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.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
11/24/2011
Dear friends and family,
Just wanted to let you all know that I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you for your love, support, for just being you. I am so lucky to have such amazing people in my life. I mean it.
I think being away from the states makes me appreciate Thanksgiving even more than when I lived there. I tell my community members about it...the idea that we have special day once a year when we take time to be grateful for one another, for our health, etc. It's actually a very beautiful tradition when you think about it that way.
I am actually spending this thanksgiving relaxing in the private comfort of a hotel room, not because I don't have anywhere to go to celebrate with others, but because I wanted to. It's nice to get some alone time every once in a while, plus this way I can spend some quality time writing and calling friends and family back home, which to me is very important. I have made some wonderful friends here, both within the Peace Corps circle and in my community, but the truth is that I feel like YOU ALL are just a step above. I love you guys so much.
What can I tell you in this email? Things are going well. Slow of course, but well. Not a whole lot has happened since I last wrote you, especially considering that I've been out of site for a week and a half for a training course. the moon and sun was right, though, so my rancho is completely done, dry, adorable, homey. I have 2 benches and a hammock, which is great, and the children have totally covered my outside wall in nature drawings.
I also finished making 2 parcels for my home garden, built the fence, started a seedbed, planted some seeds directly...i've got carrots, watermelon, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, green onion, and celery going. i havent been there to actually see what's growing and whats not, though my friend mirna tells me things have sprouted. i'm going to do this garden organically, and with any luck, get the children involved and the parents interested. use it as a tool for teaching. during training we went to this man's farm, his name is Santiago Gomez. He is a radical panamanian with just a 6th grade education who, as an adult, self-educated by reading and attending free seminars and classes, and decided some 20 years ago that for the health of people and the health of the planet in general, he had to stop using chemicals and make a radical shift to organic agriculture. he says the first 5 or 6 years were hard and he suffered a lot of losses, but now he's got it all- he makes his own organic fertilizers, organic repellents...he grows organic corn and rice and yuca and coffee, oranges, mangos, coconuts, cashews, papayas, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, celery, etc etc etc. He spends $0 on chemicals and his only food costs for his family are sugar, oil and salt-- impressive, right?? he gave me some recipes for making organic fertilizers and repellants and also gifted me some composting worms. I already have worms, but it's always a good idea to mix up the gene pool ([plus I am afraid that over the last week and a half they might have died!) He's going to donate some seeds to my cooperative, too, when they are ready to be harvested in january. i am hoping to bring some community members with me next time I go so they can see the farm with their own eyes.
What else? The girls club is still going. I love it. I wrote a grant to get some funding for it for next semester. If it fails we'll have to do some fundraisers, but that's okay. We did a really cool worm composting activity the other week, and I had the girls teach their classmates about it the next day and then the next week again. They did great! next semester i am hoping to get some support from ANAM with this club, and hopefully be able to do a field trip.
I've also been helping my friend Mirna with her children's program, Cruz de la Ninez, which is funded by the Social Development ministry. it's centered around learning children's rights and values and morals, but it's fun and I enjoy helping her. it's important, too, that these kids have something else to do rather than killing birds all day long.
Summer is approaching, which means school will be let out. I haven't exactly decided what I will do to take advantage of this opportunity, but I'd like to start working with the middle-schoolers a little more since they will be in the community every day. summer vacation is from january to march, so there's a large window of opportunity. we'll see what i can come up with.
I'm working on bringing wood-efficient stoves to my community as well. This is kind of a big endeavor, which I am halfway excited about and halfway dreading. It means getting a rather large grant, which I see as a rather unsustainable solution, but it also means reducing wood demand in my community, which is super important considering our location (top of the watershed, inside the forest reserve). my community members really want this, so i am going to see what i can do. it will be a long process i think.
Other than that, life marches on. I'm happy, healthy, and well taken care of. I'm still trying to navigate my role as a volunteer- it's harder than it sounds. Slowly but surely I think I'm starting to understand more and more of what I should be doing. Our training was a good opportunity for reflection. Today I plan on going to a coffee shop, sitting at a table, and writing up a list of good ideas, a timeline, and some motivational words to keep me on track when I head back into the wilderness tomorrow. Everything seems so clear and straightforward right now, but its easy to lose site of things out there. So wish me luck!
Lastly I will leave you with some photos. i'll attach just a few this time for those who just want to see a few and send you a link for the album later for those who want to see more.
1) me with the girls and a handful of composting worms at my house
2) i had a lot of visitors before the house was even finished...here they are reading books and drawing pictures
3) my friends putting the roof on the rancho....
4) home sweet home!
5) for Mirna's youth club she had to do a lesson on responsibility and afterwards we took the kids on a hike up through the forest up to this hill overlooking the fields and let them use the binoculars to check stuff out. i started casually picking up trash along the way and of course they all got into it and started handing me all sorts of stuff they were finding, so we talked about how we were practicing responsibility by taking care of our community and our environment...i actually ended up having to tell them that we could not pick up any more trash because we didnt have enough bags but that they could do it on their own any day they wanted but that it was a very good thing to do. :)
Okay, well, that's all for now. I hope you all have a great holiday and eat some delicious grub, and I hope you all have many wonderful things in your lives right now to be grateful for. I love you and miss you and hope to hear from you soon!
Just wanted to let you all know that I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Thank you for your love, support, for just being you. I am so lucky to have such amazing people in my life. I mean it.
I think being away from the states makes me appreciate Thanksgiving even more than when I lived there. I tell my community members about it...the idea that we have special day once a year when we take time to be grateful for one another, for our health, etc. It's actually a very beautiful tradition when you think about it that way.
I am actually spending this thanksgiving relaxing in the private comfort of a hotel room, not because I don't have anywhere to go to celebrate with others, but because I wanted to. It's nice to get some alone time every once in a while, plus this way I can spend some quality time writing and calling friends and family back home, which to me is very important. I have made some wonderful friends here, both within the Peace Corps circle and in my community, but the truth is that I feel like YOU ALL are just a step above. I love you guys so much.
What can I tell you in this email? Things are going well. Slow of course, but well. Not a whole lot has happened since I last wrote you, especially considering that I've been out of site for a week and a half for a training course. the moon and sun was right, though, so my rancho is completely done, dry, adorable, homey. I have 2 benches and a hammock, which is great, and the children have totally covered my outside wall in nature drawings.
I also finished making 2 parcels for my home garden, built the fence, started a seedbed, planted some seeds directly...i've got carrots, watermelon, tomato, cucumber, lettuce, green onion, and celery going. i havent been there to actually see what's growing and whats not, though my friend mirna tells me things have sprouted. i'm going to do this garden organically, and with any luck, get the children involved and the parents interested. use it as a tool for teaching. during training we went to this man's farm, his name is Santiago Gomez. He is a radical panamanian with just a 6th grade education who, as an adult, self-educated by reading and attending free seminars and classes, and decided some 20 years ago that for the health of people and the health of the planet in general, he had to stop using chemicals and make a radical shift to organic agriculture. he says the first 5 or 6 years were hard and he suffered a lot of losses, but now he's got it all- he makes his own organic fertilizers, organic repellents...he grows organic corn and rice and yuca and coffee, oranges, mangos, coconuts, cashews, papayas, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, celery, etc etc etc. He spends $0 on chemicals and his only food costs for his family are sugar, oil and salt-- impressive, right?? he gave me some recipes for making organic fertilizers and repellants and also gifted me some composting worms. I already have worms, but it's always a good idea to mix up the gene pool ([plus I am afraid that over the last week and a half they might have died!) He's going to donate some seeds to my cooperative, too, when they are ready to be harvested in january. i am hoping to bring some community members with me next time I go so they can see the farm with their own eyes.
What else? The girls club is still going. I love it. I wrote a grant to get some funding for it for next semester. If it fails we'll have to do some fundraisers, but that's okay. We did a really cool worm composting activity the other week, and I had the girls teach their classmates about it the next day and then the next week again. They did great! next semester i am hoping to get some support from ANAM with this club, and hopefully be able to do a field trip.
I've also been helping my friend Mirna with her children's program, Cruz de la Ninez, which is funded by the Social Development ministry. it's centered around learning children's rights and values and morals, but it's fun and I enjoy helping her. it's important, too, that these kids have something else to do rather than killing birds all day long.
Summer is approaching, which means school will be let out. I haven't exactly decided what I will do to take advantage of this opportunity, but I'd like to start working with the middle-schoolers a little more since they will be in the community every day. summer vacation is from january to march, so there's a large window of opportunity. we'll see what i can come up with.
I'm working on bringing wood-efficient stoves to my community as well. This is kind of a big endeavor, which I am halfway excited about and halfway dreading. It means getting a rather large grant, which I see as a rather unsustainable solution, but it also means reducing wood demand in my community, which is super important considering our location (top of the watershed, inside the forest reserve). my community members really want this, so i am going to see what i can do. it will be a long process i think.
Other than that, life marches on. I'm happy, healthy, and well taken care of. I'm still trying to navigate my role as a volunteer- it's harder than it sounds. Slowly but surely I think I'm starting to understand more and more of what I should be doing. Our training was a good opportunity for reflection. Today I plan on going to a coffee shop, sitting at a table, and writing up a list of good ideas, a timeline, and some motivational words to keep me on track when I head back into the wilderness tomorrow. Everything seems so clear and straightforward right now, but its easy to lose site of things out there. So wish me luck!
Lastly I will leave you with some photos. i'll attach just a few this time for those who just want to see a few and send you a link for the album later for those who want to see more.
1) me with the girls and a handful of composting worms at my house
2) i had a lot of visitors before the house was even finished...here they are reading books and drawing pictures
3) my friends putting the roof on the rancho....
4) home sweet home!
5) for Mirna's youth club she had to do a lesson on responsibility and afterwards we took the kids on a hike up through the forest up to this hill overlooking the fields and let them use the binoculars to check stuff out. i started casually picking up trash along the way and of course they all got into it and started handing me all sorts of stuff they were finding, so we talked about how we were practicing responsibility by taking care of our community and our environment...i actually ended up having to tell them that we could not pick up any more trash because we didnt have enough bags but that they could do it on their own any day they wanted but that it was a very good thing to do. :)
Okay, well, that's all for now. I hope you all have a great holiday and eat some delicious grub, and I hope you all have many wonderful things in your lives right now to be grateful for. I love you and miss you and hope to hear from you soon!
