Bei's Chinese Sauce

Presenting to you, a smorgasbord of memories from the diary of Bei Kwitubu. Enjoy!

• I was hiking up from a workday of trying to dig through a mound of landslide rubble to get to a water source with the awesome gente of Boa, and I was tired and frustrated. On my way home two of my favorite chicas, Edilsa & Yolinda, invite me to go pick mangos and puma rosa (small fruit that I don't know the English word for) with them. Okay, but only because I like you two so much. They led me to a spot I hadn't been to before, and there were clear remnants of an old abandoned house next to this big mango tree. I inquire, and Edilsa launches into a story about how Enrique used to live here with his ex-wife and they had a baby and etc... I carry a notebook with me all the time that I use for everything, to write to-do lists, new Spanish and Ngäbere words, names, and also, gossip. So I write down some Spanglish notes on this new information from Edilsa and forget about it. Two days later, we're hanging out at Elma's house after church, and my notebook is sitting on the ground next to me while I'm reading a newspaper. Enrique randomly walks over, picks up my notebook, and opens it to the very page that I have written this gossip about him. *nervous laugh* Um, Enrique...please don't read that! Sorry! and I grab the notebook from his hands. Hopefully I got it before he read anything...
• I am hiking to Guayabal with my host parents. Instead of taking the normal path, I follow Victor under a couple fences and then up a veritable cliff as he bushwhacks with a machete ahead of us. Like I actually had to climb with my hands at some points. At the top, I'm sweating buckets and practically wheezing, and Victor sees my face and chuckles a little. "It's a shortcut, Bei." Some shortcut!! We get to Guayabal and sit down at a family friend's house that I haven't been to before. The friend stares at me and asks the typical questions to Victor - What's her name? Where does she live? Why is she here? Is she married? Does she speak Ngäbere? all in Ngäbere. And Victor answers Jän, niara blite krubäte Yes, she speaks a lot. Yes! I smile. This is probably the only trace of any kind of validation I'll get this week, so I savor it. Later that day, we are getting ready for choir practice with Cornelio and Emilia, and a friend of Cornelio's stops by, looks at me, and asks him the same string of questions. But this time the answer is Ñakare Nothing. She speaks nothing. 100 to zero in a few hours. Así es la vida.
• Imagine this: Friday you are standing in front of a classroom of volunteers at an eco-lodge in business casual, giving a presentation about your community. Saturday, you are running into the warm ocean in the dark, drinking a surprisingly delicious iced tea-tequila mix out of your coffee mug, surrounded by friends and bioluminescence, feeling as though absolutely everything is right in the world. Sunday, hiking an hour and a half uphill in the blazing sun, your liter of water running out halfway up and getting so dehydrated by the time you get to your destination that you actually vomit up your dinner of boiled eggs and bananas. Monday, giving a presentation on water treatment to a group of Ngäbes, making a joke about some untreated water tasting like toads. The gente laugh, and you are happy that your point got across. Later, learning that "toad water" is actually a vulgar sexual innuendo. Ooooops. And that was my weekend! 
• I am visiting Clemente's house. "Bei, do you get the stamp of the beast on your forehead this week?" Huh?! It took me a moment to realize that they were talking about Ash Wednesday. I explain, the ashes are in remembrance of Jesus's suffering in the desert and death, they symbolize that we are all going to die some day... I think my message got lost in translation because when I said "we're all going to die" their eyes widened, how morbid. Well, I tried. In the area of religion, especially explaining Catholic traditions, that is the best I can do sometimes.
• Roderik, little host nephew, comes by my porch. Give me ten cents, Bei. For what, I ask? To buy candy. Nope, sorry. It may sound cold, and it is hard at times not to give in, but I can't give out or lend money unless there is an emergency. Part Peace Corps rules and part common sense as a development worker. A few hours later he's back. Give me ten cents, Bei. For what? To make a copy for school. Nice try. He's in first grade and cannot write yet, copying a paper (which can only be done in San Felix) is an interesting choice for a lie, but request denied.
