Gente Spotlight #1

The first of many posts where I will highlight some awesome people in my community. Look out for more of these!

Vidal
He and his wife Dominga (she will appear in a future post for sure) and their awesome kids were one of the first families to make me feel at home in Cerro Gallina, invite me to events, and make their house a place I did and still do love hanging out. Vidal is the volunteer "promoter" of the SENAPAN agricultural program and organizes work days to make compost and manage a large plot of organic corn. He is also the vocal (position that is in charge of advising the community of meetings and workdays) for the Bajo Conejo water committee AND volunteer promoter for our corregimiento representative. He is instrumental in coordinating with both me and the repre in the planning of the new government funded Bajo Conejo aqueduct (it's coming...we just don't know exactly when yet)
He is organized, motivated, asks me for help in improving his organizational skills, and makes sure I know that he appreciates both the big and small things I do as a Peace Corps volunteer. He is the definition of a good counterpart! P.s. Like everyone in my community, he never wears sunglasses and got a kick out of trying these on.

Dionicio

I'm 100% serious when I say my best friend in Panama is this 17-year old. Dionicio honestly brings so much joy into my life, from his uncontrollable laughter playing ninja to the many afternoons he spends strumming my ukulele while freestyling in a mixture of Spanish, Ngäbere, English, Buglere, and French. Not kidding, in descending order of fluency he speaks all of these languages. He is not my most advanced, but certainly the most dedicated English student in class and also in the hours we spend on my porch, mostly him practicing pronunciation but also me nagging him to help me with Ngäbere. His energy and goofiness are nonstop but lately we've been having good conversations about religion, preservation of the Ngäbe culture, his dreams for the future, and more. I can be myself around him and confide in him things that may be taboo with others in my community. Time spent with Dionicio is never time wasted. P.s. not even two days after he and Roger tried to teach me to swing on these vines in the photo - I failed miserably - I passed by this spot to find someone had chopped them all down...hmm...

Luisa
Screenshotted this photo from her husband Eduardo's Whatsapp status, it was so darn cute. She's holding her granddaughter. My favorite memory of Luisa: my host parents and I were waiting for her to hike to a concert in Cerro Piedra back in February, it was 5:30 AM and she hadn't shown up yet, but we had to go without her to get there for the 8:45 service. We were just arriving in Piedra after a (in my not-so-humble opinion) brutal 3-hour hike when all of a sudden Luisa appears beside me, looking like she had just left the house in her pink nagua, her hair done all nicely, a big smile on her face, not even sweating and says simply, "I caught up!" Luisa has a powerful and beautiful singing voice, and she is one of the children's ministers along with my host mom Benita. She is a fantastic cook and always makes me feel at home in her house. And her kids are some of the brightest in the community. Right now she has a 6-month stint as a cook in our district municipality office and hikes 1.5 hours in each direction to and from work every weekday. I admire Luisa so much!

Dinora
One of my first weeks in site last year, I went to a high school's tourism festival with a few of my gente. One female student from each grade was competing pageant-style to be crowned the queen for the rest of the school year, and one of the candidates immediately stood out to me. Most young women here are very shy and guarded, but this girl just radiated confidence; she looked like she was born to be on stage. She didn't end up winning but I always wondered what her story was. Since the high school is about 50 minutes from me and serves multiple communities I figured I wouldn't see her again. It wasn't until months later when I was visiting Ernesto's house and she was there that I realized she lived in my community!! My immediate thought: OMG I hope she will like me, she's way cooler than I was at 16! Her house is kind of far and she's often not at home (Dinora is a busy girl, which is why it took me months to realize she lived there) but I've gotten to know her a bit and I look forward to spending more time with her this upcoming year. A few times she's even hiked 30 minutes up the steep hill to my house so I can help her with her English homework. I have no doubt this girl is going places in life and I'm excited to hear her future plans as she'll be a senior in high school the upcoming year.

What Good is a Good Thing...

...if it is not shared?

The past month & a half, I’ve experienced the unexpected joy of being relentlessly generous. I will admit, I’ve been selfish all my life. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours – that’s the culture I grew up in. Say I received a $20 bill in a birthday card, I would have spent it on something for myself, or put it in my bank account. But if one of my gente in Cerro Gallina received a $20? They would probably use it to buy food to make a huge feast for their family and invite all the neighbors, take the last bowl with the burnt bottom rice and less-desirable chicken parts as the host typically does, and probably also get some special treats for the kids. Keeping it for themselves? Not a chance. Even though the sharing culture has its downfalls - as an American assumed to be very wealthy by default and therefore obligated to share the wealth - I’m appreciating and adapting to it more and more.