10/21/2011
A is for Alison, it is also for Amphibian (like my life here between the city and the campo), and Armadillo soup, and Adaptation.
B is for Biombos (slingshots), and Babies, and new Beginnings (this month marks the end of my integration period and the onset of my real job.)
C is for cleanliness (which is a very relative term) and coffee addictions, and cultural integration complete
D is for Dirt floors, and Downpours, and Dripping water into my house
E is for Every day a new day, Experiences, Education and Environment
F is for Fungus and Fireflies and Funerals and Friends
G is for Grinning Girls in my afterschool nature and science program
H is for my new Home, for the Hospitality i have recieved, and for the Hardships my community has been facing lately
I is for Ice cream dreams :)
J is for Joron (a palm thatch hut we use to store rice after harvesting)
K is for Kingfishers, which always brighten my day when they fly by
L is for Learning, for Lack of Latrine (at my new house), and for oh-so-much-Love
N is for naranjas, novelty wearing off, and no more rice please
O is for open eyes, open arms, open heart
P is for PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE
Q is for questioning, quebradas (streams) filling up with the rainy season upon us
R is for rain, for reality checks, for the unfinished rancho at my new place
S is for starlight and simplicity and stoves
T is for time to get to work!! it is also for Traditions, held by a thread from the brink of extinction
U is for umbrellas- and plenty.
V is for the vegetables i am hoping will grow
W is for walking uphills both ways. literally. and waiting and waiting, and water.
X is for Jesus of course who died on the cross.
Y is for yearning for a purpose, for a plan
and Z. Z is the unknown yet to come...
It's been so long since I have written. i suppose i ought to apologize. things got busy...
what have i been up to exactly? Well, i've moved out. i'm on my own now, though my housing situation is still being worked out. Got a bed made for me- so that's a big improvement on the hammock. I also have a stove, which I find I seldom get to use because people still feed me a ridiculous amount of rice every time i walk by their house. They are working on building me a rancho, or outdoor living space, since my house is just one room and the entirety of my wet closet is abundantly hanging from every available hook in hopes that it will one day dry. The rainy season has sort of put a damper (literally) on things, as it makes it hard to work in the mudpit below the rancho. Not to mention the moon, which is new, and apparently that means we cannot cut palm leaves because they will rot faster or be attacked by caterpillars. So i find myself, for the moment, awaiting the moon and awaiting the sun. And awaiting my job, too.
i had my community analysis presentation this past week with my community and my peace corps boss. it went really well. i was surprised at how many people came given the amount of rain we had that day, but they showed up and participated and i got some really good feedback about what the community feels they need in terms of environmental support. the four themes that emerged were: getting more fuel-efficient cookstoves for the families that still use three-stone fires, soliciting more support from the environmental agency with regards to enforcing laws within the reserve, continuing to support efforts in conserving soils and water supplies, and more environmental education. so the next steps? well....i guess you will find out when i do! it's a process.
i think i've learned that part of the peace corps experience is the floundering. there's something to be gained from floundering. it's kind of like doggie paddling, you know? for example when you get a new puppy and you let them loose in the lake or pool and they kind of bob and weave and splash in the most un-elegant and un-coordinated fashion possible, but after a few tries they start to develop a sort of technique and get into the grove of it, and before you know it they take off swimming laps. i'm in the un-elegant, un-coordinated, a-rhythmic and overly-zealous splashing phase of my peace corps experience. i'm okay with that, though. i can only go forward from here! grace has never been my finest quality.
I've really slacked off on my 5-memories of the day account, unfortunately, so this letter will probably have a different tone. I've caught the "pensive" bug lately which means I've been more focused on making sense of things than making lists of them. There's been some good which has resulted of this, though, and I realize that I am now in the study of myself and less in the study of my community. I am happy, though, which is the important thing (and healthy, too! yippee!) Yearning, though..... why is that? Because I, being an efficiency-minded ambitious north-american girl with good intentions and big dreams, want to get working as soon as possible, which is just not in the stars for the moment. For one thing our school is kind of a mess- between the director being out for surgery for 2 weeks and the other teacher's mother being critically ill in the hospital- it's simply not an appropriate time to approach the school about asking them helping me to write a work plan for integrating environmental education into their classes. That would be a little self-serving, don't you think? There's also been 2 funerals in the last 2 weeks which has been hard on everyone, especially the families, and rather than focusing on work I've decided it's more important to go spend time with the people. (Here it is tradition to accompany the families of the beloved for nine nights after the death). Then there's the weather. A) It's raining, and B) the rice must be harvested before it germinates and the corn planted so that it germinates, which means that people here are just really really busy. not a great time to call a meeting when everyone just wants to make sure they'll have enough food to feed their many hungry mouths at home in the upcoming months. So, I am sharpening the Peace Corps fundamental skill #1: PATIENCE. Gettin' sharper by the day, I tell ya.
I have, however, had some minor successes. I had a junta to build my rancho, which is pretty cool from a cultural perspective. It's a dying tradition here, but still practiced on the rare occasion. It's basically when you ask the community to get together and help you do something (like build a house or harvest) and instead of paying them you just provide food and drinks and when the day comes that one of your workers calls a junta, you "owe" them a days' hard work. I had 10 workers show up, and my ex-host mom Yita and I made rice and beans (guacho) and corn juice (chicha) for everyone. The rain put the junta to an early end though, leaving a mud pit outside my front door which I just in the last few days attacked fervently with a shovel and a lot of jumping up and down (crazy gringa!) to pack the earth back in place. when the moon is full and it is not raining they will finish, so i have a little while to think about what kind of food i will make for the next go-about. for the moment it suffices- i can now hang my clothes outside to "sun" and people can visit me and have a place to stand (i dont have any benches or chairs yet...)
I also have been leading this girls' afterschool nature and science exchange program with the ELC from fort collins. I have all of the 4th 5th and 6th grade girls for 1.5 hours each tuesday. it's just a blink of the eye in terms of time, but it makes my week. i love a) working with the girls and providing them with quality experiences in nature, and b) having a set schedule. gosh, structure sure feels warm and homey.....
Lastly I have taken the initiative to plant some damn vegetables at my house- i just started the seedlings and will transplant them in about a month. I dont care how many people tell me that you cant grow this or that or the other, or that they are too busy to start their home plots but yes they are interested, or that its raining too much, or that the summer will be too hot-- whatever. at this point, i sure dont believe they are experts in this kind of thing whatsoever (as they do not and have never grown anything of the sort), so ive decided to experiment and decide for myself. we need some better nutrition in this community and if i can at least get something to grow it's better than nothing at all. there's a perfectly logical reason they all have stunted growth and stunted learning, which is that corn and rice and yuca is not a complete diet. however there's a perfectly illogical reason that they do not have a complete diet--we have great agricultural lands and skills, so in my opinion, it's that they simply are afraid to try to grow new things, to cook with them too. i am bound and determined to get a home garden project going here- even just using my own as a demonstration- perhaps complemented by some cooking classes (says the woman who cannot cook---might need to call in backup for this one). no more of this pure rice nonsense!! i say let's put this good earth to good eating.
Well, folks, I guess that's a pretty good update for the moment. I have just one more thing to add, which is that I'm working on a new personal goal of mine. I hope to learn to live as sustainably as they do by the time I leave. I look at the way I eat and live and realize how much of it is disposable, comes from miles away, oceans, even. My trashbag fills up and I carry it out with me to dispose of it in the city, but theirs rarely fills (well and there's no bag or collection of trash really..it's just gone with the wind or into the creek or burned, but those are minor details aside from the point). the point is though that a lot of it is just orange peels and rice husks, brooms made from sticks and grass, wooden chairs and beds, bamboo walls, palm thatch roofs. Sure, they are on the brink of a massive divide that bridges the consumer culture from the producer culture, but standing here on the consumer side, I must say they've got a good thing going. It's a shame to recognize that the more "developed" they become (I use quotations because that word just doesnt seem appropriate) the more they will move away from the sustainability they already execute so well. I wish development wasn't in bed with consumerism. I wish convenience wasn't so dependent on the proliferation of trash, the simultaneous loss of agriculture and the culture agriculture sustains. I don't like the thought of Ciprian becoming a town with televisions that will eventually be tossed into the trash heap and burned or left to seep into the soil in the back yard. The idea of my little Ciprian girls becoming obsessed with their body images as a result of all the commercials and advertisements they will be seeing once we get electricity. I don't like the thought of trash lining the streets and people trading out their leather hand-crafted, made-with-love cutarras for a pair of rubber sneakers made in China by underpaid employees from toxic materials that will take generations to decompose......Buying baseball camps instead of wearing the woven grass sombreros. God- that would be terrible if the sombrero died off. I don't even like the idea of children pursuing higher education because it means moving away from Ciprian, leaving just an older population and leaving the tradition, the folklore, the culture, to be eventually buried along with their parents and grandparents. Maybe that's just part of how humans change and societies evolve, but I don't feel like that's right. There must be another way. How does a society maintain and preserve culture, maintain and preserve sustainability, and develop at the same time? It's worth taking a moment to think about...it has me thinking, anyway.
anyway, i will leave you with that food for thought and get back to "work"- the work of planning how i plan to work. and when. and in what. ahh the great peace corps inquiry....hehe.
I am missing you all and hope to hear from you soon (or even better a visit!). i will send a link for some new photos ahorita, so keep your eyes peeled.
I love you all so much. big hugs and kisses!
P.S. I received a package (thank you, sweet little sister) which means I know this address works, so that's pretty exciting! write it down!
Alison Eden
Entrega General 0600-01
Quebrada del Ciprian de Las Minas
Chitre, Herrera
Rep. de Panama
Panama
B is for Biombos (slingshots), and Babies, and new Beginnings (this month marks the end of my integration period and the onset of my real job.)
