Is Pifá a Carb?

''...Yes.''

One day last week, I was served bread for breakfast, yuca at Clemente’s house, pifá (peach palm, a starchy potato-like fruit) at Dioselina & Valentín’s house, returned to Clemente’s for a bowl of rice, and then chicheme (kind of like an oatmeal drink, but made of corn). Five different carbs/starches all before dinner! And then on October 3rd (hope you got the reference in the post title) it was 6 pm and I had eaten nothing but two bowls of plain rice all day. I was at Isaiah & Casilda’s house in a hungry, bad mood - and then they bring out a bowl of rice with onions and a piece of chicken! It was the first Gallinan chicken I had eaten in Cerro Gallina. Seeing my excitement, Isaiah exclaimed “Your first pollo de patio! A gift from God!” And indeed, it was. It was exactly what I needed.

I’ve now been in site for a little over three weeks, minus two days out for the Comarca regional meeting and a meeting with MINSA (Ministerio de Salud, or Ministry of Health). Most days, I’ve been pasearing. There are 37 households in the community, and I’ve visited each home at least once so far. I’ve been trying to get everyone’s names down and do a rough census. So far I’ve counted about 200 people, but I’m sure my estimate is on the low end. Most houses are a mixture of parents, kids, grandkids, and random relatives. There always seem to be visitors from afuera and neighbors over so it’s hard to tell who lives where. At one house, it was basically eight kids and a grandpa just staring at me while I tried to make conversation. And then someone pulled out their cameraphone and took a video of me sitting there struggling to talk to all of these blank faces. That was kind of painful. But then there are other houses where I’ve stayed for several hours chatting with the families! I’ve been read Bible passages. I’ve been given a Bible in Ngäbere and told to read it out loud. I’ve given and received a lot of impromptu English/Ngäbere lessons. People have asked me to explain everything from the differences between North and South Korea to why Jews keep Sabbath on Saturday. Countless people have asked me if I want to be set up with a Ngäbe boyfriend, upon hearing that I’m single. I’ve been fed yuca soup so delicious I wanted to cry and gluey crema so bad that tears were actually rolling down my face as I tried to gulp it down. I hiked with a family to a high school in a neighboring community for a festival and ended up judging a cooking competition. I went to a soccer tournament with my host brothers and got hit really hard in the face with a ball, which then became the local bochinche. “We heard you got hit in the face, Bei! Ha ha ha ha” I spent a morning macheteing the church yard. I went to a work junta and harvested rice. I helped a family take flow measurements for a potential ojo de agua. I’ve gotten helplessly lost in the middle of a rice field during a thunderstorm trying to hike from one house to another. I took a wrong path one day and wound up in another community on the next ridgeline…

My life is so bizarre, you guys.

The Ngäbe people are blunt. They don’t give or take any shit. People have told me that I have a huge head, that I would look much prettier if I had long hair, that my pronunciation is really bad. Learning Ngäbere has been slow going, and I get scolded multiple times a day for my lack of progress. Historically, it is an oral language. Only when missionaries came to study the population was the written language created. There’s not really any need to write Ngäbere because all official writing is done in Spanish, and the kids only speak, read, and write Spanish in schools. I am 100% a visual learner, so learning it orally has been tricky for me. But Peace Corps gave us a dictionary and basic grammar guide, which have been helpful.

Tonight I’m spending the night at the Peace Corps house in San Felix. We don’t get vacation the first three months, but we can take a couple of personal days a month to do whatever we need to do out of site. I definitely needed today to recharge: my mind and body, my electronics, my snack supply…:) Coming up, I have scheduled and invited everyone to my first community-wide meeting (!!) this Thursday, I’m going to visit the artesian group in Cerro Mesa, going to help a family with some water-level land surveying next week, hiking to my neighbor Michael’s site to help him with a handwashing charla later this month, but mostly just continuing on the pasear grind!

Aspirante --> Voluntaria

Tomorrow! We swear in to the Peace Corps and officially become volunteers. We moved out of Santa Rita on Monday morning and are now in Ciudad del Saber for a few nights. My last two weeks in Santa Rita were actually full of learning and new experiences - we had Ngäbere lessons, cooked a huge feast for the 24 of us and our facilitators, performed the cup song in English & Spanish in front of a bunch of community members, learned & performed the traditional Baile de Mariposas, I cooked a meal of Thai-style pasta and salad for my host family, we built tippy taps and learned to machete, and my host mom had her baby! In the first few days she was home from the hospital, I ended up doing a lot of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. On Sunday, I actually prepared all three meals for the family! I was not expecting that, haha. I accidentally flooded the whole back room while using the washing machine, and I almost set myself on fire several times trying to work the gas stove. I was cooking chuletas and at one point there was a flame taller than my head…the stove is waist-high…yeah. But I was grateful for the experience and my host family laughed along with me, and seemed to appreciate the help. I had some great conversations with my host mom and grandpa in particular the last week - I will really miss them!! But I’m sure I’ll be back to visit when I’m in the area. I left Santa Rita feeling very welcomed and at home in the Latino culture, and I can only try my best to have a similar experience in the Comarca.