I've hosted so many guests! I love my daily routine alone in my little house, but it has been so nice to share life with many people recently. 

First up, Michelle’s visit to Panama! We spent a day exploring Panama City, then traveled up to my site. On our hike in, a thunderstorm rolled through very suddenly and we were hiking in a wall of rain, gusty winds, and very VERY close lightning, a.k.a. lighting struck a tree maybe half a football field away from us. We both screamed and were on the verge of tears but the storm then quickly passed and all was well. We did some pasearing, gave an English class and another soap-making charla, and mostly just hung out around my house the two full days we were in my community. Kaitlyn came to visit from Bocas during this same week and helped me give an aqueduct meeting! More on that below. Michelle was given the Ngäbere name of Melichi by Enrique. We then spent the afternoon at the beach and a night at these adorable bungalows in Las Lajas, then a night in El Valle de Anton, then back to the city where we visited the artisan market and ate Korean food before heading to the airport. It was a short & sweet trip, and Michelle got along great with my community, especially the kids! So grateful she visited :) :) 

Manuelito & Melichi

Making kids pose with us on the walk from school

The most delicious & beautiful breakfast at the bungalows!

After returning from dropping off Michelle, I had two really solid weeks in site, probably some of my best weeks so far in Panama. I think it was because I didn’t have too many commitments or meetings so I was able to spend quality time with my gente. The daily volume of kids hanging out at my house has exploded lately. Especially on weekends and when there is no school, there are always kids on my porch, reading, coloring, looking through my binoculars, singing, playing cards, playing with Cuchi Cuchi, trying to wrestle and getting reprimanded by me. One day Vidal came by randomly and said, "Bei, I've been thinking about a limpieza de patio here on Sunday." Basically, I let my lawn get so grossly overgrown that Vidal couldn't stand it anymore and planned a workday, hehe. So on Sunday Vidal, Eduardo, and Manuel came over and chopear-ed that patio for a couple hours, and I made them lunch of rice & lentil soup. I had transplanted a small lemongrass stalk from Elsa's garden to my lawn back in maybe November and forgotten about it. So I was pleasantly surprised when Eduardo uncovered a giant lemongrass bush under all the monte sucio! So lately I've been taking advantage of the free & unlimited source of tea and have been making lemongrass tea for almost everyone that visits. I've also got spinach, sweet potato, basil, lemon balm/toronjil, mint, squash, habichuela, and ginger currently growing, and I harvested my first vegetable - a little squash. Woo! I've been continuing to go to work days for various SENAPAN groups, even though agriculture has nothing to do with my job here - and have learned to accept that work that could be accomplished in just a couple hours is stretched into a full-day event, done slowly with plenty of time for gossip and unnecessary passionate speeches and chilling in the shade gulping down cups of chicha. Even though it is a little unnatural for me, learning to share freely my house, my things, my time with my community overall has been a really good feeling.

I had a couple other volunteers visit me, including a new WASH trainee and soon-to-be volunteer, Elisabeth! She came for three nights and got to experience campo life for the first time just like I did at Chelsea's site last year. We went to visit families, taught English class, she was named Beyi Kwitubu by my favorite abuela, and got gifted so, so, so much pifá. We had lots of fun and I have no doubt she'll be an excellent volunteer. 

Elisabeth blended right in in my nagua. Dionicio finally brought his CONCH SHELL to English class and we were both quite excited

I then went back to Santa Clara, Panama Oeste to co-facilitate training for the new WASH group G81 for a week. I helped teach about pit latrines, surveying, hydraulic grade line, school charlas, water sources and tomas, among other topics. Soon there will be 23 new WASH volunteers and it was awesome to get to know them a little bit. Eight will be in the Comarca, including my second closest volunteer.

Got to celebrate Elisabeth's birthday with her host family in Santa Clara :)

Finally, Michigan Technological University! Four seniors - Kira, Sasha, Matthew, and Julie, and a professor Melanie spent a week camping in my site. They took water samples from springs across the community, brought survey gear and surveyed the Bajo Conejo water system that is being built by the government, a potential future EU system, and decided to do an analysis on different kinds of inexpensive and off-the-grid pump systems to pump water from Rosa's spring source to their house. All of this will go into their senior design report. I can't wait to see what they come up with! What awesome guests, so curious to learn about the culture. They were also great (and oh-so-much more patient than me) with the kids. They were troopers through the hike with a crazy amount of food and gear, sitting through a five-hour political meeting in Ngäbere (sorry about that, haha), getting clotheslined, pesky intruder cats in my house getting into their food, an infected foot, a boa constrictor attack on a chicken a few feet from their tents in the middle of the night, and some midnight double dragon dilemmas (PC speak for simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea...) But all was resolved. For me, going house to house with them the first few days was very eye-opening, because we had the families take us to their springs where they get water so we could take samples. It was my first time seeing a lot of these springs, and I finally got an idea why some of these families don't have much interest in aqueducts - they have beautiful water sources very close to their houses already. It made me realize how valuable education and efforts on spring maintenance and household water treatment & storage could be.

