panamanian culture, and then in the afternoon we have four hours of WASH (Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene – my sector) technical training. Our group of 25 WASHers is amazing – many of us are civil & environmental engineers, the others come from all sorts of backgrounds but I can already tell we are going to have a very fun two years together.

Let’s see… on the first day Milvia explained that José Ismael loves fries from McDonalds, and they have this common saying here that you don’t need to go to McDonalds because you have a mango tree right in the backyard! She laughed and laughed but it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand the joke. If you’ve never eaten a mango straight from the tree you are missing out. My host fam also grows a couple of other fruits and root vegetables (my brain is fried and I can’t remember any of the names at the moment) in the backyard, and they have an avocado tree (!!) but it’s still young and they said it’ll take a couple more years before it starts actually producing avocados. A couple of nights ago, I went to my neighbor and fellow aspirante Destry’s house and her host mom showed us how to make a dessert of nances, a fruit that grows here, flour, sugar, and water. While we were cooking, a very loud truck with a siren whizzed by the house. I asked if it was an ambulance. Turns out it’s a bread vendor. We all got a pretty good laugh out of that one. There are also trucks that come by selling fish and vegetables.

What else? I have been eating duros (homemade 25-cent fruit & ice popsicles that come in pineapple, tamarind, papaya, coconut, nance flavors) every day, my legs look like I have chicken pox because of mosquito bites, I bucket shower along with the cockroaches, mini-iguanas, and spiders, I fall asleep and wake up to a symphony of dog barks and rooster crows, I’ve hiked to several waterfalls with my neighbor and friends, Nicky, Sophia and I have translated the cup song (You’re Gonna Miss Me) to Spanish (we call it Cuando Me Voy) and are practicing that on cups and ukulele, the first night with my host family I accidentally rubbed chemicals in my eyes, woke up and couldn’t see or get to the latrine so I had to pee into a bucket, and I haven’t gotten diarrhea yet! PSA: this is the blog of an environmental engineer working in the sanitation sector in a developing country – you can bet that I will be talking about poop in probably every blog post, you’ve been warned :)

I know this is very preemptive, but I am feeling good about my decision to come to Panama. I love it so far & I definitely think this is the place for me.