• Mucha plata por alla? Lots of money in the states? Is one of the questions I get asked most often. And my answer to that question is almost 100% dependent on my mood. Sometimes, I go into a rant about income inequality, sometimes I use my poor economics knowledge to attempt to explain that if we just print more money, the value of the dollar will decrease, sometimes I say money flies out of trees and see just how far I can carry the joke. :)
• Ñantöre, ti ngwae! Hello, my sister! I love when the men in my community call me their sister. Here, almost everyone is called family. A friend that is a generation older will be called uncle or aunt. Same age, cousin. A generation younger, niece or nephew. At first I couldn't believe that EVERYONE seemed to be related. Soon I learned that this is definitely not true - but it makes it hard to figure out who is family and who isn't, very important in analyzing the community social dynamic. I'm still learning who is actually family. 
• I'm sitting in Emiliana & Julio's house, scratching a mess of bug bites on my arms (return of the rainy season means BUGS at night) and they start lecturing me on how they passed my house, "Your yard is so dirty Bei! Covered with trash! That's why you have bugs!" and I ponder the cultural difference here. My yard is impeccably clear of trash; I either hike out, recycle, or repurpose all of my trash and also pick up all the wrappers and empty juice boxes kids toss in my yard. Meanwhile, like most houses in my community, trash is strewn all over the ground around their house. (side note: I have plans for trash management charlas in the works, tossing it wherever is a huge problem here) but to my gente it is plant overgrowth, not plastic, that's considered basura. And I admittedly have not been great lately about macheteing my yard. Point taken, Emiliana. I will be making a better effort to maintain my yard to hopefully control those bugs! 
• Riding up to site in the chiva on a Saturday afternoon. Saturdays are the worst days to travel in my chiva because it's church day, and so those who are not en el culto are getting plastered in San Felix. There are three drunk men in this chiva, already slurring and stumbling, and they are pounding six-packs and taking shots of seco from a communal plastic cup the whole way up. It's also pouring rain, so the canvas top is down and the chiva is hot and smelly. One guy vomits out the back, ew. Thank goodness one of my absolute favorite women, Rosina, is also in the chiva and sitting next to me. We share many eye-rolls at the drunks. We're almost to our stop when they light cigarettes. At this point I notice that we are carrying several full gas tanks up in the chiva bed. The pavo (still don't know why chiva attendants are called turkeys) is no help - *laughs* "Oh don't worry, this is only stove gas, not gasoline" but immediately Rosina goes off at them, screaming at them to put out the cigarettes, how we need to protect the health of everyone in the chiva. I was silently cheering on this badass woman, but simultaneously shaking in my seat, terrified that we were going to go over a bump, a bit of gas leaks out, and we would all explode. 
• It is avocado season! I am hanging out with Melvin and Carmen and Dominga, and they are scooping avocados out with spoons. Have you guys ever tried guacamole? I ask. Negative. I explain that it's a Mexican salsa (salsa translates to sauce and is therefore a very general term for anything that's somewhat like a sauce) of avocado, cilantro, lime, onion, and tomato. Sounds delicious, Bei! So like, salsa china? (soy sauce) No, it's not really like salsa china at all, I answer...but I can't think of any foods similar to guacamole that they know to more accurately describe it. Can you teach us how to make it? Sure, give me a date and you provide the avocados, I'll bring the rest. "We're going to learn la salsa china de Bei" Dominga states contentedly. So this is how guacamole became Bei's Chinese sauce. P.s. we set a tentative date to make guac tomorrow. Hope it goes well!