C is for cleanliness (which is a very relative term) and coffee addictions, and cultural integration complete
D is for Dirt floors, and Downpours, and Dripping water into my house
E is for Every day a new day, Experiences, Education and Environment
F is for Fungus and Fireflies and Funerals and Friends
G is for Grinning Girls in my afterschool nature and science program
H is for my new Home, for the Hospitality i have recieved, and for the Hardships my community has been facing lately
I is for Ice cream dreams :)
J is for Joron (a palm thatch hut we use to store rice after harvesting)
K is for Kingfishers, which always brighten my day when they fly by
L is for Learning, for Lack of Latrine (at my new house), and for oh-so-much-Love
N is for naranjas, novelty wearing off, and no more rice please
O is for open eyes, open arms, open heart
P is for PATIENCE PATIENCE PATIENCE
Q is for questioning, quebradas (streams) filling up with the rainy season upon us
R is for rain, for reality checks, for the unfinished rancho at my new place
S is for starlight and simplicity and stoves
T is for time to get to work!! it is also for Traditions, held by a thread from the brink of extinction
U is for umbrellas- and plenty.
V is for the vegetables i am hoping will grow
W is for walking uphills both ways. literally. and waiting and waiting, and water.
X is for Jesus of course who died on the cross.
Y is for yearning for a purpose, for a plan
and Z. Z is the unknown yet to come...
It's been so long since I have written. i suppose i ought to apologize. things got busy...
what have i been up to exactly? Well, i've moved out. i'm on my own now, though my housing situation is still being worked out. Got a bed made for me- so that's a big improvement on the hammock. I also have a stove, which I find I seldom get to use because people still feed me a ridiculous amount of rice every time i walk by their house. They are working on building me a rancho, or outdoor living space, since my house is just one room and the entirety of my wet closet is abundantly hanging from every available hook in hopes that it will one day dry. The rainy season has sort of put a damper (literally) on things, as it makes it hard to work in the mudpit below the rancho. Not to mention the moon, which is new, and apparently that means we cannot cut palm leaves because they will rot faster or be attacked by caterpillars. So i find myself, for the moment, awaiting the moon and awaiting the sun. And awaiting my job, too.
i had my community analysis presentation this past week with my community and my peace corps boss. it went really well. i was surprised at how many people came given the amount of rain we had that day, but they showed up and participated and i got some really good feedback about what the community feels they need in terms of environmental support. the four themes that emerged were: getting more fuel-efficient cookstoves for the families that still use three-stone fires, soliciting more support from the environmental agency with regards to enforcing laws within the reserve, continuing to support efforts in conserving soils and water supplies, and more environmental education. so the next steps? well....i guess you will find out when i do! it's a process.
i think i've learned that part of the peace corps experience is the floundering. there's something to be gained from floundering. it's kind of like doggie paddling, you know? for example when you get a new puppy and you let them loose in the lake or pool and they kind of bob and weave and splash in the most un-elegant and un-coordinated fashion possible, but after a few tries they start to develop a sort of technique and get into the grove of it, and before you know it they take off swimming laps. i'm in the un-elegant, un-coordinated, a-rhythmic and overly-zealous splashing phase of my peace corps experience. i'm okay with that, though. i can only go forward from here! grace has never been my finest quality.
I've really slacked off on my 5-memories of the day account, unfortunately, so this letter will probably have a different tone. I've caught the "pensive" bug lately which means I've been more focused on making sense of things than making lists of them. There's been some good which has resulted of this, though, and I realize that I am now in the study of myself and less in the study of my community. I am happy, though, which is the important thing (and healthy, too! yippee!) Yearning, though..... why is that? Because I, being an efficiency-minded ambitious north-american girl with good intentions and big dreams, want to get working as soon as possible, which is just not in the stars for the moment. For one thing our school is kind of a mess- between the director being out for surgery for 2 weeks and the other teacher's mother being critically ill in the hospital- it's simply not an appropriate time to approach the school about asking them helping me to write a work plan for integrating environmental education into their classes. That would be a little self-serving, don't you think? There's also been 2 funerals in the last 2 weeks which has been hard on everyone, especially the families, and rather than focusing on work I've decided it's more important to go spend time with the people. (Here it is tradition to accompany the families of the beloved for nine nights after the death). Then there's the weather. A) It's raining, and B) the rice must be harvested before it germinates and the corn planted so that it germinates, which means that people here are just really really busy. not a great time to call a meeting when everyone just wants to make sure they'll have enough food to feed their many hungry mouths at home in the upcoming months. So, I am sharpening the Peace Corps fundamental skill #1: PATIENCE. Gettin' sharper by the day, I tell ya.
I have, however, had some minor successes. I had a junta to build my rancho, which is pretty cool from a cultural perspective. It's a dying tradition here, but still practiced on the rare occasion. It's basically when you ask the community to get together and help you do something (like build a house or harvest) and instead of paying them you just provide food and drinks and when the day comes that one of your workers calls a junta, you "owe" them a days' hard work. I had 10 workers show up, and my ex-host mom Yita and I made rice and beans (guacho) and corn juice (chicha) for everyone. The rain put the junta to an early end though, leaving a mud pit outside my front door which I just in the last few days attacked fervently with a shovel and a lot of jumping up and down (crazy gringa!) to pack the earth back in place. when the moon is full and it is not raining they will finish, so i have a little while to think about what kind of food i will make for the next go-about. for the moment it suffices- i can now hang my clothes outside to "sun" and people can visit me and have a place to stand (i dont have any benches or chairs yet...)
I also have been leading this girls' afterschool nature and science exchange program with the ELC from fort collins. I have all of the 4th 5th and 6th grade girls for 1.5 hours each tuesday. it's just a blink of the eye in terms of time, but it makes my week. i love a) working with the girls and providing them with quality experiences in nature, and b) having a set schedule. gosh, structure sure feels warm and homey.....
Lastly I have taken the initiative to plant some damn vegetables at my house- i just started the seedlings and will transplant them in about a month. I dont care how many people tell me that you cant grow this or that or the other, or that they are too busy to start their home plots but yes they are interested, or that its raining too much, or that the summer will be too hot-- whatever. at this point, i sure dont believe they are experts in this kind of thing whatsoever (as they do not and have never grown anything of the sort), so ive decided to experiment and decide for myself. we need some better nutrition in this community and if i can at least get something to grow it's better than nothing at all. there's a perfectly logical reason they all have stunted growth and stunted learning, which is that corn and rice and yuca is not a complete diet. however there's a perfectly illogical reason that they do not have a complete diet--we have great agricultural lands and skills, so in my opinion, it's that they simply are afraid to try to grow new things, to cook with them too. i am bound and determined to get a home garden project going here- even just using my own as a demonstration- perhaps complemented by some cooking classes (says the woman who cannot cook---might need to call in backup for this one). no more of this pure rice nonsense!! i say let's put this good earth to good eating.
Well, folks, I guess that's a pretty good update for the moment. I have just one more thing to add, which is that I'm working on a new personal goal of mine. I hope to learn to live as sustainably as they do by the time I leave. I look at the way I eat and live and realize how much of it is disposable, comes from miles away, oceans, even. My trashbag fills up and I carry it out with me to dispose of it in the city, but theirs rarely fills (well and there's no bag or collection of trash really..it's just gone with the wind or into the creek or burned, but those are minor details aside from the point). the point is though that a lot of it is just orange peels and rice husks, brooms made from sticks and grass, wooden chairs and beds, bamboo walls, palm thatch roofs. Sure, they are on the brink of a massive divide that bridges the consumer culture from the producer culture, but standing here on the consumer side, I must say they've got a good thing going. It's a shame to recognize that the more "developed" they become (I use quotations because that word just doesnt seem appropriate) the more they will move away from the sustainability they already execute so well. I wish development wasn't in bed with consumerism. I wish convenience wasn't so dependent on the proliferation of trash, the simultaneous loss of agriculture and the culture agriculture sustains. I don't like the thought of Ciprian becoming a town with televisions that will eventually be tossed into the trash heap and burned or left to seep into the soil in the back yard. The idea of my little Ciprian girls becoming obsessed with their body images as a result of all the commercials and advertisements they will be seeing once we get electricity. I don't like the thought of trash lining the streets and people trading out their leather hand-crafted, made-with-love cutarras for a pair of rubber sneakers made in China by underpaid employees from toxic materials that will take generations to decompose......Buying baseball camps instead of wearing the woven grass sombreros. God- that would be terrible if the sombrero died off. I don't even like the idea of children pursuing higher education because it means moving away from Ciprian, leaving just an older population and leaving the tradition, the folklore, the culture, to be eventually buried along with their parents and grandparents. Maybe that's just part of how humans change and societies evolve, but I don't feel like that's right. There must be another way. How does a society maintain and preserve culture, maintain and preserve sustainability, and develop at the same time? It's worth taking a moment to think about...it has me thinking, anyway.
anyway, i will leave you with that food for thought and get back to "work"- the work of planning how i plan to work. and when. and in what. ahh the great peace corps inquiry....hehe.
I am missing you all and hope to hear from you soon (or even better a visit!). i will send a link for some new photos ahorita, so keep your eyes peeled.
I love you all so much. big hugs and kisses!
P.S. I received a package (thank you, sweet little sister) which means I know this address works, so that's pretty exciting! write it down!
Alison Eden
Entrega General 0600-01
Quebrada del Ciprian de Las Minas
Chitre, Herrera
Rep. de Panama
Panama
7/21/2011
Entro a lo grueso: the thick of it.
hello my lovely family and friends,
I have been in my community now for 2 weeks. I say 2 weeks, but in my mind and my heart the notion of time is altogether very different than what it was before. 2 weeks is a month, is a day, is a journey through space and time. Yesterday I left my community for the first time after having arrived. I hopped on the back of the truck that comes to and from town 3 times a day, rode away from the past and into the present, watching the rolling hills of greenery disappear around me. It feels as though I am living in the 1800s sometimes, watching the men go by on horseback with their sacks of rice, or the woman walking through town carrying them on their heads (I am determined to learn this skill!!! and i will demonstrate upon my return!!). Men here often work not for money, but to earn peones. A peon given, a peon earned. In other words, I work your fields today, you work mine tomorrow. Its a culture of mutuality, of sharing, of cooperation. It's really quite beautiful. I have to say, I feel lucky to be there. I have many peons to repay already...they have been so so good to me.
