Hello from the USA! I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my cup of coffee and banana that doesn't taste nearly as authentic as the bananas straight off the plant in Panama (common misconception, bananas don't technically grow on trees, rather on herbaceous flowering plants). I've been home at my parents' house for a little over two weeks now. I guess you could say I am re-adjusting to the US, although I'm feeling a little restless in this period of limbo. I'm still waiting for the final clearance for my new job out in Washington. While it feels weird to be here and not working, I'm still a bit unsure how the transition to a 40 hour work week is going to go, haha... In the meantime I've been training for the Detroit half marathon in two weeks, spending time with friends and family, and enjoying the Michigan fall weather that I've missed so much!!
The final week in Panama was joyful and melancholy at the same time, bittersweet I suppose. It was sad leaving the Comarca for the last time, and saying goodbye to all the volunteers and neighbors. Eduardo and his son Ehinar came by on my last night in San Felix, and it was very sweet. It seemed fitting, closing out my service with the first person I ever met from Cerro Gallina back in August 2016. I will admit there was a tiny bit of relief leaving the RL house, and leaving the tropical climate that I had become so accustomed to, but not immune to its unforgivingness.
On that note, I had one last fun medical adventure. I thought I had another nacido (a boil, in English, caused by staph bacteria) on my right leg, but the morning I left San Felix it dawned on me that this was something else. It had a tiny hole in the center that wasn't scabbing over. Over the past two weeks, it had been leaking drops of blood and clear liquid, leaving spots on my shorts and naguas. I grabbed my flashlight and got up close, and waited. And there it was, a tiny, tiny white dot poking in and out of the hole to breathe.
Bot fly!
Our Peace Corps physicians had showed us human bot fly videos at one of our first medical sessions during training, and I still remember the collective gasp when we realized that they were about to pull larvae out from underneath this guy's skin. I believe this is the exact video they showed, and he got his bot flies in Panama too. The bot fly, or dermatobia hominis, lays its eggs under the skin of mammals (in humans it often uses the mosquito as a vector), which develop into larva. If you left it in, it would grow for about 8 weeks and then drop out to continue its metamorphosis into an adult fly. But leaving it in risks infection, and it hurt! Every couple days I felt a sudden shooting pain, which I realized was the larva moving. Living in close proximity to horses, cows, dogs, and unfortunately small children who frequently get bot flies, it's honestly a wonder that I hadn't had one before. The doc at the hospital first covered the hole with adhesive tape for a half hour to suffocate the larva, made a small incision, and pulled it out. "It's a boy!" he announced (humor). There were three nurses who had never seen a botfly extraction before and were watching the whole thing in fascination, haha. They let me take it -- photos below -- and Mr. Botfly went to his final resting place in his sample cup coffin somewhere in a Panama City landfill. Exciting times!
I have one final post for this blog that I'm working on, a sort-of summary of my three years in Panama with biggest takeaways/lessons learned. I will post that when it's ready.
After three years I still never got the serious face right. Also, my host mom surprised me by gifting me this blue nagua, one of her old ones. I specifically remember commenting three years ago (!!) when I had recently arrived how much I liked the colors of this nagua!
Dionicio showed up out of the blue to play Samy y Sandra on my speaker and take about 50 selfies in various parts of the house while I was rushing around trying to clean and make lunch
Carrying Loraine in the kra, it is huge!
Chelsea, Kiersten, Daniel, Kaitlyn, and me. The Regional Leaders with our supervisor!
We're doonnnneeee
The 19 of us that COSed together on September 18th.
Another view of the little bugger