Post with work & life updates and more photos coming this week, promise!

Playtime!

SENAPAN organic composting day

It's crocs & soccer socks season again

Bigira, Cuchi Cuchi's son & friend Carl's cat. Basically, Cuchi Cuchi with balls.

I made a beautiful dinner and was trying to get into my hammock bug net while balancing my bowl and a solar lamp in my non-casted hand - missed the hammock, fell onto the floor and hot curry spilled all over me. I had to take a photo with the hope that someone could laugh about it later... I did manage to salvage most of the curry by scooping it from the inside of the bug net (cochino, I know) and didn't get badly burned or anything, all good here.

Cuchi Cuchi, Tuna, and Scooby Doo (or in Spanish, Escubi Du)

Head up, heart strong

Keep your head up, keep your heart strong.

Keep your mind set, keep your hair long.

Oh my my darlin', keep your head up, keep your heart strong.

No no no no, keep your mind set in your ways,

Keep your heart strong.

'Cause I'll always remember you the same.

Oh eyes like wild flowers within demons of change.

Ja tuita, Tächi Terabu. We will miss you so much.

The past few weeks have been tough, but simultaneously inspiring.

I went to my friend Courtney's community to help give a water committee seminar! Her directiva seemed to enjoy it and it led to some quality discussion about their water system.

Here's the poster I made for the charla I led on Watershed Protection.

I went to visit MINSA in San Felix. We discussed getting our water committees legally recognized and got the legalization paperwork. I also asked about the next steps for the Bajo Conejo neighborhood aqueduct project that our local representative is funding, because I'm still in the dark on when and how this funding will be delivered and what my role (if any) should be in this whole deal. MINSA suggested I go talk to the "district engineer" at the Municipio in Hato Pilón - which I am planning to do this Thursday. I have a feeling there are a lot of bureaucratic hoops yet to jump through, and to be honest I have doubts this project is going to happen, but I'm going to do everything I can to make sure the government cumplirs this promise. When I got home from MINSA, I sat down to talk with my host dad Victor and a few others. After some small talk, Victor said, "Okay, Bei. It is April. Here's my question. How are you going to spend your $6,000 budget for community projects?" 

Come again?

He told how Choi, the first volunteer, had explained to them that typically a first volunteer conducts a community analysis, training and studies and a second volunteer does a project - which is often true. However the reality got misconstrued in translation [note: this is no one's fault. Remember that Spanish is the second language for both parties. I misunderstand and get misunderstood allllll the time] and apparently some of my gente believed (believe?) that I have money already in the bank to give to the community. So I explained, with all due respect, that is completely false. If the community and I decide we are ready to put in the effort for a project, I can apply for funds. My application is carefully reviewed and must be accepted by Peace Corps, and then an outside entity has to actually fund it. Funds are never guaranteed from the start. So then Victor asked, "So is it possible for a volunteer to pass the two years without doing anything?" At first it really, really stung to hear that. So I tried to explain... the English classes, Choi becoming fluent in Ngäbere and playing on the local baseball team, the times we have introduced new foods and taught songs, given charlas and trainings, the soap making day, helping Bajo Conejo form a water committee, me learning to make chakras and singing in the church choir, the countless times we have sat and drank cacao and shared stories about our two cultures. THAT is the heart and soul of Peace Corps, that is not "nothing", a big infrastructure project is certainly possible but not necessarily right for every community. And Victor affirmed that he knew this, which I know deep down he does. He said he was worried for his neighbors. He has a latrine and access to clean water in his house, but he knows that many of his friends and family do not, and he doesn't want them to miss this opportunity to work with Peace Corps to help them get these things. And I totally agree; more and more people have taken the initiative to ask me if I can help them and I believe they deserve the help I can give. I walked away from that conversation feeling somewhat disheartened but also thankful that I now have a clearer perspective. We are still in the process of determining if two small neighborhood water systems are going to be feasible -- if they are not, Victor suggested a latrine project, which I'm also very much on board with. Because the grant process is long, we need to be all ready to apply by around the end of June. So, as always, we'll see.

In the morning on April 9th, we received word that our fellow volunteer Cody had passed away. It was shocking. The G79 Comarca volunteers immediately decided to meet in San Felix that day. I had just briefly told my neighbor what happened and that I was leaving when I slipped and fell walking down to the pozo to fill my water bottle and landed hard on my left wrist. I immediately knew that it was badly hurt because it was bent funny and I couldn't move it without sharp pain.

Ouch. This is the photo I sent to the Peace Corps doctors, who mandated me to a hospital immediately. (I had a pretty good wristwatch tan going...)