For those who want the summary: We have about 250 people in our community, 3 small kiosks where they sell the basics, a public phone that works so long as it doesnt rain too hard, an elementary school of 50 students with a huge farm and chicken coop (I have been helping them make organic fertilizer for the farm), and an evangelical church. We also have a very successful farmer's cooperative that is working on building wood efficient stoves, solar latrines that produce compost from human waste and prevent watershed contamination, starting up bean production in the community, and in the past they've done some reforestation, tilapia ponds, and coffee planting. Eventually I will be working with the cooperative, as well as with the school garden, and possibly with the students (I hope!). There is also a middle school in the nearby community where our students attend, though I have not yet gone there to visit.. For the first few months I am just getting to know everyone (as is the strategy of the peace corps), evaluating the community's strengths and weaknesses, learning a lot, trying to find where my skills and knowledge will be most useful...the work will begin later. I have been staying with a family and will continue to stay with families until october, when I will begin renting my own house. It's a cute house, made of adobe, surrounded by little streams. It's next door to the president of the cooperative, too, and right off the main road. I am considering getting a horse when I move there, though I have not yet looked too seriously into this.
For those who want the details: It is hard, as you can imagine, to put into words what I have been experiencing. I have been trying, late at night under the glow of my headlamp, to record a minimum of 5 memories a day, just short phrases, moments in time. I feel like this may be the best way to paint you a picture, as the picture is very large. I'll share just a few of them:
- Piglets and puppies. Horses and cows. Plentiful kittens. A train of baby ducks crossing the road. Chicks so small they'd fall through the cracks of your fingers if you weren't careful.
- The nicest, sweetest, most generous people you could ever imagine. So giving, though they have so little to spare. I am never hungry. I am never lost. I am never alone. They take care of me as if I were their own. Everyone knows my name, and each day they ask me to come over to eat this or that, to learn this or that or the other. We echar cuentos (tell stories) for hours, one house to the next, mostly the same stories over and over again. We talk about the weather, our families, the volunteers who came before, I show them photos of colorado and my family. They feed me so much I feel like I am going to explode (you can't say no). They tell me my hair is beautiful and soft, like a baby's hair. They like to feel it, braid it. They say my eyes are the color of chocolate.
- No need to buy food here, just to cultivate. Fresh picked baby corn toasted on the fire is amazing. Did you know you can eat the leaves? The ends are sweet and soft and juicy. A thousand and one oranges, all of which are gifted to me by barefooted boys scrambling up to the treetops to toss the ripe ones down. 5 different types of bananas, maybe more. Mangos. Coconuts. And of course, the never ending supply of rice. Rice rice rice rice. We grow a lot of rice. We have a rice husker that is run on a car motor. It was purchased by the cooperative. Before that, they husked the rice by hand in large pilons (wooden bowl type things that you smash the rice in with a big thick wooden stick). Now, every wednesday you can hear the murmur of the motor running throughout the town, husking away. And every sunny day wherever you walk the people have their rice laying out on sheets of zinc, sunning it to dry, preparing for the next wednesday.
- They love it when I sing to them in English. Their favorite song is “If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.” They say it's beautiful. They have a song in church with the same melody, so they just love it. They ask me to sing almost every day. It's precious, really. Can you imagine it? If you're happy and you know it clap your hands.....clap clap.
- At night we lay in the hammocks drinking coffee under the glow of the kerosine latern, called a guarricha. It's one of my favorite things. The light is so soft and beautiful. The world outside is so calm, tree tops and pastures dimly lit by just the moon and stars. In the distance we can see tiny specks of light coming from the town of Los Pozos. For them, it is a distant glimmer of hope. Every day we wait to see when the electrical company will come. Every day they say it will be today, but of course they do not come. They wait in silence, in the darkness, under the guarricha, wondering if it will be tomorrow.
- There are a million and one ways to eat corn. They are far more inventive than we are. We eat it boiled, in soup, as a tortilla, a grilled tortilla, bollo, changa, chocolo, cream of corn, corn juice, tamales, tamales of new corn, pastelitos, grilled, baby corn, and this is just to name a few.
- I learned to fish tilapia by tossing the net. On my second toss I caught a big one! They were very impressed. Then I learned to cut it, identified the various organs, and we fried it and ate it with pastelitos and coffee. Delicious!
- Bathtime. I bathe with a bucket and bowl, and I am never truly clean. But it is so lovely to bathe at night when the temperature is right, when the moon is above. I turn off the flashlight just to see the stars better. We bathe here twice a day, which is all together necessary given the amount of mud and sweat and dirt. I am clean for about 30 seconds each day, until I step out of the shower onto the slippery slope and make my way back up the house. By the time I arrive my feet and legs are already muddy.
- Demons, duendes, and evil spirits. My community is evangelical, and apart from going to church 4 times a week, they have some very interesting beliefs. They are afraid to walk alone at night because of the evil spirits that appear. They say that only dogs can see the evil spirits at night, and that is why they bark in the middle of the night. But supposedly if you take the goobers that come out of the dogs eyes and put them on your eyelids, you, too, would be able to see evil spirits. No one does it though, because, as they say, man could not take it- it would drive him to insanity (not to mention its totally disgusting to think about.) They also believe that there is a leprechaun that lives in the forest, called the Duende, and that he appears to children and elderly folks and tries to entice them with sweets or by playing a flute or with gold. And when they follow him into the forest they disappear and are never seen again. Everyone believes this, and they will all tell you that they know someone that knows someone, maybe a friend of a cousin, or a friend of a cousin's friend, who was taken away by the Duende. Some of them also believe in a mysterious man who lives in the peak of the mountain who has special powers to cure injured wild animals, and that when he calls them they come to him, and that he smokes tobacco. And if you want to hunt a wild animal, you can bring a pouch of tobacco and leave it in the forest for the man, and he will send you a wild animal to hunt in return. Their cousin's friend did this once, and they brought back a huge deer for the town to eat- true story.
- Falling. I think my legacy so far is that I smile all the time and I fall a lot. I'm sure they will talk to the next volunteer about this incessantly. “Oh Alison, she sure fell a lot!” The soil here is terrible...there is no top soil whatsoever, which means it is clay, and wet, and slippery. I have fallen at least 10 times, and when I fall in one place, everyone in the community soon hears about it. “Alison! You fell today when you were at the soccer field, didn't you? Did you hurt yourself?” When it rains or when I am walking up or down hills, the people who see me all say, “Be careful that you don't fall!” But not to tease, they say it genuinely, they offer me their hands when going down a particularly slippery patch. I laugh when I fall, and so do they. In fact, the house I'm staying at put up a railing going down to the shower and latrine because one time I fell there. They are so sweet.
- Movie nights. We have one television, owned by the cooperative. Once every few weeks they charge a quarter and people come, walking through the darkness with their flashlights, to the cooperative at night to see a movie. They plug the TV into the car motor that is used to run the rice husker. The motor is so loud you can't hear a thing, but for them it is a special event. And it so cute to see them, all gathered around the blue glow of this old TV, the motor purring loudly in the background. If you didnt know it was movie night, you'd know when you heard the motor turn on. They crank it by hand to get it to turn on, and when it finally goes, in clunks and clanks and a plume of black smoke shoots out the back. We watched a Rocky film last week- they love the action flicks. Everyone brings their cell phones, too, to charge while the motor is on. For us it works just great.
I could keep going on and on with this list, though I won't, because time does not stretch for me the way it used to. I'll let the photos tell you more. In sum, I am happy here, mostly healthy, and extremely well fed. I miss you all a bunch and talk about everyone to my community. They love hearing about where I am from, what I used to do, my friends and family and work. I am learning so much..... today I will head back to town in the afternoon, back onto the truck, away from the buzz of cars, away from the background static of appliances, away from the bright lights, back to the glimmer of the guarricha and the slick mud paths where not even horses will pass. It is not distance that separates Ciprian from the rest of panama, but rather time.
Not sure when my next email will be out, probably in the next two to three weeks I will get to somewhere to use the internet again. And for those who have been trying to reach me by my cell, I am unable to get service there with my current service provider, so Ive got a new one. Send me a text message or leave a voicemail though because I dont leave it on during the day (no way to keep it charged) and when I do turn it on I will hopefully get your message-- this phone is a lot more reliable when it comes to text and voice messages than the other. It's 6914-1876. I have to go to school or the stick at the top of the hill to get service, so it may be a while before I get your message, as I dont go there every day. Still, I would love to hear from you and I will text you back or try to call if the payphone is working- it's a whole lot cheaper for me to call from the public phone than from my own. Still no updates as far as snail mail addresses go...im working on it though. ill let you know when i know.
I really appreciate all you folks writing to me, so much. I only wish i could spend a whole day sitting and writing back to each and every one of you or better yet calling.. It puts such a smile on my face to read your messages. keep em coming! I love you all and miss you. My heart is with you always.
p.s. the link to my album will come in another email.
Big hugs.
8/30/2011
Blessings, Bokachi, and Bevin.
Wow...can't believe its been over a month since I wrote you all. It doesnt seem that long ago. I guess I've been busy!! i cant even remember if i ever sent you pictures with the last email, so let me know! if not i will be sure to send that link out.
Well, I guess you are probably wondering what Ive been up to....its so hard to summarize, but Ill try to give you a snapshot...
Blessings:
In breve....The long and short of it is that I am happy, healthy-ish, and genuinely enjoying my peace corps experience. My community is just too adorable. I mean it. I really lucked out. Sure its not an easy life. They work really hard to makes end meet. There isn't enough money to send most of the children to middle school. Its dirty. Its hot. I fall all the damn time because its so slippery and muddy everywhere, which wrecks havoc on the lack-of-clean-clothing situation (and makes my community laugh). The food is really really really unhealthy (everyone has stunted growth, im pretty sure, including the animals). There are parasites in the soil that come from all the pigs (I got my first one last week!! They took it out with a needle!) They kill every single wild animal they find- some they eat, many they dont. Theres no electricity, still.. Handwashing my clothes on a wood plank is my very least favorite thing EVER. it takes up so much time and they never ever ever come clean, nor do they dry. BUT. at least we HAVE plentiful food. and at least we HAVE work. at least people in my community are eager to learn, self-organized, active and interested in improving their lives and their community. at least we have water to wash our clothes with, to bathe. We can even DRINK IT. imagine that. My community is actually at the very top of the watershed, so we have 4 of the springs that feed the river, and the water here, as opposed to in most of downriver Herrera, is potable. there are communities in herrera that have not had potable water for over a year.... Yes, we are blessed.
