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!
No comments:
Post a Comment