I called for help, my host family came quickly and helped me to my house, where we made a makeshift sling and I managed to throw some clothes and essentials into my backpack. The driver at the entrada to my hike didn't answer his cell so I hiked 50 minutes to Cañazas, waited for a chiva, rode to Juay, waited for a bus, rode to David, walked to the clinic, and finally got there about six hours after my fall. I was given a butt shot of painkillers (ha) and then an IV with more painkillers, x-rays, and the doctor determined I had a distal radius fracture in my wrist. He made me a temporary splint and released me after midnight to go sleep. The PC doctors told me I had to go to Panama City to see an orthopedist, so I headed out Monday morning. They took more x-rays, then I had to go back in Tuesday morning. I was given light anesthesia while the doctor reset my wrist to elongate & align the bone that I had broken, then I was given prescription anti-inflammatories & painkillers and a permanent cast which I have to wear for four weeks. 

Overall, although I was in a very strange mental state trying to process both the death and this injury, I was blown away by how positive the experience was. Nearly everyone in the hospital was friendly, the doctors were patient, the Peace Corps med staff arranged everything for me and called me each day to check in, the hospital in Panama City especially was so nice and so clean. The first doctor in David asked me where I went to school, then told me with delight that he'd just taken a trip to Michigan last month! He whipped out his phone and scrolled through photos of him standing in front of the Union, the State theater, and UMMA. I almost started to cry. How much I miss that place! The warm treatment I received was quite the contrast to my neighbor's angry reaction when I fell down. "You need to be more careful Bei! Why were you walking here anyways?" It made me think a lot about how accidental injuries are just not affordable for many people in my community. The transportation, the lodging, food, medical bills. These are all completely covered for me. And on top of that, there is so much racism against native people in Panama. I wonder if Ngäbes experience the same kindness that I did when they go to the hospital. Life is unfair, and I happen to be one of the lucky ones.

A group of Cody's closest friends worked tirelessly from Sunday to Wednesday to plan a Celebration of Life service for him Wednesday afternoon. I got to help put together a slideshow of photos and video clips. We picked Keep Your Head Up by Ben Howard as the background song, because we know that is what Cody would want us to be singing as we mourn his death. Sargent Shriver's quote The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit. But we're not apologetic about it. could not describe the essence of Cody more perfectly. The night before the celebration, all the Comarca volunteers gathered to prepare something to present the next day. At first, no one knew how to begin. But soon, the stories began pouring out. So many hilarious, fun, extraordinary memories he had made the past nine months! He loved getting his hands dirty and jumping into projects, building his whole house from various scrap materials he gathered around his community. I remember one of the first weeks of training, he had somehow compressed the entirety of Wikipedia into a file small enough to fit on a flash drive, and he brought it to class to share with anyone who wanted it. Locked out of his friend's house at night? He rigged a makeshift hanging tree bed until he got there. No pancake syrup in Tolé? Leave it to Cody, he boiled down soda on the stovetop to make strawberry syrup. He was famously the most creative chef of our group, making egg rolls, spicy tuna sushi rolls, and even figuring out how to make homemade doughnuts using only ingredients found in a rural tienda. I will remember him especially for his unbelievable generosity. Always cooking something new to share, he was in the process of making paracord survival bracelets for all of us G79 squirrels, and he was telling me at IST all about the gourmet lunch he cooked for over 100 people when his parents came to visit him. This is just a small handful of the stories that defined who he was as a volunteer. At the service, a variety of volunteers, staff, and even the US ambassador to Panama and the Panamanian president attended and spoke. This year's Panamanian Special Olympics will be dedicated to Cody. Amazing.

The whole week was a reminder of how strong and incredible our Peace Corps Panama family is. Over 100 volunteers came, some that didn't even know Cody. His mom, brother, and sister flew in from the states to attend too. Wow. I got to talk to his brother a little and I was just amazed at how intelligent and strong this whole family is. Because Cody was a craft beer fan, we all went out together to a brew pub after to continue the celebration. Even the Peace Corps Panama director Diane came to the pub with us! The whole day was filled with tears but also smiles and so much laughter. I gave and received hundreds of hugs. We are grieving but we continue the fight for our friend. Everything we do in our service from here on out is that much more meaningful, because we are doing it in the spirit of Cody.

