Merry Campo Christmas

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I will be in site tomorrow, doing whatever it is that Ngobes do for Christmas, which from what I´ve gathered, is nothing they don´t do every other day. I will be spreading some cheer by bringing back some chicken tonight for the occasion, and if only as a gift to myself, some cabbage, cucumber, and tomato for a traditional Panamanian salad. As goals 2 and 3 of the three-goal Peace Corps plan are cultural exchange, staying in site is a good thing for me to be doing, and it seems my community appreciates that I´ll be there.

For New Year´s however, I am taking a couple of days off and heading to Bocas
Island with some other volunteers for some R and R.

I´m missing you all, and I hope the holidays find you healthy and happy!

Paz,
Catherine

Pic from Navidad two years ago with the Basham Brothers:

From WinterTime 07-08

Recipe Contest!!

So, my darling readers , I need your help. Soon I´ll be moving into my own house, and that means cooking for myself. LET FREEDOM RING. It´s been a long, sometimes painful few months eating other people´s food. (Did you read the Ngobe Cookbook?) But on the eve of my culinary independence, I must confess some trepidation. In the U.S., I am no master cook, but I can navigate the basics. Here, I am presented with the challenge of no fridge or oven and markets that stock only the essentials (though Almirante does have some legumbreros that have a good fly-free selection of produce). Anyway, I need your help brainstorming recipes, and I am sensing my adult readers in particular can help. Here are some guidelines for the contest:

1) No meat. No, I didn´t go vegetarian, but I might as well have. On the rare occasion that I buy meat, I´ll know how to cook it.
2) Nothing refrigerated. But powdered milk is a good friend of mine, and remember eggs don´t really need to be in the fridge.
3) Suggested ingredients:
-Beans, beans beans. Lentils and Red Kidneys are my favorite.
- Pasta or rice.
- Simple veggies- onions, peppers, celeries, carrots, garlic, things that can sit on my shelf for a few days. Extra points if you use yucca.
- I have access to most common spices in the Changuinola supermarket. Favorites: chili, curry, basil, salt, pepper etc. Basics are best.
4) I will be cooking on a two-burner range with an attached gas tank. Plan accordingly.
5) Keep it simple, this is Peace Corps not Food and Wine magazine. These do not have to be culinary masterpieces. A one- dish stir-fry or good pasta sauce is more than enough.

Please submit all recipes to me by email at cvbasham@gmail.com by January 20. Don´t be shy! The best recipe will be delicious, simple, and reasonable to make for one person. Winner(s) will receive something special and Panamanian (artisan jewelery, a chakara bag, open for suggestion), which can be sent to the States and mailed accordingly in March when my brothers visit. I am serious about this. Think of something or just Google. I don´t have the time and anyway, there is no such thing as an original recipe (except maybe for Bush´s baked beans.)

Best of luck and if I receive no entries, I will assume you all want me to starve to death.

Volunteer Vignettes

The following incident took place on 12.14.09.

What had been going on in my stomach was not normal. After calling the PC doctor (who is awesome, by the way), and relaying to her a particularly off-putting symptom, she ordered me to the clinc in Changuinola for a poop test.

I loaded my backpack, and began an agonizing descent to the road, where I caught a bus and arrived in Changuinola by noontime. After taking a shower at the regional leader´s house, I walked to the lab like an inmate down death row. I wondered where this process would rank on the list of medical indignities I have suffered in Panama (oh yes, there are others).

The lab is tucked in the bottom floor an impossible-looking three-story building and lacks any kind of signage. It is embarassed about what happens there too, further evidenced by the pink blush of its paint. And I am still unsure whether the building itself is crooked, or that it faces the street at such an abrupt angle that it accidentally gives off a distinctly Alice-in-Wonderland impression.

I entered and sheepishly explained to the desk attendant in hushed Spanish why I came. He presented me with a laughably small vessel for deposit. It had the diameter of a film canister and the depth of a thimble. Seriously?