What’s next? After the swear-in ceremony, we're going to spend the evening celebrating in Casco Viejo, and then Thursday we’re all going to have a last G79 hurrah at a beach in Coclé, travel Friday and I’ll be in Cerro Gallina by Saturday morning. And from there, it’s all up to me. The reality of the challenge that lies ahead of me is daunting. Being the only English speaking strange American outsider in the whole community is going to be really tough for me - and for my mental health I am going to take a social media break for a while. I know myself well enough to know that scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed is going to depress me, and I don’t need that. However, having people to talk/vent/cry to when I’m having a bad day is very important to me, and thanks to my awesome 3G signal in site, please don’t hesitate to send me a WhatsApp message! I’ll be checking my phone daily, provided my solar panel functions as expected, and I’d love to hear from you. See the Contact Me tab. 

Kwitubtä

I didn’t have a long list of expectations for my community - I hoped it would be small, indigenous, and have aqueduct work to be done. And I hoped it would be challenging. Not that there are “easy” communities in the Peace Corps, but I hoped that my community would have aspects that would be challenging to me personally. And let me say that Cerro Gallina (Kwitubtä in Ngäbere) did not disappoint! The week was a roller coaster, my thoughts ranged from “this is the coolest place ever” to “how in the world am I going to survive here” but if I made it through five nights I can survive two years, right?!? Really, I just need to get through the first three months, which will undoubtedly be difficult as I’ll be living with my host family and my primary goal will be building a relationship with my community. My host fam can speak Spanish, but they pretty much only speak Ngäbere with each other. To be honest, I felt like a circus freak the whole week. I hardly got a word out of my 16 and 21-year old host brother and sister, who both have children already, even after purposely making fun of myself to try to get them to laugh. They did laugh AT me several times- when I attempted to pilar and rice went flying everywhere, when my Spanish made no sense, even when I said my thank you’s and goodbyes before leaving. My goodbye was met with blank stares and no replies, but as soon as I turned and walked about 10 feet they burst out laughing. Nothing against them - I would’t know how to connect with a culturally clueless, clumsy, freakishly pale-skinned girl either if I were in their shoes!! Luckily my 8 and 10-year old host sibs were awesome, and they’ve already asked me how to say a bunch of phrases in English. I love that age group - ideas are already forming in my head for kids’ English book club, environmental club, music club...

The first volunteer in my site, John Michael, left the community for good on Saturday. He took me pasearing on Wednesday, Thursday we had his despedida party, and Friday I paseared with my host brother. I met a lot of the community, was offered too much overly sugared coffee and cacao, learned a *little* bit about the current state of things - water systems, family feuds, agriculture, religion... The women, in general, are incredibly quiet, while the men are more talkative. John Michael is basically fluent in Ngäbere, and it was so impressive. People kept telling me how fast he learned it...hint hint...looks like I will be working my butt off trying to learn this language in the first couple months, because it is clear that there are some community members who won't truly accept me until I do. I was named Bei (pronounce it like a middle school girl might say "my bae") and drank > 4 cups of cacao to rid me of chogali (demons). I saw the ojos de agua - there are at least five of them amongst the four neighborhoods, no large-scale aqueduct system, huge issues with drought during the January-April dry season, not many latrines, basically: a lot of potential WASH work!

A favorite of mine:

“Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. That way, when you judge them, you’re a mile away. And you have their shoes.” :)

In Peace Corps terms, this metaphorical mile is our two years here. I saw a lot of things in my community in five short days that disturbed me, things I couldn't make any sense of, but I know that with time, with the confianza we will build, I will hopefully be able to get to the roots of these behaviors and understand. I really think that this is why everyone in our world seems to hate each other - because we don't spend the time learning about other cultures. Even studying, visiting for a week or two is not really going to make you understand. Growing up I never imagined I'd get the chance to live hombro a hombro with an indigenous group I had never heard of. As wild as Peace Corps is, it is really the coolest job.

I have much more I’d like to say here, but I’ve got two whole years to write about Cerro Gallina. Three weeks from today, I'll be living there!

Until next time, 

Bei Kwitubu <3

S-s-s-site placement

Current volunteers, PC staff, Panamanians and Americans packed the Peace Corps office to find out where the 45 trainees (we've lost a few from the original 48) would be placed in a somewhat drawn-out and over-hyped site announcement ceremony. Emotions ran high; people were squealing with happiness and others were almost in tears. We're spread out across the country - from Bocas del Toro bordering Costa Rica, the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé, Veraguas, Cocle to the Darién bordering Colombia. 

Drumroll....I will be living in the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé in a small community called Cerro Gallina! Which translates to "Chicken Hill". I know very little about this place yet so I'll keep this short, but I will be the second volunteer to live there, the population is ~200, it's located in the mountains with a 60-minute hike to public transportation, the community is interested in my help with aqueduct construction, latrines, health charlas, working with water committees, and side work with cacao, agriculture, a women's artisan group, youth sports and gender development work. Wowwww I am so excited! It sounds like the place for me.

