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