When Panama kicks your butt

Something I appreciate about Peace Corps is that there is always an element of surprise - waking up in the morning, even on the rare occasion I already have a day's worth of activities planned, I never know exactly how my day is going to go. I certainly didn't expect this week to turn out how it did. Remember in my last post, less than a week ago, I wrote about how the summer breeze, and you probably thought "Oh how cute, sometimes it blows her clothes off the line." Well on Monday, the breeze turned to super gusty winds, and I came home that afternoon to find that the wind had collapsed my rancho.

Now I don't use this rancho daily, but when my friends came for Christmas it slept six people in hammocks. I'm just thankful no one was under it when it collapsed!! I'm going to talk to the guy who built it with my previous volunteer to see if he wants to help me find new palos to rebuild. This srong wind hasn't let up all week and according to my neighbors will continue until March or April. It's a pain! When it comes at night the door creaks, the roof shakes and my whole little wooden house rattles, keeping me awake for hours. It comes through the cracks between the wall boards, blowing posters down and nearly extinguishing the flame on the stovetop. When I do dishes on the porch, my tupperware and even aluminum pans go flying if I'm not holding them. I went to fill up water at the spring, which is right next to a group of four-story high bamboos. They were creaking and swaying like mad and I was thinking "I really don't want to get crushed by a bamboo reed right now, I just wanna fill up my dang Nalgenes..." So when the wind is that intense I'll use the other spring. I do realize that all of these issues are truly first-world problems of the third world, if that makes sense. None of them affect my well-being, they're simply annoyances that I'll get used to soon. But my gente use open fires in ranchos to cook all of their food and many live in poorer-constructed homes than mine, and they must make huge adjustments during the summer just to be able to live normally. I'm sure I'll be seeing lots of creative solutions from them, as I always do!

On Tuesday morning, I came down with the nastiest bout of diarrhea and extreme gas I've ever experienced that had me running to the nearest latrine whenever the urge struck. I managed to prep for my meeting and give my weekly English class and downed three liters of oral rehydration salts. On Wednesday Jess arrived, and thanks to our work on the camino she was able to make it all the way down into Gallina in the 4-wheel drive Peace Corps truck! I met her at the entrada and as we were driving down we passed a two families who said they'd come to my meeting leaving the community...we stopped and asked where they were going, and turns out the government had announced a few days before they'd be giving out free household supplies like mattresses in two nearby communities. On top of that, the Panamanian president was visiting a community in our district to inaugurate a bridge. On top of THAT, there had been a fair in another nearby community the day before, meaning a baile and drinking the night before, meaning that one entire neighborhood of Gallina was hungover. Despite all that, I still had eleven people come to my meeting (by these standards, not bad!) and it went well. Jess was able to set the community straight on a couple things I had been trying to transmit to them, and she gave me some great new ideas to go about getting the community motivated to work. Before I had this singular idea that we needed one legalized water committee for the whole community. I presented at the meeting a new idea of working with different neighborhoods individually with possibly smaller and less formal committees, and it seemed to go over pretty well. My gente enjoyed meeting Jess a lot and we all had some Bocas cacao (no sugar) and chocolate (sweetened hot cocoa mix PLUS a whole 2-lb bag of sugar, it's all or nothing here haha) after the meeting as they gossiped and I tried to decipher some Ngäbere, which has become sort of a Gallina Peace Corps meeting tradition. I bolted to the bathroom as soon as the meeting was over...

On Thursday, my diarrhea was just as bad so I called the PC doctors, who prescribed me antiparasitic medicine. So I went to David and got the medicine and took a night to relax. Whew. Hopefully these meds kick in soon.

Photo Time!

 My first morning in my house back in December. I was thinking, "Hmm, what should my inaugural house breakfast be?!" (important questions) when Pricila came to my porch with a freshly-cooked bollo :) Thanks host fam. So I fried it up with some tomato. Cuchi Cuchi was interested.

Post toma-cleaning with Domingo and Eduardo. Look at that clean spring water!

Came home from Elsa's with a baby celery plant, jiraca, limes, bodá, culantro, and a bag or organic compost. I love visits to Elsa's.

Burning some monte in front of neighbor Zach's newly built house with host dad Narciso.