And me? I am very very blessed. They are so good to me. I am never hungry. I am never without help. Little children offer to carry things uphill for me. People give me yuca and platano to take home when they see me pass by their houses. They send me on my way with a bag of oranges, cashew fruit, whatever they've got growing. People are always happy to recieve me in their homes, without invitation or forewarning. They tell me to come back soon. That we will make bollos. We will make tortilla changa. We'll go hunt shrimp in the river and then fry them and eat them with plantains. We'll echar cuentos (tell stories) and drink coffee. We'll sing songs. We´ll chase toads. We wont kill the birds with slingshots at least while youre here, promise- just come over and spend time with us. (yes, they really do kill all the birds with slingshots, and the boas, and the armadillos, and the pacas, and whatever else they can find. yes, its really hard to see, and yes, i feel there could be an opportunity here to teach people about the importance of wildlife, and yes, i hope that i can at least plant a seed with respect to this. how do you convince a substinence agriculture community that wildlife have an important role though? for them, they are all competitors. I am still working through this question....)
This is basically my typical day at this point-- I wake up, I eat breakfast, bathe, do laundry, go pasear (walk around and visit) different houses, chit chat, eat, learn, help out around the house/farm, play with kids, pasear to another house, repeat, pasear, repeat, pasear, repeat, maybe play some soccer or play with the kids in the afternoon (jump-rope is my favorite. we use vines instead of rope), bathe, eat dinner, lantern lit hammock time with a cup of coffee and the family, go to bed. i am also working on meeting as many people as possible, introducing myself to all the agency workers, neighboring communities, etc. Just getting out there!
Bokachi:
The work is finally beginning. Technically I am still not working, as im still in the process of doing my community analysis and I havent done my presentation or gotten any real community input yet (october marks my 3 month date, an important milestone for the PC volunteer). But, in the meantime, theres bokachi. Bokachi is a type of fermented organic compost that is popular in panama, largely due to the availability of ingredients. We make it here with the following: rice husks, rice dust, ashes, carbon, chicken poop, molasses from sugar cane/chicha fuerte from corn, yeast, some good soil, and diligent turning. Since it is fermented, it heats up dramatically, thereby increasing the rate of decomposition. The whole process from start to finish takes just 15 days. Currently in my community you can sell a rice sack of bokachi to the environmental agency for 8 dollars, which is a lot of money for us camposinos, especially if you make 10 sacks at a time. (While the incentive might have more do with the money than pro-environmental values, its a start. Its a seed of an idea, a notion that perhaps, on some level, using this organic stuff instead of chemicals is actually really a good idea. So good in fact the government is willing to pay for it....) I was sort of "thrown into the bokachi fire" in week 1 when my counterpart told me I should do it with the padres de la familia for the school and the school director got super excited about it. We made a batch using my counterparts recipe and I helped out, learning as I went along. i found out that other people in the area were involved in bokachi too, so I went and saw and learned, and i learned more, and i compared recipes, and i revised and relearned. Then there was the second batch..... this time my friend Adela came to find me. she wanted my help with compost. I came over and she started asking me about how to make bokachi. She told me she had all these ingredients but didnt know if she was still missing something, and didnt know how to go about actually doing it, and if I could help. She said she wanted to do it right. She asked me questions about it, why certain ingredients work and others dont. She wanted to learn! So we made it together, and each day i came and helped her turn it. And while we made it we talked about sewing, and children, and cows, and life in general. Then came the third batch.... Yani, another friend, asked me what ingredients she would need if she was going to make compost with her woman's group to raise funds for their bakery project. i let her borrow a recipe i had printed out, left town, and when i came back she and the other woman had already found all the ingredients and were making their compost. At the end of the day one of the kids in town came to find me and told me that Yani was looking for me. I thought maybe they wanted help turning it, but to my surprise, when I arrived, they had already done everything. They just wanted me to look at it and let them know if i thought it was well done, to give them a thumbs up before they covered it. It may not sound like much, but I was really proud of my community, and I was really proud of myself, too. I felt, well, like a peace corps volunteer.
Ive also been working on developing relationships with the teachers here so that I might be able to work with the students soon. A few weeks ago we had some great bonding time making banana bread on their stove using my recipe, and they LOVED it. (Now everyone wants me to go make banana bread with them. :) Its fun! and lord knows we have the bananas!) Anyway....The director of the school is interested in youth development, so I am currently tossing the idea of an afterschool club for our community. A lot of kids dont go to school past 6th grade here, and during 4th, 5th, and 6th, they really start losing interest. The director would like to see a program that motivates them, teaches them self discipline, pride, and gives them the skills and ambition to stay focused on their education and their futures. I think i can help with this, and I would love to.... there is a chapter of Boy and Girl Scouts that is strong here in Panama, so thats might be one option...im also considering adapting a version of GASP for our community. Ive got some research to do though, some community prepping, some conversations to be had, connections to be made, etc. Still, this is on the horizon. I want to make it happen.
What else?? The community is planting coffee currently to reforest the watershed. I havent been involved in this yet, but it just goes to show how awesome my community is!! Since we drink a LOT of coffee, this will also help people to save more money, maybe even make a little money. We went on a tour recently to chiriqui funded by the cooperative to learn about coffee production actually, and it was super neat because the cooperative members really caught onto what they were doing up there (which is much better practices than what we do here) in terms of using shade trees, combining the coffee fields with plaintains, etc. I was really amazed to see how eager and excited to learn everyone was, too. For me, that was the most impressive part of the whole trip. AND! one pretty exciting result of this tour was the level of interest it sparked in home vegetable gardens, which are very common in Chiriqui. EVERYONE in my cooperative went crazy over all the vegetables. Oh man, you should have seen how packed our pick up truck was on the way back. They talked about vegetable gardens and parcel home gardening for weeks afterwards....I really hope this might pick up speed, too, as we desperately need to improve the diet around here. Thats the one thing thats been making me sick....so much salt, sugar, and oil.....i am starting to realize that part of my service here needs to be spent in the kitchen. by going over to peoples houses and cooking with them, or cooking for them, i am able to teach them a lot. the complication is that a) we have a limited selection of foods to choose from, and b) they just dont know other ways to cook things, and c) they love pig grease SO MUCH. i bought some herbs in chiriqui for an herb garden...they still dont really understand what i mean when i say im going to cook with them. cook with them? are they medicinal? why would you do that? are you going to fry them?.....
Bevin:
This past week I had my first vacation when Bevin Luna came to see me. She is heading to Mali in october for her own peace corps stint, so it was so nice to be able to see her before she left. We had a great time checking out panama city, went hiking in a national park with monkeys and butterflies and slothes and trogons and all sorts of other awesome naturey things, checked out the little quaint little Azuero town of Guarare, home to the nationally famous folkloric music festival centered around the mejorana, a small traditional style panamanian guitar, and a beautiful beach, and a salt marsh with a million shorebirds (no, really, a million. never seen so many birds in my life). i took her to my community where everyone fell in love with her. they told her she should just come to panama instead of africa, hehe. she played guitar with my friends and we stayed up late singing with them by flashlight. i took her to the river, up the hills, down the hills, to see the compost, to meet as many people as possible. she got to try some of our local foods, see the school, the community center, the cooperative, meet the pigs/ chickens/ dogs/ cats/ children and get on a horse and even got to see a parasite get taken out of my toe! a very well rounded experience, right? we happend to be there when there was a FAO meeting, too, which was really interesting, and i think it was a good introduction for her to learn about the peace corps, esp since she will be working in agriculture and environment. and we did a great amount of just playing and seeing panama, too, of course. overall the vacation was so relaxing. oh man. i love showers in clean hotels. i dont think i knew how much i love showers until i joined the peace corps. you can get really clean in a shower!!!! like, clean-even-between-your-toes-clean. its remarkable.
Whats to come?? i am actually just heading back today from all that, so im refreshed and ready to dig my heels in back in the community. I am ready to get this community analysis done, start collecting the information I need to be successful, to start working. I am ready, too, to see some amazing folkloric events, as tis the season here. In fact, this weekend there is a big fair in Las Minas called feria del flor de espiritu santo, named after the national flower, an orquidea that opens up and looks exactly like a dove on the inside. its breathtaing really. I will take lots of pictures for ya´ll. :)
Anyway, I should get going now to catch my truck into town, over the hills, away from the lights, into the campo. I love you all and miss you all dearly. Please write whenever you have the chance. I love hearing from you.
Big hugs to all.
Ciaoito
Wow...can't believe its been over a month since I wrote you all. It doesnt seem that long ago. I guess I've been busy!! i cant even remember if i ever sent you pictures with the last email, so let me know! if not i will be sure to send that link out.
Well, I guess you are probably wondering what Ive been up to....its so hard to summarize, but Ill try to give you a snapshot...
Blessings:
In breve....The long and short of it is that I am happy, healthy-ish, and genuinely enjoying my peace corps experience. My community is just too adorable. I mean it. I really lucked out. Sure its not an easy life. They work really hard to makes end meet. There isn't enough money to send most of the children to middle school. Its dirty. Its hot. I fall all the damn time because its so slippery and muddy everywhere, which wrecks havoc on the lack-of-clean-clothing situation (and makes my community laugh). The food is really really really unhealthy (everyone has stunted growth, im pretty sure, including the animals). There are parasites in the soil that come from all the pigs (I got my first one last week!! They took it out with a needle!) They kill every single wild animal they find- some they eat, many they dont. Theres no electricity, still.. Handwashing my clothes on a wood plank is my very least favorite thing EVER. it takes up so much time and they never ever ever come clean, nor do they dry. BUT. at least we HAVE plentiful food. and at least we HAVE work. at least people in my community are eager to learn, self-organized, active and interested in improving their lives and their community. at least we have water to wash our clothes with, to bathe. We can even DRINK IT. imagine that. My community is actually at the very top of the watershed, so we have 4 of the springs that feed the river, and the water here, as opposed to in most of downriver Herrera, is potable. there are communities in herrera that have not had potable water for over a year.... Yes, we are blessed.