This weekend we built a latrine on Saturday, went to Albrook for some shopping Sunday, went to a huge birthday party at my neighbor's house for a 1-year-old, and this morning we got up at 4 AM to come to the Peace Corps office. I met a man from my community, Eduardo, who came all the way here to Panama City (his first time!) to meet me and go through an all-day community entry conference with all of the other G79 volunteers and their community guides. He was shy but friendly, apparently the community is stoked to get a female volunteer so I can't wait to get there! I'll be staying for five nights and don't really know what I'll be doing the whole time (hopefully just tons of pasearing). Tonight we're in the Ciudad del Saber dorms, bright and early tomorrow we head to the Comarca!

Some of my host family in Bajo Gavilan

"We wash our hands" in three languages

Post-piñata with José Ismael - piñatas here are filled with flour in addition to candy

Ships going through Miraflores Locks!

Bocas shufflin' and campo life

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!

Ñan töro!

(Hello, in Ngäbere) My visit to Bocas was much needed after sitting through training sessions for three weeks - I got a glimpse of what it's actually like to be a PC volunteer in the campo, and it definitely made me more excited for my service. Here are a few observations from the small Ngöbe-Bugle community I stayed with: 

Language: I was amazed that my volunteer, Chelsea, could listen to older men mumble in half Spanish, half Ngäbere and understand exactly what they were saying. She started about the same intermediate level as me in Spanish, so I'm excited to reach the level of comfort she has with communication. She does an English/Spanish book club for the kids at her house, and I got to help out with that and even give a mini-charla (a charla is like an informational presentation that you'll hear me talking about a lot, there's no good English equivalent) on nutrition, which was fun! So far in Ngäbere I can say hello, goodbye, thank you, good/okay, my name is ___, and "I pooped". I was given a Ngöbe name: Besi. Many fellow volunteers have remarked that it sounds like a good name for a cow.

Community health: this was the hardest thing to see. Families with 10 kids will live in 3-room homes, no one wears shoes regularly, handwashing is not practiced, there are no latrines, the community doesn't treat their water, I saw many little kids with protruding bellies, the diet is primarily rice and bananas, girls commonly get pregnant in their mid-late teens and drop out of school, the few that are still in school at this age. There are some interesting myths that people believe in - like adding chlorine to water makes you sick instead of preventing it, and rainwater is dirtier than water from rivers people poop in. I can see that behavior change is going to be as difficult, or possibly much MORE difficult, than physical infrastructure development. 

WASH projects: Right now Chelsea's just getting started with a rainwater catchment tank project for 10 homes in the community. She already has one at her house and there's one at the school. She's also considering constructing a composting latrine and seeing if the community is into that. We hiked to the tank and tomas for the aqueduct a neighboring volunteer, Alex, had designed and built with her gente. This week in tech class we've finally started more techy stuff: going over latrine construction, surveying methods, and aqueduct data collection. I'd be happy to work with any of it but truthfully I really want to build an aqueduct :) I requested that in my site placement interview so we'll see!

By far the most important part of the visit, though, was seeing how Chelsea thrives in her community. Her house is wonderful - decorated, clean, homey, sustainable. She has a huge herb & veggie garden, compost bin, and is recycling all of her trash to use for a big art project at the school.  We cooked some bomb meals in her kitchen - omelets, stir fry, guacamole, garlic bread, homemade juices from oranges straight from the tree. She loves and trusts her community members and they look up to her. This is what I will strive for. 

I'm writing this post on the bus to San Felix (I snagged some cell data gratis today, score) where all 24 WASHers are staying tonight before heading back to Bocas del Toro tomorrow for TECH WEEK! We finally get to do some excavating, constructing, data collection, etc as well as health charlas we have prepared for elementary school students. And then we have a free night on the way back to Santa Rita, so we're going to the beach! 

P.s. Still haven't gotten diarrhea, though the enormous daily quantity of rice and minimal fiber has given me the opposite problem. I've stocked up on dried fruits like prunes and raisins and they've been helping me out with that :) 

Foto time

After almost four weeks in country I have finally figured out where I can get an internet signal strong enough to post photos. I just returned from a wonderful visit to Bocas del Toro which I don't have time to write about today but will later, for now, some photos!


My host brother, José Ismael, putting together a puzzle


Panama City skyline


Chelsea reading a dual Spanish/English book to the kids at her site in Bocas. She runs a regular afternoon book club that I got to help out with!


Campo breakfast at Chelsea's home: coffee, coconut water (I macheted the coconut open myself!), mango right from the tree, veggie omelet.


The tiny, wonderful hillside Ngöbe community of Renacimiento, with the Caribbean Sea in the background!


Our waterfall & oh-so-clean swimming hole near Santa Rita


Casco Viejo, Panama City. Beautiful


The Sierra fish at the Mercado de Mariscos (hahaha)


My Ngöbe name: Besi


Edi, Bedi, Chinuare, y Besi in Quebrada Pastor :)