Comarca fam on Christmas! Sophia, Destry, Jenna Kate, Zach, Matt, Cody, Kevin, Michael, Jake, me. What a good time.

 First double paila baking success: pumpkin chocolate bread!

 Climbing Patena on New Year's.

 Mmmmmmm ya

"Do you mind if I take a picture of your parrot eating a potato?"

The Ngäbes make these terrifically creepy muñecas to burn on NYE.

Merry Christmas Eve from the tropics :P

Final 2016 sunset.

Patena crew

I spy a Peace Corps volunteer doubling as a ladder. Played some volleyball in Mesa last week!

Neighbor kids

"I suppose I'll tolerate this for the photo"

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!

Checkpoint: Passed

We made it!!! Our three-month integration period has officially ended. Do I feel completely integrated? No way. But it's a continual process, and I definitely feel like I am at a good place with my community. Obviously there have been high and low points - picture me on good days frolicking in my nagua along a mountaintop path and on bad days hiding in my bedroom furiously shoving cookies into my mouth. But my mental state is good overall, and somehow I've managed to stay remarkably healthy so far in site.

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

 Vidal and Yeya with the tail and hoof of the cow my host family slaughtered

 Waiting...and waiting...for people to show up to my meetings in the rancho

More kids on rooftops

Roderik "Chong" and Pedro "Tito" eating lunch we cooked, the chickens and dogs constantly hang around hoping for a bite or two

Pumpkin soup over rice that I made for lunch! Plus a very interested hen. Definitely the tastiest meal I've cooked

Host sister Pricila (on the right) and her cousin on the way to school

I hardly took any photos at the holiday party :( but I had to snap a photo of my friends being typical PC volunteers by bringing tupperware to Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers

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

Producer Soup

One of my favorite parts about Cerro Gallina so far has been the chance to work with a newly formed "grupo de productores" of 16 families. So far, I've been to four juntas (communal work days) for this group. We macheted several parcels, planted rows and rows of yucca, banana, rice, and herbs, and prepared rice tanks for future planting. The idea is that each family shares in the work and each will receive a portion of the food produced. The instigator of this group, Marcelino, is a very motivated guy. Since I've been in site, he has traveled to several conferences and events around Panama to learn about organic farming techniques, eco-stoves, endangered sea turtle protection - all kinds of environmental topics. The goal is for this whole endeavor to be done completely organically. The work days are fun! As I'm still getting used to the whole Panama time thing (every event seems to start between 1-2 hours after the scheduled start time) I am usually the first to arrive in the morning. We'll all gather, everyone brings their contribution for lunch (rice, vegetables, soup broth, coffee, sugar, etc) and someone is put in charge of cooking the meal. Then we work - chopping, digging, planting, giant gallon jugs of coffee and chicha are passed around, men salimar, women get right in there hacking the ground with garden hoes, everyone gossips, I listen along and try to get the gist of the half Ngäbere-half Spanish conversations. This past Tuesday, Adriana asked if I wanted to be in charge of cooking lunch with her for the day at Elsa's house. I've been helping out with cooking meals at my host family house lately, so I jumped at the chance to show off my new fogón cooking skills. No, I'm kidding - did you really think they trust the gringa to cook their meals over an open fire? I do help a lot, especially when Walter, my little brother cooks dinner. But he always delegates to me the tasks that don't actually require cooking. "Bei, go pick and slice peppers from the bush" "Bei, rinse this rice" "Bei, wash this spoon" "Bei, open this can of sardines" Yep, I get bossed around by a 10-year-old in the kitchen. Anyways, on Tuesday Adriana took charge of the actual cooking and put me to work peeling and slicing. We made a paila of rice and porotos (type of bean that is in season) and a paila of soup with uyama (like a squashy pumpkin), bodá (stringy green vegetable), ñame & ñampi (potato-like root veggies), onion, bell pepper, garlic, and a bunch of herbs. Elsa kept running to her garden and picking more herbs to throw in - culantro (like cilantro, but better), oregano, parsley, celery leaves. As the soup was simmering, we the cooks snacked on bread and the ever-flowing coffee. Elsa had the radio tuned to a station with American music (!!), there was a cool breeze blowing through the rancho, the sun was peeking out, the women talked and laughed and I listened, and the smell of garlic and oregano wafted through the air. I think it was one of the moments I have felt the most content in my whole almost-five months in Panama so far. And the soup was the best dish I have eaten in the Comarca, hands-down. Not just because I helped make it, really...I never wanted my bowl to end. As I slurped down mouthfuls of soup with rice and beans, I thought about how almost every ingredient in the meal was grown right here by the community, or if not, at least from this region of Panama. Switching from 22 years in the heart of the consumer class to living now in the heart of the producer class has definitely been a tough adjustment at times, but this meal was a reminder of how incredible and admirable of a life this is. Though it wasn't Thanksgiving back home...I sure was thankful for this day!