And me? I am very very blessed. They are so good to me. I am never hungry. I am never without help. Little children offer to carry things uphill for me. People give me yuca and platano to take home when they see me pass by their houses. They send me on my way with a bag of oranges, cashew fruit, whatever they've got growing. People are always happy to recieve me in their homes, without invitation or forewarning. They tell me to come back soon. That we will make bollos. We will make tortilla changa. We'll go hunt shrimp in the river and then fry them and eat them with plantains. We'll echar cuentos (tell stories) and drink coffee. We'll sing songs. We´ll chase toads. We wont kill the birds with slingshots at least while youre here, promise- just come over and spend time with us. (yes, they really do kill all the birds with slingshots, and the boas, and the armadillos, and the pacas, and whatever else they can find. yes, its really hard to see, and yes, i feel there could be an opportunity here to teach people about the importance of wildlife, and yes, i hope that i can at least plant a seed with respect to this. how do you convince a substinence agriculture community that wildlife have an important role though? for them, they are all competitors. I am still working through this question....)
This is basically my typical day at this point-- I wake up, I eat breakfast, bathe, do laundry, go pasear (walk around and visit) different houses, chit chat, eat, learn, help out around the house/farm, play with kids, pasear to another house, repeat, pasear, repeat, pasear, repeat, maybe play some soccer or play with the kids in the afternoon (jump-rope is my favorite. we use vines instead of rope), bathe, eat dinner, lantern lit hammock time with a cup of coffee and the family, go to bed. i am also working on meeting as many people as possible, introducing myself to all the agency workers, neighboring communities, etc. Just getting out there!
Bokachi:
The work is finally beginning. Technically I am still not working, as im still in the process of doing my community analysis and I havent done my presentation or gotten any real community input yet (october marks my 3 month date, an important milestone for the PC volunteer). But, in the meantime, theres bokachi. Bokachi is a type of fermented organic compost that is popular in panama, largely due to the availability of ingredients. We make it here with the following: rice husks, rice dust, ashes, carbon, chicken poop, molasses from sugar cane/chicha fuerte from corn, yeast, some good soil, and diligent turning. Since it is fermented, it heats up dramatically, thereby increasing the rate of decomposition. The whole process from start to finish takes just 15 days. Currently in my community you can sell a rice sack of bokachi to the environmental agency for 8 dollars, which is a lot of money for us camposinos, especially if you make 10 sacks at a time. (While the incentive might have more do with the money than pro-environmental values, its a start. Its a seed of an idea, a notion that perhaps, on some level, using this organic stuff instead of chemicals is actually really a good idea. So good in fact the government is willing to pay for it....) I was sort of "thrown into the bokachi fire" in week 1 when my counterpart told me I should do it with the padres de la familia for the school and the school director got super excited about it. We made a batch using my counterparts recipe and I helped out, learning as I went along. i found out that other people in the area were involved in bokachi too, so I went and saw and learned, and i learned more, and i compared recipes, and i revised and relearned. Then there was the second batch..... this time my friend Adela came to find me. she wanted my help with compost. I came over and she started asking me about how to make bokachi. She told me she had all these ingredients but didnt know if she was still missing something, and didnt know how to go about actually doing it, and if I could help. She said she wanted to do it right. She asked me questions about it, why certain ingredients work and others dont. She wanted to learn! So we made it together, and each day i came and helped her turn it. And while we made it we talked about sewing, and children, and cows, and life in general. Then came the third batch.... Yani, another friend, asked me what ingredients she would need if she was going to make compost with her woman's group to raise funds for their bakery project. i let her borrow a recipe i had printed out, left town, and when i came back she and the other woman had already found all the ingredients and were making their compost. At the end of the day one of the kids in town came to find me and told me that Yani was looking for me. I thought maybe they wanted help turning it, but to my surprise, when I arrived, they had already done everything. They just wanted me to look at it and let them know if i thought it was well done, to give them a thumbs up before they covered it. It may not sound like much, but I was really proud of my community, and I was really proud of myself, too. I felt, well, like a peace corps volunteer.
Ive also been working on developing relationships with the teachers here so that I might be able to work with the students soon. A few weeks ago we had some great bonding time making banana bread on their stove using my recipe, and they LOVED it. (Now everyone wants me to go make banana bread with them. :) Its fun! and lord knows we have the bananas!) Anyway....The director of the school is interested in youth development, so I am currently tossing the idea of an afterschool club for our community. A lot of kids dont go to school past 6th grade here, and during 4th, 5th, and 6th, they really start losing interest. The director would like to see a program that motivates them, teaches them self discipline, pride, and gives them the skills and ambition to stay focused on their education and their futures. I think i can help with this, and I would love to.... there is a chapter of Boy and Girl Scouts that is strong here in Panama, so thats might be one option...im also considering adapting a version of GASP for our community. Ive got some research to do though, some community prepping, some conversations to be had, connections to be made, etc. Still, this is on the horizon. I want to make it happen.
What else?? The community is planting coffee currently to reforest the watershed. I havent been involved in this yet, but it just goes to show how awesome my community is!! Since we drink a LOT of coffee, this will also help people to save more money, maybe even make a little money. We went on a tour recently to chiriqui funded by the cooperative to learn about coffee production actually, and it was super neat because the cooperative members really caught onto what they were doing up there (which is much better practices than what we do here) in terms of using shade trees, combining the coffee fields with plaintains, etc. I was really amazed to see how eager and excited to learn everyone was, too. For me, that was the most impressive part of the whole trip. AND! one pretty exciting result of this tour was the level of interest it sparked in home vegetable gardens, which are very common in Chiriqui. EVERYONE in my cooperative went crazy over all the vegetables. Oh man, you should have seen how packed our pick up truck was on the way back. They talked about vegetable gardens and parcel home gardening for weeks afterwards....I really hope this might pick up speed, too, as we desperately need to improve the diet around here. Thats the one thing thats been making me sick....so much salt, sugar, and oil.....i am starting to realize that part of my service here needs to be spent in the kitchen. by going over to peoples houses and cooking with them, or cooking for them, i am able to teach them a lot. the complication is that a) we have a limited selection of foods to choose from, and b) they just dont know other ways to cook things, and c) they love pig grease SO MUCH. i bought some herbs in chiriqui for an herb garden...they still dont really understand what i mean when i say im going to cook with them. cook with them? are they medicinal? why would you do that? are you going to fry them?.....
Bevin:
This past week I had my first vacation when Bevin Luna came to see me. She is heading to Mali in october for her own peace corps stint, so it was so nice to be able to see her before she left. We had a great time checking out panama city, went hiking in a national park with monkeys and butterflies and slothes and trogons and all sorts of other awesome naturey things, checked out the little quaint little Azuero town of Guarare, home to the nationally famous folkloric music festival centered around the mejorana, a small traditional style panamanian guitar, and a beautiful beach, and a salt marsh with a million shorebirds (no, really, a million. never seen so many birds in my life). i took her to my community where everyone fell in love with her. they told her she should just come to panama instead of africa, hehe. she played guitar with my friends and we stayed up late singing with them by flashlight. i took her to the river, up the hills, down the hills, to see the compost, to meet as many people as possible. she got to try some of our local foods, see the school, the community center, the cooperative, meet the pigs/ chickens/ dogs/ cats/ children and get on a horse and even got to see a parasite get taken out of my toe! a very well rounded experience, right? we happend to be there when there was a FAO meeting, too, which was really interesting, and i think it was a good introduction for her to learn about the peace corps, esp since she will be working in agriculture and environment. and we did a great amount of just playing and seeing panama, too, of course. overall the vacation was so relaxing. oh man. i love showers in clean hotels. i dont think i knew how much i love showers until i joined the peace corps. you can get really clean in a shower!!!! like, clean-even-between-your-toes-
Whats to come?? i am actually just heading back today from all that, so im refreshed and ready to dig my heels in back in the community. I am ready to get this community analysis done, start collecting the information I need to be successful, to start working. I am ready, too, to see some amazing folkloric events, as tis the season here. In fact, this weekend there is a big fair in Las Minas called feria del flor de espiritu santo, named after the national flower, an orquidea that opens up and looks exactly like a dove on the inside. its breathtaing really. I will take lots of pictures for ya´ll. :)
Anyway, I should get going now to catch my truck into town, over the hills, away from the lights, into the campo. I love you all and miss you all dearly. Please write whenever you have the chance. I love hearing from you.
Big hugs to all.
Ciaoito
7/1/2011
The wind comes, the wind goes.
Dear friends and family,
Been a while since I've had the opportunity to catch everyone up....sorry for the lack of responses for those who have written. Been hard to find time to get online lately-- things have been a real whirlwind. Seems like just yesterday they told us we were halfway through training, and here I am today, 4 weeks later, sworn in and getting ready to begin my life as a volunteer.
Dear friends and family,
Been a while since I've had the opportunity to catch everyone up....sorry for the lack of responses for those who have written. Been hard to find time to get online lately-- things have been a real whirlwind. Seems like just yesterday they told us we were halfway through training, and here I am today, 4 weeks later, sworn in and getting ready to begin my life as a volunteer.
I do, however, live somewhere. And that somewhere is in the Azuero peninsula, in the heart of the country, the cradle of culture. I will be serving in a very small, rural farming community in the province of Herrera near a town called Las Minas, up in the mountains (yayyy cool climate!). I don't know much about my community just yet, as the site change was abrupt. In fact, my supervisor is there today arranging for my arrival. (P.S. I just have to say that I am EXTREMELY lucky to have such an awesome Peace Corps team here in Panama. They are so wonderful and I am very well taken care of. Love them.) I wasn't thrilled about the change at first--it's hard to go somewhere, meet people, imagine yourself there, and then turn around and be told that in fact you're going somewhere entirely new and about which you know nothing. (Better now than in a year, though)...
So I have moved on. I'm opening my mind and heart again, preparing for the unknown again. I feel like this is good, though...I'm going where the wind blows me. I know that wherever I land I will be happy.
There have been 2 volunteers in my site previously. One was working in the environmental health sector building aqua ducts and compost latrines, and the other was an agricultural volunteer who left not very long ago. Not sure what exactly my role will be just yet, though I know there is an environmental group there that is working on cookstove construction and reforestation, and there is an elementary school. I'm excited to learn about cookstoves....down here they mostly use Lorena (clay) or eco justa (brick), so we will see what is going on in my community. It's all very exciting and mysterious at this point.... vamos a ver! I have a very good feeling about all of this. Eyes wide open.