I got to go back to site for a few days, for which I was grateful. I talked to some families in more detail about what had happened, spent some time with the kids, finished building a shower stall at my house, and figured how to cook, do laundry, and wash dishes one-handed. On Easter, I tried to make a coconut bunny-shaped cake, but it all fell apart coming out of the pan. Oh well. I shared it with my host family anyways, and also made a little poster explaining some of the Easter traditions (bunny, dying eggs, egg hunt, etc) in the United States. Lately I've been having some issues with certain strong Adventist beliefs I don't agree with and the Catholics-are-evil sentiments from several community members, so I was grateful my host family was interested to learn about how my family celebrates Easter. (They do not celebrate it or consider it a holiday)

I am back in the city for a check-up & x-ray, and the next month contains even more traveling. Mom and Dad will be here in 8 days!!! Cannot wait for them to meet my community and experience the best of Panama. I'm helping out with a seminar in my friend Carl's community, have to go back to the city to get my cast off, then finally to the office for a Training-of-Trainers. I was selected to help train the incoming group of WASH volunteers arriving in July for a week, which I am super excited for.

Although overall I've felt somewhat down the past couple weeks, I am looking forward to the coming weeks & months. A vacation, and the return of the rain. I think the heat, the dust, the wind, the layer of ash that coats my house each day from all the burning, the dwindling water supply, have started taking a toll on all of us and the impending wet season will bring a much-appreciated change.

Chong & Tito "reading". Thanks to Tyra for the wonderful picture books!!

Cast-signing in Mesa. "What is the purpose of this?"

Yolinda. I love this chica.

Avocado season is upon us :) :) :)

This is the best part of being home. They are growing rápidamente!

Prayer Request

Hi readers - on Saturday one of our fellow Comarca volunteers passed away suddenly in a tragic accident. Cody was an exceptionally smart engineer and problem-solver, a fun lover, a generous soul, full of a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm, and I am so lucky to have called him a fellow G79 volunteer and squirrel pal the past 9 months. I am looking forward to celebrating his life tomorrow in Panama City.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/peace-corps-mourns-loss-volunteer-cody-oser/

I ask that you keep his family, friends, community members, and all of Peace Corps Panamá in your prayers, if you are so inclined.

Also...I slipped while walking down a hill & fractured my left wrist on Sunday and am now in a cast...I am not at all sure what the next month or so is going to look like because of this.

More updates soon.

Xoxoxoxoxo
Bei

We Thought It Would Turn Purple..

Once again (I sense a trend forming here) I can’t believe it has been over a month since my last post. Looking at the March calendar hanging on my kitchen wall, on which I jot down what I did each day, I only see one day in which I didn’t have compromisos. And of course, you occasionally need days without obligations - when else are you going to try cooking or baking something complicated, clean your house, spend a whole morning down at the quebrada slapping the dirt out of clothes you’ve let pile up for way too long? After IST I came back with a let’s-get-to-business mindset instead of a just-try-to-make-my-gente-like-me mindset (but let’s be real, I still do too much of that) and so in March I feel like I finally, you know, did stuff. We’re already well over a quarter of the way through two years in our communities (how'd that happen?!) and time is accelerating the longer we’re here and the more comfortable and normal life in Panama becomes. So, a March recap:

