Sierra en Panamá: March 2019

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?

Advice for anyone living in a culture different from your own: your first instinct is always gonna be wrong. For real, you think you're right but you're wrong!

In my last post, I wrote about how I thought the officers at the highway security checkpoint were racially profiling. But I've been through the same checkpoint many times since then (yay, traveling almost every day for site ID!) and I realized I don't think that's what's actually going on. It seems to be truly random, the people they ask for identification. I'd love to chat with one of the officers and ask him, but since I'm nearly always passing by in a cramped bus, I don't think that'll be possible...

I love this diagram. I have it hanging on my wall and have looked at it nearly every day of my service. It was just words on a paper during training but after several months in my community it made so much sense. I DID go into my service with fear, superiority, suspicion, prejudice...there was a LOT of dissonance, a lot of all of the things in the blue splatter, and resulted in too much criticism and rationalization. However, I realized what was happening and I worked hard to change it. I focused specifically on eliminating my superiority complex as best I could. I then focused on not rationalizing, but rather asking lots of questions and trying to figure out WHY things are the way they are instead of assuming. Sometimes I would be in my house at night, and my host parents would pass by heading uphill to drink cacao at Lleya and Domingo's. I'm really comfy here in my hammock with my podcast, I would think... but some nights I shook off the laziness and went up. Domingo was one of my most difficult relationships in site because our beliefs clashed so much. Plus he was my landlord and next door neighbor so it wasn't something I could avoid. But while drinking cacao we at least made progress on understanding each other. Those late nights gatherings were where some of my best listening and observing took place, and hence where I broke down the most barriers between my culture and my gente's.

A recent example of cultural dissonance... I needed to get a new hose for the RL house bicycle pump. I bought one from the supermarket and when I was pumping up the tire later that day, I realized the tire was deflating instead of inflating. Then I saw that the rubber on the hose had a hole in it. I went back to the store and showed the salesperson the hose and she got me another one. At the checkout counter I told the cashier I wasn't buying a hose, I was just getting a replacement for a faulty one. But you have to pay for it, he said. But you sold me one that was damaged! I argued. He burst out laughing. But you bought it! There are no returns. I was pretty annoyed, but when I cooled down later I thought about it. In the culture I come from, the customer is always right. But here in rural Panama, customer satisfaction is definitely not the priority and warranties are not a thing, and I knew that. If you buy something damaged and don't realize it, that's all on you!

In Peace Corps, you don't just swallow your pride. You digest it, feel it rumbling in your tummy, and poop it out with your intestinal parasites down the latrine hole. What I mean to say is, you are forced to lower your pride over and over again, every single day, and it's not always easy to keep it down. Sometimes the feeling of selflessness lifts you, and sometimes you wallow in self-pity. You question all of the norms that you grew up with and realize that so many things in life that you thought were black and white are actually really grey. You have 2+ years of experience in this culture and still are not always sure of the culturally correct thing to do, so you give it your best go and try to be as forgiving with yourself as you are with others. You make ambiguity your home and you settle in.

And some updates on life here in the good ol' San Felix, Chiriquí...

I have been busy busy busy with new site identification. I will give you a lowdown on how it works. I get a community recommended to me by a neighboring volunteer, the Peace Corps office, a government agency, someone random I meet on a chiva, etc. If I have a contact person there, I try to call him or her and set up a day to visit. If I don't or I can't get a hold of them (which is frequent) I just show up! I go pasear - house to house greeting people and trying to find community leaders. Finding these leaders has actually been pretty easy, people seem to always know who to direct me to. We sit down, maybe drink some agua negra, and I give them a brief overview on how Peace Corps works. They ask questions, I ask questions. Mostly my questions are to make sure the site meets criteria: within an hour hike from the road, access to treatable water, cell signal within a 20 minute walk, at least 150 people, has a nearby primary school, etc. On top of that, I ask about community organizations, priorities, and try to make sure that there will be relevant agriculture or water & sanitation work, depending on which sector they're interested in. If it meets the standards and I'm getting good vibes, I will schedule a meeting with the Programming & Training Specialist (PTS) to begin the official process of making them a Peace Corps site! Sometimes I can't get a good read on my first visit so I have to visit the site twice before setting a meeting date. Sometimes I don't get great vibes or I'm not certain they meet criteria, so I don't schedule a meeting. It's kind of like speed dating, haha. I just finished two weeks of meetings with the agriculture PTS, Laura. We went to ten sites, six new and four follow-ups (currently have a PCV and are requesting another one) and we are moving forward with all of them. Woohoo! Coming up I have two weeks of water & sanitation initial visits.