Today and tomorrow we are on our first few days of vacation. Much needed, too, as we have been going nonstop. I think it's a strategy on the part of the Peace Corps to keep you from thinking too much. Stay busy! Go go go! (Though I anticipate this pace will dramatically change once we arrive in site....) Today I will be in the city checking out the old town and maybe a museum, maybe strolling along the boardwalk, hammock time, watching some birds----RELAXING mas que todo. ((The birds here are amazing, by the way! And while I'm at it....here are some other animals I've seen: coral snake, black squirrels, grey and cream squirrels, poison frogs, toads, wild/domestic cats, sloth, parrots, squirrel monkey, toucan, ducks, horses, cows, goats, chickens, doves, pericos, dogs, pigs, and more! I should be keeping a list of all this...)
What else can I say? things will be pretty different from here on out. I will try to stay in touch as much as possible, though it may not be as easy as it has been. I've been pretty spoiled so far as a trainee. I do want you all to know that I have a cell phone now, and despite no electricity, there is cell service in my community (i'll do my best to keep my phone charged via solar charger) It's quite expensive to call the united states, but it is FREE for me to receive calls, so please do call or send texts! My number is 00-507-6824-3481. If I don't answer, don't leave a voicemail....(I can't figure out how to check them). Just try again another time. (Also a word about texts--sometimes they arrive, and sometimes they don't. if you don't hear back from me it could be that I never got it.) But still call! I will be so happy to hear from you, even if for just a few minutes.
When I know a better address for ya'll I'll send out another email. For now, I'll say so long and see where this wind blows me next...
Much love to all of you. A million thanks for your emails, which I always read and enjoy. I miss you and keep you all in my heart.
Big hugs!
6/6/2011
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,
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,
5/8/2011
hello family and friends!
í hope you are all doing well!!! just thought id send a little shout out while i have the chance. so far things are going very well!!! let me tell you a little bit about my life in panama so far....
i live with a mom, Alicia, a dad, Sixto, a 15 year old sister Yuri, and a 2 year old sister Alison. My mom is a seamstress and my dad works for a construction materials company. Yuri goes to school in la chorrera, which is about 30 minutes away once you get on the chiva (bus), and Alison just plays all the time. our favorite games to play together are ¨pretend to be chickens´´ ´throw the ball´´ and ´go to the roof!´ we also like to play mommy with her baby dolls and we love to dance!! she is a much better dancer than i am!!
Our community has 3 stores, a primary school, and a church. there are probably about 50 houses in the whole community. theres a river and a creek. its not up in the mountains, but it is slightly higher in elevation than panama city, where i am writing this email from. there are tons of birds and trees and sloths in our community, too! and of course lots of dogs cats chickens ducks geese etc. the water is potable here, which is fantastic, though it goes out from time to time (like today). also there is electricity in most all of the homes, though that, too, can go out from time to time, depending on how much water there is and if the turbine gets clogged (it´s hydroelectric).
the first week was very chaotic and intense due to our training schedule, though also very good. we have a pretty intense schedule of spanish classes in the morning, and techincal classes in the afternoon. then in the evenings we spend time with the families. yuri and sixto do not get home from la chorrera until very late, especially on days when the busses do not come or are too full for them to get a ride, so mostly i spend time with alicia and alison. we are learning about environmental education and informal education techniques, as well as culture and language.
the PC staff down here is FANTASTIC., i feel very lucky to be in such good hands. everyone is super nice, easy to talk to, and cares about us very much. also our group of volunteers is awesome.!! happy to report that CSU is well represented by 3 volunteers in my group alone! one of which is actually from the warner college of nr (corbin, you might know him!) and the other is an international studies major.
what else? we have done some little trips here and there to get to know the public transportation sistem. the busses here are called Diablos Rojos, Red Devils. They are super fast but quite efficient, even though their schedules are somewhat unreliable. our first outing was to a little foothills community where a current volunteer is serving. We got to meet his counterparts, the agency representatives he works with, his family, and tour his community to learn about various projects and his lifestyle there. It was so fun!!! the kids at the school gathered a bunch of fruit from all over the town for us to have when we got there and then they did a folkloric dance for us. i loved it!!!!! i couldnt resist dancing with them....
our second trip was to la chorrera, the largest nearby town. we basiclaly just checked out some important locations, like the clinic, the training center, so that wed know where they are.
our third trip was to parque nacional altos de campana. we had a guided tropical ecology walk there to learn about plants and animals, particularly those that can be used for agroforestry. it was super interesting! lots of the plants and animals found here are also found in costa rica, so that has been super cool to see and it has really been advantageous for me to already have some background information on this type of stuff.
our third trip was today! we are in panama city. we came here to learn where the important places are, like the laboratory where we go to take med samples. now we have a little bit of free time, so ive taken this opportunity to write you all.
next week on thursday i will be going to visit a current volunteer alone in her site. she has been there for about a year. im going to stay with her for like 4 or 5 days and shadow her thorugh her daily activities to see what kinds of projects she is involved in, how she lives and interacts with the community, and to learn from her! i am very excited! it should be super informative, and a lot more realistic than the training.
well, i have to go already, but i hope you all know that i love you and am thinking of you. when i can i will get some photos out to you.
5/16/2011
hey all you wonderful folks!
i'm taking advantage of the great internet access while I have it!! on my way back through penonome today from membrillo. i spent the last few days shadowing a volunteer named Ashley in her community, and now i am going back "home" for a while, back to training etc. but oh so much has happened in the last few days.....its hard to summarize! also, i'm going on one month here next week. can you believe it? crazy huh.
membrillo was AWESOME. i think that pretty much sums it up. for those who are in a hurry, you can skip to the last part with the photos for a "breve repaso" of my trip but i'll expand a little more though for those who enjoy the details....
first off, when i say Panama i mean the provence of panama, which is where most of the people in panama live. everywhere else (east west north south) is just called "the interior" and it has this very mysterious connotation for those who live in panama, because many people have never actually been to the interior, and its vastly different. panama (provence) is pretty developed as far as the land goes, the culture is different, there are malls and lots of neighborhoods that seem to stop when another begins. lots more cement, densely populated for the most part, some rich some poor some rural some urbanites, but overall has a lifestyle and a speed of life and culture marked by a typical "city feel." the interior, however, is the opposite. there are little communities nestled between vast expanses of undeveloped land (see photos) each community having its own unique characteristics, cultural aspects, cultural norms, occupations, even vocabulary and dress in some places. so this being my first time to the interior, i was very excited and surprised to find so much difference!
i got there on thursday afternoon and met with the volunteer in penonome, where i am now, and we traveled up to membrillo together in a little bus with 20 other passengers (5 rows of 4 people in each row....) which sounds like a lot, but i am told that if you stack three people per seat you can actually fit 60 passengers, and it has been done many a time!! imagine that. ashley can attest. (Bevin luna- these are MUCH like the guaguas in the dominican republic- to give you a visual representation).
once we got there she took me up to her house and showed me how she lives there (quite nice and luxiourous really, i wasnt expecting that, but i also realize its not necessarily the norm). she has electricity and running water, plus a FLUSHING TOILET- oooooh, aaahh... fancy! i dont necessarily need a flushing toilet myself (ive gotten pretty used to the latrines, they aren't so bad!) but it was pretty cool being able to hear the water whiishh down. sounds like home! hahaha
so membrillo. membrilllo is HUGE. like 6000 people, broken into 5 sectors that you cant see all in one day. i mean, its big. but really spread out. we mostly just spent time in her sector and one other sector, and we hiked a LOT just to see those two. its very hilly there and lush, lots of trees birds etc. the majority of the residents who are employed are employed in either farming, artesian craftmaking, or they go work in penonome on construction. the biggest crops are corn, name, yuca, guineo (banana), and some people also have fish & rice (called arricipice, which sounds a lot like rieces pieces and is very fun to say), sugar cane, plantains, and mangos. the funny thing about panamanians though is that they dont actually seem to eat the mangos (or any other fruit for that matter), even though they grow everywhere and are FREEEEE. they really dont eat much fruit at all. mostly just tubers, pastas, rice, and beans. at least in this particular region. oh and bananas and plantains, too.
what else? it has a school, a local puesto de salud (health center) where there is an auxiliar (a first aid helper person) that can treat basic stuff, but can also get an ambulance in if you need to go the the hospital, 26 aquaductos, some creeks, did i mention lots of hills?, lots of red clay (the soil is an issue here too...not so good for growing stuff), a primary and secondary school (a very good one, actually), a community environmental action group (they are working on reforesting around the aquaductos), and a mine. there is a lot of soap stone in there area, which is neat! and also means that many of the artesanos carve soap stone figurines to sell in the city. the other major type of crafts are panama hats which are woven from the fibers of a plant leaf (cant remember the name of the plant), and other little figurines and mobiles that are woven, as well as wood carvings and painted wooden tiles. they also produce a lot of baskets, called motetes, that are woven from vines and are used for carrying whatever to and from the fields (you strap it onto your back).
as far as the people go, they are SO SWEET. i can't even begin to describe the generosity of the membrillo community. compared to the folks i have met in santa rita (which are also friendly, though more reserved and serious) the membrillianos are just very open, arms wide open to anyone, warm and kind, eager to receive visitors, to share about their lives and their hobbies and their fotos and stories about their children and grandchildren and growing up, love to laugh and smile, love to give gifts and share their culture and teach about it and learn about other cultures. i felt so welcome there.... we visited first the volunteer's landlords family, and they showed me all these pictures of their kids and made me a snack and freshly squeezed chicha (fruit juice) and we talked about the environmental group that the mama is working with (she teaches at the school, too). the environmental group is planning a big fair for the annual environment day (this community is obviously much more enviro-aware than some of the others, they are also already very well organized in terms of their community groups, and they do refer to themselves as environmentalists. also interestingly they have had 3 PC volunteers already in agriculture, one in business, and now they have one in environment so they are pretty used to the PC by now).