The community was really interested in the water samples they, which tested for total coliform and E. Coli. I took advantage of this interest and scheduled a meeting with a few families to explain and discuss the results. Unfortunately only two households showed up, but regardless we had a productive discussion on how we can better protect our springs, protect water in transit, safely store it in the house, and treat it with simple methods like boiling, chlorine drops, and solar disinfection. The gente could visibly see the difference in the number of coliform from the families that had good source cleaning practices already and those that didn't - which was huge and I think very valuable for them. I had naively assumed that most people already knew how to treat water in the house because I know my previous volunteer did education on it - but a volunteer obviously cannot reach everyone in the community and it's important to reinforce to make ideas actually stick. I'm looking forward to doing more meetings like this soon!

 Water sampling

Showing Roger how to use a rangefinder

Modeling artesanía purchased from Miriam & Elsa

Post-soccer game "When are they coming back, Bei??"

Oh yeah, Cuchi Cuchi had four more kittens while MTU was here. I've now got five cats living with me, so I think that officially makes me a cat lady right?

Silly faces...? o_O

Our government representative came to Gallina twice in the past month for meetings to talk about upcoming projects like the Bajo Conejo aqueduct. This was a BFD for the community since it's the first time he's been here, at least in the past year since I've lived here. At the first meeting, Vidal, the repre's volunteer promoter, proudly presented a solicitation letter for materials to build a roof for a new hut for the visiting MINSA doctors since the existing one is about to collapse. Enrique, the community's health promoter, had come to my house one afternoon and we sat down and wrote out the letter. He can't type but he dictated to me everything to put in it. I then printed it out and Enrique went house-to-house and collected over 110 signatures from community members to turn in along with the letter. I'm so proud of him. And the repre gave us at least a verbal promise that he would find a way to get us materials for a zinc roof! 

The letter and three pages of signatures from nearly every home in the community (except families that are feuding with the health promoter's family...classic)

I’ve also gotten to visit nearby volunteers for some cool events – notably the ‘Bettering Your Life’ seminar in Quebrada Loro organized by neighbors Sam and Michael. I helped facilitate sessions on water treatment, caring for the sick, and HIV/AIDS prevention. Hundreds of people showed up and got very passionate when discussing the problem of AIDS in their community. Sam and Michael just finished their services, and it was amazing to see them in action facilitating fluidly in Spanish and Ngäbere, and their confidence and ease with the gente. I also went to Michael’s goodbye party as well as the inauguration party for my friend Sean's community's aqueduct - the one we helped build for a week in February. It’s bittersweet to see these incredible people leaving, the new volunteers have some big shoes to fill. (I’m not crying you’re crying!!!)

A project update! So in July I had to make a tough decision and abandon for now the idea of writing a grant to build an aqueduct to serve three families. For many reasons, which maybe I'll elaborate on later, I could not justify trying to get them funding for a project I couldn't see as feasible nor sustainable. We're exploring some other ideas to improve access to water for these families - will keep you all updated. But I did write a different grant - for a few of my closest families that had build their own aqueduct, that functions but needs improvements. The proposal includes fixing and expanding a leaky and dirty toma (spring catchment), getting rid of a leaky plastic tank and building a concrete tank, and a few other minor upgrades, as well as Water Committee Seminars for the beneficiaries. I feel strongly that these are the people who are dedicated to working with Peace Corps, and we all hope that this project can inspire other sectors of the community to make their own efforts to improve water access in the future. I have submitted the grant request and prepared a report for an NGO that funds rural gravity-fed water projects, let's see what happens! 

I'm in the city at the moment for mid-service medical and dental exams. This weekend G79 will be celebrating one year in site in the city, and then Michelle (different Michelle) will be visiting me for a few days in Gallina. More visitors! 

Allllmost one year into my two years in Cerro Gallina, and boy do I have a lot of plans and hopes for this coming year. Gonna try to blog more often so I don't have to catch up several months at a time and write novels like this. Paz y amor, ja mräka tikwe. (Spangäbere for 'peace and love, my friends.')

