New Season New You?

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Coming back to Gallina after the holiday party, I felt as though I was coming back to an entirely different community. In the less than a week that I was out, the season officially changed from winter to summer. I had been skeptical when everyone described how wonderful the summer was - when there's no temperature change between summer and winter, how different can the seasons really be? But trust me, it's very different. There's no more rain, and it's sunny most of the day. Afternoons and nights are breezy, sometimes downright windy, sending my drying clothes on the clothesline flying. The mud has turned to cracked dirt. All of the streams fed by runoff have dried up, and creeks fed by springs have gotten much narrower. Leaves are falling from the trees, giving a slight sense of autumn in the midwest. It's officially corn harvest season, so I have been eating more than my fair share of sweet corn chicha, chicheme, and bollos! Guandu plants are almost ready to harvest, there are bastante oranges, even the avocado trees are flowering (which means that the actual fruits won't be ready for another five months, what a cruel temptation of nature). Almost every house in my community has moved their fogón and hammocks from their ranchos outside. So yes, everything looks, smells, and feels different. The best change is that I am living in my own house! It has been amazing. I wake up every morning not worrying about whether my host family is going to serve breakfast or not, but excited to cook breakfast and brew my two cups of unsugared, pure Duran café con leche (imagine drinking super sugary unfiltered lukewarm "coffee" that's actually a mixture of a litte bit of coffee and a lot of burnt corn for three months - ahh the first sip of coffee now is a wonderful feeling!!!) I spend all day with people and the neighbor kids always visit in the evenings and hang out on my porch, bombarding me with questions as I cook dinner, so I haven't felt lonely at all. Summer is also a time for work days! I've helped out with quite a few juntas improving the roads to Mesa and Gallina (wooo pickaxing!) and prepping Mesa for the agricultural-artisan fair coming up in February. Of course, summer does mean that there is no water in my rainwater tank so I have to bathe in the river and haul all of my water for drinking, cooking, cleaning etc to my house up a steep slope from the spring in 5-gallon cubos, but I feel myself getting much stronger and the beautiful sunsets over the mountain each afternoon as I carry water make up for it. I've been waking up with achey limbs some days from all the physical work - it's a good ache, but I think I really need to start doing yoga... Overall, the past few weeks I have definitely felt a renewed sense of energy for my work here in Gallina.

When constucting a toma (spring source water catchment structure), it is considered a best practice to install three PVC pipes: one to carry the water to the storage tank and distribution system, an overflow tube for when the toma fills up during times of peak rainfall to prevent back pressure on the concrete structure, and finally a cleanout tube where the water will flow during periodic toma

cleanings. When you clean the toma, you stir up all of the sediment, sand, curious toads, whatever gunk has accumulated on the bottom. You temporarily shut the transmission line and open the cleanout tube until all of the murky water has passed through so that you don’t have toads’ legs plopping out of someone’s faucet. It has occurred to me that I may be the person, both literally and figuratively, who is shaking up all of the sediment in Cerro Gallina-for better or for worse. Literally : I finally got my gente to take me to see two tomas. Both were relatively disgusting (especially knowing I have been drinking the water directly from these sources for 3.5 months) so we cleaned 'em out. Figuratively : as I have probably mentioned before there is a huge, longstanding family conflict in Gallina that has gotten worse recently as the two sides are in a legal battle over water sources. I have gotten close to both sides of the family, and they constantly are gossiping to me about all of the bad things members on the other side have done and said, even trying to get me to take their side of the conflict, even though I've tried to make it clear that I cannot take sides. Because land rights and therefore water rights are big points of contention and because I am supposedly here to help more families get water in their homes, just my presence has seemingly shaken up this conflict. I'm not here to solve family problems but I do really want to help my gente, who have become my friends and my Panamanian family, better their lives, and if there's anything I can do that will help them I'm all for it. TBD on how it goes.

This Wednesday (finally!) my boss from the Peace Corps office in the city is visiting Gallina for a meeting about the community analysis I've been preparing and our work plan for the next two years. I personally visited each house to deliver an invitation, so hopefully people show and I get the motivation up so we can get going with our first priority, elections for a new water committee.

We managed to get the entire Comarca G79 crew together for Christmas, and had a fantastic bash at my house in Gallina! Everyone was in charge of cooking a meal, and we had some delicious campo-style pizza, chicken empanadas, beef stew, omelets...mmm. We sang carols and all that and set off fireworks at midnight, a Panama tradition. For New Year's, I hiked with a group of 14 volunteers to the top of a nearby (well, 6 hour hike for me) mountain and feasted up top, again fireworks at midnight, and slept up there. The view was incredible - imagine you're a famous singer and you've just come on stage and the cameras go wild, but you're also on top of a mountain and the flashes go on continuously for a half hour. Crazy.

I have so many photos I want to share but no wifi at this moment, my apologies :( I have to go to David to get a flu shot this weekend so I will post photos then!