i also got to meet the volunteers host family, whom she lived with for all 3 of her first 3 months (usually you do 1 month with a family and live with 3 families in total, but she loved them so much she just decided to stay put). they were the NICEST and TINIEST people i have ever met. her dad used to work in construction, but now he works at the school for padres de las familias and also crafts. her mom crafts, too (they weave), and they have 6 kids, who are all artists as well (they all draw and paint and stuff...the WHOLE family does actually, grandparents uncles aunts cousins included). the eldest lives on her own with her boyfriend and her baby, and then the younger 5 live at home. the mom and dad, sebastiana and juan, taught me how to WEAVE!!! it was really neat. with their help i made a little miniature panamanian hat! they let me keep it afterwards and they also gave me one that they had made, which was so sweet and thoughtful. all their kids drew me pictures, too, and signed and dated them. Elvira, the girl, even gave me a beaded bracelet she had made and a beatiful drawing of flowers with my name on it adn the panamanian flag and the word Membrillo across the top. they were so incredibly generous with everything....and they were super excited to teach me how to weave. they also showed me all of their plants and told me about which ones are medicinal and for what and which ones are for eating and which ones are just flowers, etc. it was AWESOME. i ADORED them. they invited us to come and spend the whole day on sunday with them at the grandparents house, which we did. they have their own church there (evangelical) and we did the church service, which i actually really enjoyed, mostly because of all the happy songs and clapping and dancing and just how they were so excited to have us there. then we had lunch there with their enormous family and spent the afternoon playing with the kids and talking to the adults. the grandparents have a big property with all sorts of crops and fish ponds and a natural springs which feeds the nearest acuaducto and they showed me all around and told me about all the plants and about their family and the history of artesians in their family and the process of how they collect the leaves, submerge them in water for a month, dry them, dye them, dry them again, split them, roll the fibers, dry them again, and then weave with them. and later that night we went back to their house again because they invited us over for dinner, so that was super fun and i drew them and colored a picture of colorado and wrote all their names on it as a thank you for their generosity and hospitality. they really appreciated it and told me to make sure i come back and see them whenever i am around. :)
what else? one of those days we hiked over and visited anohter volunteer in her site which is nearby, but in a totally different community with a totally different vibe. we hiked up to the top of this mountain with these local boys, and at first they kept saying, "well the trail got erased so we just have to bushwack", and then we got to the top and the boy goes "oops, wrong mountain!" hahahaha. so basically we scaled up the side of this trailless mountain only to discover that the other mountain, the one we meant to hike, sure enough had a great trail! we just werent on it! it was really fun though. my legs are SO beat up from the brush. we literally had to bootyscoot down the site and climb over and under all the vines and trees in the forest to get back down, but it was worth it.
well, that's probably enough to keep you guys busy for a while... and i have to go, but i send my love to all, and i am thinking of everyone lots, keeping my eyes wide open, and just taking it all in. i am excited to get back home tonight and see my familia again. i admit a miss that cutie pie miss alison. :) she's probably dying to play some more "pretend to be chickens" when i get home.
big hugs to everyone.
i'm taking advantage of the great internet access while I have it!! on my way back through penonome today from membrillo. i spent the last few days shadowing a volunteer named Ashley in her community, and now i am going back "home" for a while, back to training etc. but oh so much has happened in the last few days.....its hard to summarize! also, i'm going on one month here next week. can you believe it? crazy huh.
membrillo was AWESOME. i think that pretty much sums it up. for those who are in a hurry, you can skip to the last part with the photos for a "breve repaso" of my trip but i'll expand a little more though for those who enjoy the details....
first off, when i say Panama i mean the provence of panama, which is where most of the people in panama live. everywhere else (east west north south) is just called "the interior" and it has this very mysterious connotation for those who live in panama, because many people have never actually been to the interior, and its vastly different. panama (provence) is pretty developed as far as the land goes, the culture is different, there are malls and lots of neighborhoods that seem to stop when another begins. lots more cement, densely populated for the most part, some rich some poor some rural some urbanites, but overall has a lifestyle and a speed of life and culture marked by a typical "city feel." the interior, however, is the opposite. there are little communities nestled between vast expanses of undeveloped land (see photos) each community having its own unique characteristics, cultural aspects, cultural norms, occupations, even vocabulary and dress in some places. so this being my first time to the interior, i was very excited and surprised to find so much difference!
i got there on thursday afternoon and met with the volunteer in penonome, where i am now, and we traveled up to membrillo together in a little bus with 20 other passengers (5 rows of 4 people in each row....) which sounds like a lot, but i am told that if you stack three people per seat you can actually fit 60 passengers, and it has been done many a time!! imagine that. ashley can attest. (Bevin luna- these are MUCH like the guaguas in the dominican republic- to give you a visual representation).
once we got there she took me up to her house and showed me how she lives there (quite nice and luxiourous really, i wasnt expecting that, but i also realize its not necessarily the norm). she has electricity and running water, plus a FLUSHING TOILET- oooooh, aaahh... fancy! i dont necessarily need a flushing toilet myself (ive gotten pretty used to the latrines, they aren't so bad!) but it was pretty cool being able to hear the water whiishh down. sounds like home! hahaha
so membrillo. membrilllo is HUGE. like 6000 people, broken into 5 sectors that you cant see all in one day. i mean, its big. but really spread out. we mostly just spent time in her sector and one other sector, and we hiked a LOT just to see those two. its very hilly there and lush, lots of trees birds etc. the majority of the residents who are employed are employed in either farming, artesian craftmaking, or they go work in penonome on construction. the biggest crops are corn, name, yuca, guineo (banana), and some people also have fish & rice (called arricipice, which sounds a lot like rieces pieces and is very fun to say), sugar cane, plantains, and mangos. the funny thing about panamanians though is that they dont actually seem to eat the mangos (or any other fruit for that matter), even though they grow everywhere and are FREEEEE. they really dont eat much fruit at all. mostly just tubers, pastas, rice, and beans. at least in this particular region. oh and bananas and plantains, too.
what else? it has a school, a local puesto de salud (health center) where there is an auxiliar (a first aid helper person) that can treat basic stuff, but can also get an ambulance in if you need to go the the hospital, 26 aquaductos, some creeks, did i mention lots of hills?, lots of red clay (the soil is an issue here too...not so good for growing stuff), a primary and secondary school (a very good one, actually), a community environmental action group (they are working on reforesting around the aquaductos), and a mine. there is a lot of soap stone in there area, which is neat! and also means that many of the artesanos carve soap stone figurines to sell in the city. the other major type of crafts are panama hats which are woven from the fibers of a plant leaf (cant remember the name of the plant), and other little figurines and mobiles that are woven, as well as wood carvings and painted wooden tiles. they also produce a lot of baskets, called motetes, that are woven from vines and are used for carrying whatever to and from the fields (you strap it onto your back).
as far as the people go, they are SO SWEET. i can't even begin to describe the generosity of the membrillo community. compared to the folks i have met in santa rita (which are also friendly, though more reserved and serious) the membrillianos are just very open, arms wide open to anyone, warm and kind, eager to receive visitors, to share about their lives and their hobbies and their fotos and stories about their children and grandchildren and growing up, love to laugh and smile, love to give gifts and share their culture and teach about it and learn about other cultures. i felt so welcome there.... we visited first the volunteer's landlords family, and they showed me all these pictures of their kids and made me a snack and freshly squeezed chicha (fruit juice) and we talked about the environmental group that the mama is working with (she teaches at the school, too). the environmental group is planning a big fair for the annual environment day (this community is obviously much more enviro-aware than some of the others, they are also already very well organized in terms of their community groups, and they do refer to themselves as environmentalists. also interestingly they have had 3 PC volunteers already in agriculture, one in business, and now they have one in environment so they are pretty used to the PC by now).
i also got to meet the volunteers host family, whom she lived with for all 3 of her first 3 months (usually you do 1 month with a family and live with 3 families in total, but she loved them so much she just decided to stay put). they were the NICEST and TINIEST people i have ever met. her dad used to work in construction, but now he works at the school for padres de las familias and also crafts. her mom crafts, too (they weave), and they have 6 kids, who are all artists as well (they all draw and paint and stuff...the WHOLE family does actually, grandparents uncles aunts cousins included). the eldest lives on her own with her boyfriend and her baby, and then the younger 5 live at home. the mom and dad, sebastiana and juan, taught me how to WEAVE!!! it was really neat. with their help i made a little miniature panamanian hat! they let me keep it afterwards and they also gave me one that they had made, which was so sweet and thoughtful. all their kids drew me pictures, too, and signed and dated them. Elvira, the girl, even gave me a beaded bracelet she had made and a beatiful drawing of flowers with my name on it adn the panamanian flag and the word Membrillo across the top. they were so incredibly generous with everything....and they were super excited to teach me how to weave. they also showed me all of their plants and told me about which ones are medicinal and for what and which ones are for eating and which ones are just flowers, etc. it was AWESOME. i ADORED them. they invited us to come and spend the whole day on sunday with them at the grandparents house, which we did. they have their own church there (evangelical) and we did the church service, which i actually really enjoyed, mostly because of all the happy songs and clapping and dancing and just how they were so excited to have us there. then we had lunch there with their enormous family and spent the afternoon playing with the kids and talking to the adults. the grandparents have a big property with all sorts of crops and fish ponds and a natural springs which feeds the nearest acuaducto and they showed me all around and told me about all the plants and about their family and the history of artesians in their family and the process of how they collect the leaves, submerge them in water for a month, dry them, dye them, dry them again, split them, roll the fibers, dry them again, and then weave with them. and later that night we went back to their house again because they invited us over for dinner, so that was super fun and i drew them and colored a picture of colorado and wrote all their names on it as a thank you for their generosity and hospitality. they really appreciated it and told me to make sure i come back and see them whenever i am around. :)
what else? one of those days we hiked over and visited anohter volunteer in her site which is nearby, but in a totally different community with a totally different vibe. we hiked up to the top of this mountain with these local boys, and at first they kept saying, "well the trail got erased so we just have to bushwack", and then we got to the top and the boy goes "oops, wrong mountain!" hahahaha. so basically we scaled up the side of this trailless mountain only to discover that the other mountain, the one we meant to hike, sure enough had a great trail! we just werent on it! it was really fun though. my legs are SO beat up from the brush. we literally had to bootyscoot down the site and climb over and under all the vines and trees in the forest to get back down, but it was worth it.
well, that's probably enough to keep you guys busy for a while... and i have to go, but i send my love to all, and i am thinking of everyone lots, keeping my eyes wide open, and just taking it all in. i am excited to get back home tonight and see my familia again. i admit a miss that cutie pie miss alison. :) she's probably dying to play some more "pretend to be chickens" when i get home.
big hugs to everyone.
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