Bei out ~~

You've Got a Long Way to Go, Girl

Hello! I have so much to update about, however I have little internet time and I must spend it all rapidly trying to submit a grant application before the deadline!!! #procrastinatorproblems

So here's a little piece I wrote for the upcoming issue of La Vaina (basically, 'The Thingamabob') the PC Panama volunteer literary magazine. Hope you enjoy. Will be in the city for mid-service med appointments next week and I'll do a big 'ol life update then :)

~

You've Got a Long Way to Go, Girl

My journal entries, phone calls to my parents, WhatsApp messages with fellow volunteers are full of complaints. The kids trash my porch, the adults hardly show up to meetings, people still don’t understand why I’m here, students aren’t motivated to succeed in school…and the list goes on. I realize with horror how much I sound like a person whom, because of her education level or wealth or perceived intelligence or whatever, thinks she is somehow better than those surrounding her. And this is anything, anything but the truth.

After 11 months I have hardly scratched the surface of a true understanding of my gente, what makes them tick and why they think and act like they do. On the contrary, they somehow understand me completely; often I am struck with the thought that my gente know me better than I know myself. I was paseando with Miriam, and I was in a terrible mood but making my absolute best effort to smile, chat, and pretend like everything was normal. All of a sudden Miriam asks, “Why are you so sad, Bei?” How did she do that?! Her mother Elsa comes into the room and sticks out her hand for my plate and spoon. Feeling ashamed that I forgot my bowl, I tell her thank you, but I’m not hungry today. Elsa narrows her eyes and disappears into the kitchen, returning with a perfectly small portion of rice and mustard green soup in a little bowl. How did she know this was exactly what I wanted?!

But the person who gets me more than anyone is my 11-year old host brother, Walter. I turned down the invitation to an overnight excursion with the Adventist church by pretending I had an important compromiso the next day when truthfully, I just didn’t want to go. I figured I had convinced them until Walter came by my porch as soon as they returned and asked, “Bei, really, why didn’t you go this weekend?” Another time we were relaxing around the house, and out of the blue he asks me, “Bei, if your family had a kid like Tito, would you care for him?” Tito is a severely disabled grandson who lives with my host family. I began to stumble through an answer, “Well, of course we would, but it’s different in the States…” I know that I wouldn’t be able to care for him without ever uttering a single complaint, nor make the necessary sacrifices to ensure that he was attended to by an immediate family member 24 hours a day, 365 days a year like my host family does. As I struggled to find the words to explain this, my family stared at me and in that moment it was clearer than ever that the gente see me for who I really am – someone who is selfish at heart, someone who doesn’t possess a fraction of their innate compassion and generosity. When planning charlas we say to “get down to their level”, but I disagree with this statement; I need to get UP to their level. My gente are, absolutamente, better human beings than I will ever be. I’ve got a long way to go and I am so grateful that my community has opened their hearts and let me in so that I can begin down that road.

~

And a few people I love!

 Tatiana enjoying lemongrass tea wearing the princess crown

 Marcelino & Isaías harvesting oranges

 Elvin (and Cuchi Cuchi of course)

 My tocaya Bei checking out some childrens books & Melisa

 Tito & I watching soccer

Adrián at a penca hut workday

Getting my Maestra On

Hello / Buenas / Ñantöre! First – I must make an update to two posts back. I wrote about my host nephew coming over asking for ten cents to make a copy, and how silly I thought that was. I stand corrected because I recently learned that the students are asked to each bring in ten cents so that the teachers can print out worksheets in San Felix. This is one of the expenses authorized under the beca universal –the check that each Panamanian student collects three times a year as long as he or she receives passing grades. For elementary schoolers, the amount is $90/student, for high schoolers it’s more but I can’t remember the exact amount. The beca is used for buying school uniforms or fabric to sew uniform naguas, notebooks, pencils, backpacks, food, transportation, and any expenses requested by the teachers. There is no real tracking of how families spend the becas, so you’ll see families eating really well the week after they collect and then handfuls of kids missing the first few days of class in the new school year because they don’t have shoes, there is no money to purchase shoes, and students are not allowed in school without shoes. I see this as a huge problem, one of several in the public school system. In our elementary school teachers frequently miss days of class, and there are no substitutes. On any given day, at least one or two grades won’t have class because the teacher is not there. Sometimes the students are told in advance and sometimes they make the trek (up to an hour, uphill, for some kids in my community) just to find that the teacher didn’t show up. I could go on ranting but it’s not my place; I am a foreigner, I’m not in the profession, I don’t understand the complexities. What I do know is that there is a huge resource and quality gap in public education between wealthy and poor areas, a problem not at all unique to Panama. As a graduate of 17 years of high-quality public schools and a lifetime nerd who always loved going to class, what I can do is to encourage kids and parents to make education their priority and show them what amazing things education can do.