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone in the States! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. In just 2.5 weeks, I head to San Felix for several days of additional Ngäbere training with fellow Comarca volunteers, then to Cerro Punta for the Peace Corps holiday party, then when I get back to site I will officially be moved into my own house. Finally!!! I love my host family but I cannot wait to have my own space. I am continuing visiting door-to-door, helping around the house and in my host family's finca, attending work days and meetings and celebrations, and trying to and get to know Gallina and all of the people that make it up. At several community members' request, I decided to start a small informal English class on Monday afternoons, and my first class had four eager participants :) I hope the motivation stays up. My mental list of ideas for the community continues to grow and become ever-more complex the more I talk to people and learn about family dynamics, the history of the community and the Comarca itself, and the local economy. This Friday I have my next Peace Corps meeting, in which we'll hopefully dive a bit deeper and start solidifying and developing plans for some of these ideas. Or we'll just drink cacao and go way off-topic and not accomplish anything. Who knows??

Photos!

 Handwashing seminar in Kaboy

 Ya know, just almuerzo on the roof

 Handwashing day at the school in Mesa

 Manuel and Gabriel

 Daily walks through corn fields in the clouds

Sledding Comarca style: pulling babies in cooking pailas

School marching band at the Comarca Panamanian Independence from Columbia Day parade

p.s. changed my blog header background - I took this photo from right outside my future house!

Facepalm Moment, Integration Status, Quotes, and Poop Tidbit

Once again, I did something silly and became the subject of Gallina bochinche. My host parents, brothers, and I went to go harvest rice in a part of their finca I hadn’t been to before. The winding path to get there included a hike through a cornfield, across several creeks, under a couple fences, etc… After working for a few hours, the clouds rolled in and an aguacero (downpour) was imminent. They filled a giant chácara with rice - probably the biggest one they own, you could carry a full-size adult human in there. They asked if I could carry it home, and wanting to appear strong I said I could. They helped me hoist the strap onto my head and the bag onto my back, and sent me off alone, because they know I walk much slower than them and needed more time to get home… I stumbled off and shortly realized that the bag was way too heavy for me. I had to take a rest, realized that the strap was ripping my hair out. So I tried to carry it around around my shoulders, kept trudging on, it started to rain, and then I realized that the path I was following was starting to look less like a path and more like me just forging through the brush. It began to downpour, and I slipped and the chácara fell and I could not get it back on. I would try, and then I would fall over backwards or sideways; I was exhausted. The rice was getting wet - my family are subsistence farmers, soaking and ruining their rice is like burning their money! I started to panic. I realized how lost I was, trying to lug the bag back the way I came, not finding the path. I couldn’t just leave the bag of rice and find my host family, because what if I couldn’t find it again? But I couldn’t carry it anymore. I started to salimar (a specific Tarzan-like yell that everyone does here to greet each other) at the top of my lungs, and screaming “Ayúdame!” repeatedly. Oh man, I must have been quite the site to see. I kept this up for probably at least 20 minutes, continuing to freak out, until my host dad finally answers my calls and hacks through the brush to find me. Luckily, he seemed more amused than anything. I surrendered the bag to him, and made it home. “This is the path, Bei. There is only one path. Where were you going?” Of course, everyone hears about this incident, and the following days I hear sentiments such as “When are you going to the finca next, Bei? Do you need a guide to make it back okay? Ha ha ha…” 

