12/24/2011

Feliz navidad hanukkah and new year a todos y todas!

Good lord do I miss you all! I hope that you are all in good health, eating some amazingly delicious food, enjoying the company of friends and family, and loving every minute of the holiday spirit. I bet it's gorgeous where you are right now...i am imagining all the lights and decorations and cheerfulness....

I can't say that my community is equally as adorned this time of year. In fact, it's not adorned at all! it's not just not having electricity, but no trees, no music, no special foods, no gifts, no parties, no mention even of the word "navidad" which makes it quite different. turns out we do not celebrate Christmas, nor any other holiday really, so I am certainly a bit disconnected from the season this year... It's not clear to me whether the avoidance of the holiday has more to due with the lack of monetary resources or with their religious beliefs, but either way, it is what it is. Funny enough it's almost easier to be there, peddling along, than to be here in the city, surrounded by Christmas fervor, apple-eating (yes, apples are the season's treat!), flashing lights, glowing trees, and english christmas songs translated into catchy spanish variations. if it weren't for the heat of the summer and the abundance of tropical fruit it would sure look like home, and that's exactly what makes it harder. i miss christmas at home. i miss the way the fireplace glows, the smell of the tree, the way light reflects off the ornaments, the getting together, the cooking, the cookies, and most of all, you wonderful folks. i'm dealing well with it though. my strategy is to stay as busy as possible through the holiday season.....so far i have been extremely successful. today i am in the city for a meeting, tomorrow i will be traveling back to my training community to see my old host family and spend christmas with them. not only is it christmas, but it's the little girls' 3rd birthday, so that will be fun! afterwards i am off to see a teacher and her family, and then back to my community in time for a busy week of work, and an even busier month. if before i said that things were going slowly, i revoke the statement. things are flying finally. which is both good and bad.........i'll try to give you a brief explanation, though i doubt it will be brief and most likely does not explain the half of things.

the good
+i love my people!!!!! love love love love them.
+work is taking off!...... i finished up the girls' afterschool science program for the year and culminated with the school's holiday party/ mother's day party/ teacher's going away party. it was great! got a lot of great feedback from the parents and the girls. ALSO i put in a grant application and got funding to continue this program next semester! now the boys want their own program though, so we will see what i can do.
+our worm composting at the school is up and running (wiggling, really). now that the teachers and students are gone it's up to me and the school manual laborer to take care of the babes, but they are pretty low maintainance and seem to be doing just fine on their horsepoop diet, occasionally supplemented by a banana peel from the gringa.
+i went on an epic horseback ride to the ANAM office with my friend and former host dad fanol. we saw monkeys and an ocelot and a snake along the way! and when we got there i convinced him to go hike the trails with me and he was super into it. we are going to try to bring some of our other friends with us there this summer to spend the day and roast a chicken and some corn and suck some oranges. also, fanol is just plain amazing i have decided. we had some great conversations along the way about how he wants to grow vegetables and wants to learn about everything there is to know about organic agriculture and how he knows that the kidney bean projects are bad for the environment because all the chemicals are going to destroy the soils, and how much better coffee is. smart man, that fanol.
+i have been helping my friend mirna on saturdays with her youth club, club de la ninez. we did an activity on water contamination that was pretty awesome last week and in january we are going to take them to the trails at the ANAM office to learn about the watershed, along with the 5 highest placing students from the school.
+the cooperative has been finishing up with this enormous UNDP grant, which included a bunch of solar composting latrines, fuel efficient stoves, and soil conservation parcels, so we have been busy trying to get alll the work done before the report is due in january. we finished all of the latrines except one (MINE of course, i am still pooping at the neighbors house) and all of the stoves except 2 or 3- i can't recall, and we did about 1/4 of the soil conservation work.
+as luck would have it, i got a ride from a random government employee one day and incidentally mentioned that the community is interested in stoves, so he recommnded i talk with his boss at the PAN office. i went there today and turns out this director studied abroad in Kansas and is super friendly and wants to help the community out. he seems to think asking $3000 is no big deal and so he's going to start working on the budget and im going to work on the budget and we're going to write it up and take it to panama city for a meeting with the national director in january.... if this goes through we will be able to get fuel efficient stoves for every house in the community...wild, right? some days it's good to be a hitch-hiker!
+the garden is still alive! so far i am still winning the battle against the pigs. thank god. i have planted carrots, watermelon, squash, cilantro, green onion, tomato, bell pepper, cucumer, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, celery and cabbage. yum yum yum.


the bad
-i have not once yet had time to weed my garden. good golly it needs some love. and my celery is begging for a transplant, and my fence is made of palm leaves and sticks, which is a very temporary defense mechanism against my neighbor's highly-destructive pigs. at any moment the fortress is bound to fail me and i don't even want to imagine the havoc that will ensue should the fatties get in there and start digging things up.
-my tolerance for clothes washing, here at the end of my 5th month, has dropped to zero. i believe it is in my best interest to start paying a friend to wash my clothes. i know that sounds so lazy and northamerican, but i really am terribly slow and i just have so much other stuff i would rather and should be doing. like weeding, or better yet, helping my friends Fanol, Facundino, and Avelina to start up their own vegetable parcels.
-there is never enough time in the day, week, or month, to do all the work i would like to do, nor all the playing-with-children, nor the visiting-of-friends, that i would like to be doing.
-i reached an all-time low today. i walked into a nice pharmacy, smelled 5 different types of very fine organic shampoos and drooled for about 10 minutes in the health food section, then left the store like a dog with my tail between my legs without a single purchase. but i admit it was worth the visit. if heaven smells i am sure it smells just like those organic shampoos.....a-mazing.
-i feel like i am never at home, and when i am at home, i'm busy doing home-stuff, like trying to prepare a meal that includes the color green or orange or purple or red. (pretty much any color other than white and yellow and brown......) its discouraging for everyone- those who visit me when i am not there, those who visit me when i am there but am busy, and myself because then i dont get to eat or i do eat but then have to wash clothes in a 5 gallon bucket while several wishful-eyed children hover around me watching my every move as though i were a television set.
-i am always leaving! this next month will be especially hard because i will be in and out and in and out.....all of it is work related, but then life gets put on the backburner, people start asking where i've been and when i'm coming over next, children leave candy wrappers on my porch (evidence that they have been waiting there for me and given up), pigs find their ways into the garden, ants in the house, work gets left behind, money gets spent. asi es la vida of the volunteer.
-i miss my folks. since i have been busy there are some invididuals i dont see for weeks at a time. there are folks i havent seen for months....i live there and i miss them. crazy, huh? plus my male buddies are all working outside the community right now, my teacher friends are home for the summer, and my best female friend is going back to highschool in february. and then there's all of you, who i also miss.

ya que the body aches, the heart yearns, the sun rises and sets in the blink of an eye, but the soul is content, which is the most important.

well my friends and family, i wish i had time to pass on some of the deeper thoughts and reflections about the new year to you all, but unfortunately i am off once again. i will, someday, try to send you some new photos and a more satiating account of the internal state of things- thoughts, feelings, projections, etc. but for now i will leave you to enjoy the holiday season.

Know that I have you all in my heart and mind. I love and miss you.

Best wishes for 2012 to each and every one of you.