So today I want to write about some POSITIVE things that have been going on in the academic world here in the Comarca! First, motivation for my community English class continues to be high, so we’ve been having class often, sometimes even several a week. My students are advancing in their vocabulary and basic sentence formation and we have fun with games like charades, Pictionary, Telephone, and Simon Says.

An English class with host uncle Julio and the teachers in Cerro Mesa

Gallina's English class, including my star students Dionicio and Virginia, who may or may not be having a love affair (what have I started)

I spent a morning teaching 5^th and 6^th graders about the water cycle and watershed protection. We talked about the scarcity of potable water in the world and ways we can conserve it, how our agricultural and ranching communities pollute our streams and rivers, the importance of tree coverage in the watershed, and how we can preserve the quality of water for downstream communities. On the whiteboard I drew a map of our entire Salto Dupí watershed, and had the kids draw it too in their notebooks. This way, they have a visual to remind them that as residents of Cerro Gallina and Cerro Mesa, the highest communities on the ridgeline, we have an obligation not to throw trash and chemicals into the rivers – they will wind up in the laundry of our downhill neighbors! The 5^th grade teacher Manuel was very into the topic and invited me back the next week to plant trees around the school to protect the watershed, ohh yeah! I went and it ended up being me watching Javier, one of the best gardeners in town, plant trees haha, but it’s the idea that’s important.

This is a photo of a map of our watershed that was made by a group of McGill University students. It includes all of the named quebradas and rivers, communities, and even land usage (yellow: grazing/agriculture and green: forest). Pretty cool! This is what I based the chalkboard drawing on.

Sadly, I was too busy teaching and don’t have any photos of this day :(

Eugenio and I had a productive four days at the Project Management & Leadership (PML) conference in Coclé! It was definitely way out of his comfort zone and I think he learned a lot about forming strong groups, thinking about budgeting and time management, writing formal letters, and presenting ourselves to agencies. I enjoyed seeing my friends interact with their counterparts and picking up new facilitation ideas from our awesome Panamanian facilitators. My friend Kevin’s counterpart Mario was also into singing, so for the talent show I played the ukulele and we sang a Spanish song together (one of my favorite campfire songs, Pass It On – in Spanish Lo Debes Compartir) we had only run through it twice before the show so it was kinda rough haha but it was fun. I would LOVE to do a shorter, similar seminar in-site this coming year. I mentioned it to Eugenio and he agreed that community members could really benefit from education on some of these topics. I’m thinking of planning a one or two-day seminar for maybe this October, with Eugenio as one of my co-facilitators!

 Eugenio and I literally filling each others' tanks.

Friends in naguas at PML

And finally, Elige Tu Vida in Hato Pilón! In typical Panama fashion, a day and a half before the seminar was to start I began to develop a nasty rash on my face and woke up the morning of the first day with eyes so swollen I could hardly see. Soooo I missed the first day of the seminar to go get medicine and spend a night in David, but my friends picked up the slack. I was back the next day, and the three days I did get to facilitate went super well. We trained early 200 7^th, 9^th, and 10^th graders on goal-setting, tank-filling, STI’s, HIV prevention, sexual rights, consent, and consequences of teenage pregnancy. I loved seeing the students laugh during our socio-dramas, pay close attention when we explained anatomy and write excellent questions for the anonymous question box. And the high school counselor was so excited to have us there, she was in the classroom with us nearly the whole time for four days :) We’d like to do ETV again for the 8^th, 10^th and 12^th graders as well as for the high school in Dupí later this school year.

So overall, I’d say my various teaching roles have been the most fulfilling part of my Peace Corps service thus far. June 6th marked 365 DAYS in the country of Panama! It’s hard to believe we’ve been here an entire year. And to celebrate a year in-country (actually the dates are just a coincidence) Michelle arrived on the 6th to visit me!!! Will write about her trip in a future post. Also, some bad news…my iPhone was stolen. In brief, either it fell out of my chakra or was snatched while I was in a taxi and is now long gone. I’ve gotten a new phone number for calls and Whatsapp and updated it under the Contact Me tab above. Luckily (thanks to iCloud) I still have all my contacts and should be able to recover a lot of my stuff. So I will be a little more absent from social media for a while for this reason. Also I lost my most recent photos, including ones from the Elige Tu Vida :( Sorry everyone.

My birthday!

Week's veggie haul from the amazing veggie & fruit place in Las Lajas

Water level surveying with Walter, Roger, and Victor! (project updates coming soooooon)

Went to the beach with some of my favorite gente for an overnight trip to hunt crabs.

Let's hope my face NEVER looks like this again!!