It was very fun to have Emily and Shellee visit. We swam in the river, got very lost on the hike back from the river (sorry guys), made good food including tacos and Bocas cacao brownies, pasear’d, checked each others’ backs for muscular parasites (ya know, typical sleepover activities…), and my community, as always, enjoyed meeting my visitors. I finally went to an evangelical church service - only about four houses attend, the vast majority of my community is Adventist - they want to build a latrine for the church because they don’t have one yet. I gave the president, Israel, a list of necessary materials and he said they would buy them, so hopefully we get going with that soon. Eduardo and I continue to survey for a potential Estados Unidos neighborhood aqueduct system. Hopefully we get that done soon so we can see if it'll be feasible. The China neighborhood [[ side note for readers: my community is split into five neighborhoods nicknamed China, Michigan, Bajo Conejo, Estados Unidos & Pedregal ]] still wants my help with a water system, but they are working to secure legal rights to use a spring source - so that is on hold right now. I've also helped the Michigan neighborhood thermoform tubes and fix a couple of holes in the aqueduct they built. I helped the Bajo Conejo neighborhood elect a new water committee directiva! I'm quite happy about this, we will be applying for legal status soon. My host family got an oven and gas tank, and they are eager to learn recipes that use the oven, because they've never cooked with one before. So far I've taught them how to bake a plain bread and a sweet carrot & beet bread. Next up, I want to have a pizza-making day! My second-closest volunteer Michael came to Gallina to help with a soap-making seminar. I taught about the importance of using soap, not just water, to wash your hands, and attempted to explain with some illustrations on how soap works at the molecular level to remove dirt. Then we mixed the water, oil, and lye to make the soap, and I brought a bunch of things: tea bags, spices, coffee grounds, flowers, etc for my gente to put in the soaps to make them smell nice. They definitely had a blast with that, most of them went way overboard and put literally everything I brought in their bars of soap "It would have been really pretty with the purple flowers had they not dumped a load of coffee and cinnamon into it too..." Here the gente make tea from lemongrass, ginger, and other plants; I'm not sure they had ever used a tea bag before. My host mom kept adding more and more berry-flavor tea to her soap, because the package was bright purple "We thought it was going to make the soap purple," she said with a laugh while mixing the now murky brown-colored soap :)

I took a community member, Miriam, to a Peace Corps Women's Biodiversity & Empowerment seminar at the Center for Sustainable Development in Coclé, where we learned about all kinds of things: vertical gardens, nutrition, organic compost, climate change, seed saving, plant nurseries, recycled crafts...I didn't know Miriam super well before the conference so it was nice to get to know her & spend time with someone around my age (she's 21) and we both really enjoyed meeting women and volunteers from nearly every province in Panama. Miriam is part of the Mesa/Gallina artisan group and she brought a bunch of beautiful naguas, naguitas, diented shirts, and chakras to sell. It was cool to see her in her element selling her work to the other women.

Back in September I had met Alvaro, from a small community about a 45-minute walk from Gallina at an event in Dupí. I went to visit his home and he took me on a mini tour of his incredibly impressive organic finca. His neighborhood is only 11 houses, in between two larger communities and without running water. He's incredibly smart and has drawn up a plan for an aqueduct, we walked the potential transmission & distribution line and saw the spring source. Alvaro & I then scheduled a meeting with the community and they have decided to self-fund the whole system, building it little by little (a Peace Corps volunteer's dream right here!) I suggested starting by building a toma to protect the spring source, so next week we have a work day to clean the area around the toma, then we can see what we're working with, know how much sand & cement to buy, and start constructing as soon as they get the materials. I'm really excited to work with this group!

Sorry, this post was a lot of rambling.

Photos ^.^

Cuchi Cuchi had two kittens!

Teaching the gusanito song. "Tu eres loca, Bei..."

"Permiso Bei." Sassy children on my porch, what else is new. p.s. see the rainbow?

"We're playing monkey!"

Went to cosechar frijoles with Elsa & Marcelino in Quebrada Loro.

Studying Ngäbere with Yeya.

More Comarca-style sledding: pulling babies in whatever containers you can find

Soap-making in the rancho

Miriam selling her bracelets!

Some Comarca & Bocas women at the seminar. Notice the clear difference between Panamanian vs. American smiles, haha

Potato & lentil curry dinner & some reading in the hammock

El Gran Bautismo de la Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día. Pastors baptizing gente in the river.

Quick 1-day trip to Panama City for the Panama-USA World Cup qualifying soccer game!

