So, how´s Panama?

I think I spent most of my first week in site in a semi-conscious daze. I have kept surprisingly busy, with something to do each day, if not all day, and have so far had good experiences interacting with the people here. Still, my mind wanders easily. I can block out background Spanish with remarkable efficiency, and I get lost thinking about how I got here, how impossible a task my work seems sometimes, and what all my friends and family are doing back home. It has been surreal for sure.

I am slowly re-adjusting to life with another host family. I have been met by incredibly generous people and families in my (almost!) three months in Panama, and the family I live with now is no exception. My 10-year-old host brother Caesar has the most contagious smile, and will sit with me for hours asking about what life is like ¨por alla¨in the U.S. He fancies himself my chaperone whenever I leave the house, escorting me two minutes to the public telephone, and waiting patiently while I babble away in English, grinning up at me all the while. My family gets endless enjoyment out of watching me fall in the mud, which happens several times a day, but they usually stop laughing long enough to ask if I´m okay.

Being under the miscroscope for all this time though has its frustrations. Ngobes in particular have a habit of staring long past what would be considered appropriate in the United States. I have to keep myself from snapping at my 16-year-old host brother when he arrives at my window to silently observe what I´d hoped would be my only 15 minutes of alone time.

My biggest obstacle has been the sanitation situation. No one washes their hands, dishes are only rinsed, and flies crawl all over food, utensils, and bowls, depositing who-knows-what and possibly laying eggs as well. When the 1-year-old has diarrhea, it gets rubbed over the concrete floor with a wet mop, without soap or bleach. My host mother absentmindedly cleans it up and goes right back to cooking.

I am trying to strike a balance between brainstorming household education techniques and also ignoring certain things in order to keep the fecal-oral transmission charts from haunting my every vacant thought.

I´ve already made a point about washing my hands as much as possible, or risinging dishes when I´ve seen flies on them. But the solutions to these problems aren´t as easy as you´d think. At home, you fill up a five-gallon bucket with water, pour in some cleaner, and mop your floor. (Better yet, your one-year-old wears diapers!) At home, you know your dishes are clean because you take them out of the dish washer yourself and put them safely into a clean cabinet. Here, without running water in the house, implementing sanitation efforts is much more challenging. Studies have shown that having more water available is more effective in reducing diarrhea and disease than water treatment itself, for example. Usually the first solution should be more water, not better water.

So you can see how sometimes life here seems surreal. For those of you who are as panicked about my health as my mother was when she heard all of this, don´t be. I chose to live in three separate houses during my first three months, and I visited my second house the other day. I was delighted to find out they have a latrine, an ocean view, and what appears to be an approved standard of cleanliness. And when you are an environmental health volunteer who works with water and latrines, it goes without saying that where you´ll be living might be without one or both.

There are so many things to think about here each day. I fall asleep every night watching TV with my family. (A lot of famlies have small, black-and-white TVs, powered by car batteries or solar panels.) Dinner is usualy served around 8:45, and I am collapsing gratefully into the floor by nine.

Leave any questions in the comments section. I know I leave a lot out in these quick updates. I´ll fill in the blanks as I can.