Good news: I am definitely feeling more integrated in my community. People are getting used to seeing me wander around Gallina. I learned to tejer and knit my first chácara! People are so excited because know how to make chácaras and chakiras (bracelets) now, and I’m currently learning to sew dientes by hand with the local artisan group. I just need to learn to sew naguas! I’m getting used to seeing six-year-olds wielding machetes almost as tall as they are, seventy-something grandmothers scaling ridiculously steep hills in flip-flops, and three-year-olds drinking huge cups of coffee. I’m becoming closer with my host family. Although they may not quite understand it yet, at least they know I do have a sense of humor. I am appreciating the slow daily pace of life, the sweaty days in the fields planting yucca and beans, the simple diet, and the ever-abundant natural beauty that surrounds us. I have been continuing to check out ojos de agua, asking a lot of questions about where their water comes from, getting people excited about re-forming the currently nonfunctioning water committee, and scoping out what kind of projects people are interested in collaborating with Peace Corps on. 

Some favorite quotes… neighbor kids are playing with this toy gun that lights up and makes a noise. He points it straight at his friend and yells, “¡Dame su cédula!” A cédula is an identification card that all Panamanian citizens have. So instead of “Gimme your money!” it’s like yelling “Gimme your social security number!” It made me laugh. 

People have asked me quite a few times about indigenous culture in the United States. I’m trying to brush up my knowledge, especially about the indigenous people that live in my own state, so I can give them better answers. One of the questions was “Do they have normal skin, or white skin like yours?” which also made me chuckle, another reminder of how weird my looks are here. “They have normal skin,” I answered.

And a poop update (sorry, WASH volunteer necessity)…I finally had a tiny bit of diarrhea. Just one time, and it wasn’t bad at all. Many of my PC friends have not been so lucky, lots of them have had to visit the clinic in the city for amoebas, Giardia, parasites… However, the chronic constipation continues. I’ll be constipated for days and days, and then all of a sudden I’m off somewhere hiking to visit families and the urge to poop will just hit me like a wave, and I’ll have drop what I’m doing to find a place to relieve myself immediately. Living the Peace Corps campo life.

Scrapbook: first five weeks

Vidal, my neighbor, crossing the sketchy bamboo bridge to Salto Dupí.

Adrián laughing at how I freaked out when they shoved their parrot in my face and it started squawking.

Second community meeting! They got really into drawing a map of the community, which was super fun to watch.

Two of my favorite muchachas. Beche, on the left, is my Ngäbe spirit animal.

 Manuel and his siblings always love posing for pictures and videos.

 Gorgeous waterfall near Cerro Piedra! Day trip with some Peace Corps pals :)

Chidäni, my neighbor, heading back along the ridgeline from Piedra to Gallina.

Things are going well in Cerro Gallina. My first community-wide meeting didn't go very well, as I invited 37 families and only seven people showed up, but the second one went much better. I had at least 20 people there! I also provided a whole cubo of cacao, which was gulped down quickly. My community wants to meet with me every three weeks, something that they suggested and I was really impressed with! Next meeting is on November 8^th. I had somewhat of a wakeup call last Saturday, when during a cacao session a bunch of people called me out on my slow progress in Ngäbere. I realized that even though I've been studying my Ngäbere manual, I haven't been putting 100% into my speaking. So now I'm working on throwing in whatever phrases I know into conversation when possible. People seem to appreciate it!

She has strange colored eyes, skin, and hair, wears weird Jesus sandals, loves dumping hot sauce on her food and drinking coffee WITHOUT sugar, and lets cats fall asleep in her lap. What kind of odd human being were we ''lucky'' enough to receive?!

I have no shortage of time to wonder what my community thinks about me...

But overall, I am feeling good. Muy buena gente here in Gallina. I've been invited to late night cacao drinking sessions, juntas (communal work days), birthday parties, and a lot of people have asked me about potential projects. It's still early to tell, but there are at least five different groups of families spread out throughout the community that have expressed interest in my help with aqueducts. So it looks like I have WORK ahead of me! Next week I suppose I am starting some official WASH work, as I volunteered Zach and I to spend a day giving handwashing seminars to the entire elementary school in Cerro Mesa. I have yet to plan it (shhh) but I love working with kids so I can't wait! 

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!