Rice and Other Matters: Dear family and friends,
First of all I want to say thank you for everyone who has been writing me. I really appreciate the messages, even though I oftentimes do not have time to respond. I do, however, read them and LOVE them. So keep on writing!!! I will try to respond as time permits.
Secondly, so much has happened since I last emailed you all that I can't even begin to summarize. I'll let the pictures tell the story for the most part, but I thought it would be fun to tell you a little about la vida panamena, enfocando en FOOD. So first of all, there's Rice. That accounts for about 2/3 of the diet, so that pretty much takes care of most everything. Rice, rice, and rice. But there's more....
Typical breakfast foods: Coffee (though not real coffee, at least not where I am now. There's a term they use to describe this particular blend of powdered coffee with corn and bean filler "Maife" which is super popular down here. Also it looks like tea because they like it super super weak. That being sad, there are still some panamenos that like the real stuff, but its hard to find and more expensive down here- probably not the case if you are in the highlands.) Also Maicena, which is basically cream of corn with food coloring and artificial fruit flavors that you mix in with lots of sugar and water, or if you are really doing-it-up fancy style, with milk. More often than having maicena, I eat hotdogs (fried!) and a fat, little corn tortilla (fried) with a slice of kraft plasticized cheese (super popular down here). Alternatives on the breakfast include (if you are lucky!) ojaldres (fried bread), tortas (fried egg with diced onion bellpepper and tomato), fried egg, hardboiled egg, bollos (basically mashed corn in a tube that looks like a hotdog), and fried plantains. oh and in rural communities you might even eat some bananas or pinapple for breakfast. Not here, though. its funny but despite the plethora of fruit trees, the panamenos here in the city sector just dont eat it. i mean at all. fruit is just not part of the food culture in this particular part of panama...mountains of rotting mangos just laying in the streets......just imagine it.
Let's talk lunch: Here in my training community, I eat a mountain of rice every day for lunch and a little piece of chicken or fish (fried). Also a big glass of Tang with lots of sugar. One might also expect pasta with a simple tomato sauce, or some beef with onions, or lentils (once in a long while), or tuna from the can, and if you are lucky (a few times a week at most) some pink (beets) potato salad with mayonaisse or even better a little bit of lettuce and slice of tomato or some sliced cucumber- yum!!! In the rural communities where people grow fruit, you might actually get natural chicha (juice) instead of tang, which is AWESOME- especially the pinapple. Soup, too, with yuca and name and all those good roots (and more rice) is also very popular for lunch. i am still trying to figure out how to honestly enjoy a hot bowl of soup in the middle of the day in the tropics....despite being a delicious variation from the norm, it's just too hot!
For dinner, I eat the same thing as for lunch, oftentimes exactly the same thing. And another glass of Tang. some times my panamama makes beans (borrotos) (like once every 2 weeks) which are super delicious. as for the salad, it's pretty much a once every 3 days kind of thing, but i always appreciate it, and i know that she really only makes it that often for me because my 16 year sister always complains about how she is so tired of eating salad. hahaha. usually i eat her portion too, which to them is probably very strange. then again, they seem to know that northamericanos like green things and fruit (which of course is very odd by panamanian standards). the only problem in my community is that these kinds of foods (with the exception of fruit, which is abundant but wasted) are not accesible. we have just 3 tiendas, and they only sell "shelvable" foods like boxes and cans and garlic and onion and chips and cookies and oatmeal and, of course, rice.
other foods that are popular (though not so much in my family) are plantains cooked with sugar and cinammon and butter, rice with chicken, tamales, cream of oats, pork, beef, mashed plantains, boiled plantains, cake, chicken stew, boiled yuca, cookies (with coffee), and soda pop. That being said, I've only eaten food from TWO provincias out of NINE, so this is a very narrow perspective.
Also, I admit: I am not a panamanian vegetarian. I won't cook it or buy it, but I eat it when I am served. And it's actually oftentimes the most flavorful part of my meal, so I am pretty grateful for a good dish of arroz con pollo when I get it. My other favorites are: tortas, ojaldras, borrotos, bollos, sugary plantains, friend plantains, cream of oat, mangos, bananas, natural chicha, DUROS (popsicles either made from maicena or tang or natural chicha, COCONUT being the best of all), and lentils.
What else to say? Well, in the last few weeks I have been busy:
-working on a garden project at the local school. last saturday we planted watermelon, cucumber, and beans, and are working with two teachers to coordinate a feasible, weekly and yearly schedule for maintanance that involves the students and PTO. we also did a model bed construction and built a model compost for them that we trained the teachers on.
-going to lots and lots of training. I learned about the state of waste management in Panama, environmental and human health effects of trash burning, alternatives to trash burning, landfills in panama, family landfills, and about trash culture education (like separation of trash from organics and recyclables and options for reusing commonly burned items in construction). I also learned about woodburning stoves, their use, popularity, effects, variations, feasibility, cultural acceptability, cost, construction, best practices, etc. Basically most people that cant afford gas or do not have access to gas down here use lorena (mud) stoves and mud ovens, but there's a lot than can be done to increase fuel efficiency to decrease the rate of deforestation and to decrease the amount of smoke produced (for environmental and human health reasons).
-about teaching in schools and approaching teachers and directors as a volunteer. I also have been teaching A LOT. we are mostly working on integrating environmental education across the disciplines. Last week I had to teach a religion class, for example, to 1st graders, so in order to ingrate EE we had the teacher read the story of Noah's ark and then we had the children draw pictures of boy and girl animals that Noah carried on his ark, and we learned the names of the animals. Yes, religion is a class at all public schools here. For another other class we did a "nature's colors" scavenger hunt (it was an english class) and learned the names of some of the more basic colors, like red, blue, green, yellow, green, and pink, and some others. There are lots of colors in nature down here!!! i also did a social studies class with 4th graders and we made a big map of all of panama with the names of the provincias and we learned about the different types of forest resources (like medicinal plants, animal homes, wood for cooking and building, paper, filtering the water, etc) by playing a little game. We also did an activity with our map to show how forests are affected by different activities, like cutting trees down or planting more trees. and we learned about why forests are so much more than just trees. :) It's been fun to be back int he classroom. I do love the kiddos.
-living in membrillo for a whole week of training. I stayed this time in La Mina, a sector that is about a 30 minute hike away. It was really nice though and the cool thing about la mina is that everyone is an artesan. My family there carves, sands, and paints beautiful wood pieces to sell in the markets. the people next door make jewelry and the people down the way and across the street carve soap stone. aside from intensive training we also did a fun hike to a waterfall and jumped off the rocks and swam and relaxed.
-i had a FREE NIGHT. first one so far!!! THANK YOU PEACE CORPS! Very much needed and very much appreciated. I went solo to this little mountain town called El Valle to kick back for a night in a cheap, quirky and totally eccentric youth hostel. met some really cool folks from all around- colombia, chile, france, guatemala, and scotland, and we went to the natural hotsprings, hiked up the lip of the crater (the valley is inside an old volcanic crater), and went swimming in the waterfalls--super beautiful there, and nice and CHILLY. we also checked out the huge indigenous crafts market there and saw the petroglyphs! the rest of my group split ways for the beach and the city.
well, that's all for now folks. i think that probably gives you a pretty good idea at least for now. i'll send you the link to my photo album in another email....but for now here's a teaser!
i hope you all are well and know that i am thinking of you. much love to all! (p.s. on thursday I will have my site assignment, so I will let you know next email where I am going to be spending my next 2 years!)
Big hugs,
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