Mi Tanque Está Llena

Ñantöre, blog readers! Can't believe it has been over a month since I last posted; January and February have been super packed and time has flown. Here is what I've been up to:

After a quick recovery from my stint with parasites, the rest of January was full of feria preparations, work days on the road in Mesa, playing volleyball, swimming in the Río Dupí with kids, guandu (a type of pea-like bean) shucking juntas, two family birthday parties, and hanging out with neighbors. I went to a friend Carl's (agriculture volunteer) site and learned how to start a coffee nursery, and I'm hoping to get a mini coffee planting project going with a few families in my community soon. The first week of February was the agro-artisan fair in Cerro Mesa, and I think it went really well! There were many visitors, speeches, lots of volleyball and soccer, tons of produce and artisan crafts for sale, an incredibly awkward baile, and I led some games for the kids, which was fun. Then after the fair I went with a few other squirrels (nickname for southern Comarca volunteers) to Boquete, a very touristy town in the Chiriquí mountains and spent two days rapidly typing out my CADP (Community Analysis and Development Plan) to turn in the Peace Corps, which ended up being a 30-page report! Then I hurried back to site for a day for English class and pasearing, then went to San Felix for meetings with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Environment, then rushed back to site to hike three hours with my host family to sing in church in another community. I have somewhat unintentionally joined a Ngäbe Seventh Day Adventist a capella quintet with my host parents and another couple from Hato Julí. We've had two gigs so far, one in Cerro Gato and another in Cerro Piedra. Later this month is going to be the big one in Quebrada Guabo, a Comarca-wide baptism in the river that supposedly thousands of people attend. It's been quite fun so far, a capella is something I always wished I had time to pursue in college - never expected I would be singing in front of crowds in Panama!!

The day after the 6-hour hiking day I hiked out and took a bus to Coclé for a week of IST (in-service training), which was a lot of sitting in a classroom but quite helpful - learning how to apply for grants, some more technical aqueduct concepts, how to facilitate gender & development clubs and camps, etc.. and it was so nice to reconnect with all of our group and spend hours talking and playing games at night. Then we headed to Cerro Pita, site of fellow volunteer Sean, and spent a week building a bloque tank, ferrocement tanks, a toma, lock boxes, sediment cleanouts, and air release valves for their new aqueduct and practicing facilitating water committee seminars. I absolutely loved the community and my host family and learned a lot of great tech knowledge that hopefully I'll be able to apply in Gallina (should we ever build an aqueduct...we'll see) Now I'm heading back up to site, and my friends Shellee and Emily are coming with me to visit! :) Excited to have more guests.

I've been in Panama for nearly eight months now, and although I miss my family and friends (and am looking forward to some visitors from the States in the coming months! *hint hint*) I am content with life in Panama and excited to spend another year and a half here. I am surrounded daily by some of the most incredible friends (Panamanians, Peace Corps staff, fellow volunteers) I have had the privilege of knowing and all the love and support in the world. So no need to worry about me down here. After being with my fellow G79ers for the past two weeks and hearing all about their struggles and triumphs in the first five months in site, I feel inspired and I am so ready to get back to work in Gallina. We're in the dead of summer so my rainwater tank is empty but my metaphorical tank is full of new knowledge, animo, energy.

Fotos ~

Swimming with Jorge, Oscar, Walter, Carmen, and Melvin

Ñampi, egg, bodá: such a campo breakfast

God smiles on little Tito

When you go to the river...fresh-caught shrimp stir fry fo dinner!!

Checking out the plant nursery in Kuerima

Look at those products!

Guandu guandu guanduuuuu

Pricila exploring an abandoned house on the way to Cerro Gato

This week in English class: Team Pig edges out Team Big Head in flashcards

Nido brings a dead squirrel to English class...

Quintet rehearsal with Emilia

So windy on top of Cerro Vaca

Meligön and Lisandra at field IST

Frolicking on top of the world :)

Trying to do the semi-smile and not succeeding...this was also taken before 7 AM...host dad Alfredo and I in Cerro Pita

Christian, little host bro (at least he looks cute)

I have no idea what he was painted with

Building the bloque tank in Cerro Pita

Ferrocement tank building with the kids

Look at dat Chaco tan... swimming in the river!

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"