Before I could think abou the how, he instructed me to leave, do the you know, and come back.

¨No hay un baño aqui?¨ There´s no bathroom here? I must have looked desperate.

¨Aqui no hay agua,¨ There´s no water here, he said unapologetically.

Really? Really? I´d heard about the water going out in Changuinola on the radio, but a medical laboratory without water? How can that be? I didn´t want to know. I shuffled back to the regional leader´s house, did the unmentionable, and went back to the lab. He told me I had an hour to wait, so I went to the Internet to distract myself from the plight of the poor soul whose job it is to look at people´s excrement under a microscope in a waterless lab.

When I returned for the results, a mother was in line in front of me with her daughter. The little girl wore a lovely dress, surely donned for her big trip to the city. They still do that in Panama. The desk attendant slid a piece of paper across to the mother and said ¨Ella tiene amebas.¨She has amoebas. He saw me, fetched an identical piece of paper, slide it across the same counter and said, ¨Tiene amebas.¨You have amoebas. Though disturbing, this diagnosis came as a relief. There is medicine for amoebas, and soon I would feel better.

As I left, I wondered how many times a day that man tells someone they have parasites, and if maybe, all day, he just says ¨Tiene amebas,¨ reciting the same script like a broken record. His announcement was so mechanical, identical in tone and structure to that which he delivered to the girl´s mother. Does he just stand there, all day, in that improbable fuschia eye sore and tell one person after another that one-celled protazoa or whatever have invaded their sysems?

How enchanting.

-----------------------

I am all better now thankyouforasking. You take one dose of two pills, and you´re all better. Being sick is yucky and unpleasant, but it is sort of inevitable given the living conditions. Many volunteers proudly recite all of the infections and parasites they´ve had in Panama within minutes of being introduced. This is another reason why I´m afraid I´ll be unable to make normal conversation when I return to the U.S.

Ngobe FAQ

As people get more used to having me around, they´ve started to ask me more questions. Most of them generally cycle through the same 10-12 inquiries, and I´ve formulated many automatic responses.

On the one hand, I love answering questions, and enjoy the opportunity to teach them something new. I feel like I am tearing a small hole in the dark curtain that has, because of poverty, circumstance, and lack of access, limited their world view. I have to hide an incredulous grin sometimes when I hear Roberto, my host dad, unprompted, explanining earthquakes to someone in Ngobere, a topic I explained at great length last week over dinner. He is eager to spread the word. I even love how, after trying to navigate a long-winded scientific explanation, armed with my illuminated-by-kerosene-lamp Spanish dictionary, Roberto´s only response is ¨A mystery... the work of God.¨

And you know? Instead of talking myself blue in the face, this might become my fall-back answer.

But on the other hand, sometimes answering the exact same questions over and over has its frustrations. Even though I live in absurdly close quarters with these people, and spend virtually all day with community members, sometimes I feel the wide expanse of the whole world between us. It brings on the strangest feeling of loneliness-- this idea that I am here, in their country, speaking their language, living and learning their lives, and that my own existence in the U.S. is so far beyond their own understanding. I continually forget this until I hear the questions they ask. Then I am reminded that my life is impossibly distant from everything they know, and that they will never, ever really ¨get¨where I am coming from. It´s an odd feeling. I try not to wonder too much about what they really think about me. It´s better to live only in the moment of our interactions, which are usually rich and fulfilling. If I think too much about the barriers between us, some of my work here starts to seem even more difficult, bordering on impossible.

This is the first time in my life when I have truly felt that I am the only kind of person in one place. I am having an experience so foreign and unique that I can never fully explain it to someone else, American or Panamanian.

I think I know what you´re thinking. That is a lot of emotion coming from a simple Q and A. But during each, I am confronted with the privelage of my education, of where I grew up, and everything in the world I have learned. We know so much, and we don´t even realize. It´s something to think about, and something to be grateful for.

But please do remember as you read these questions the differences between being uneducated and being stupid. The people here are not stupid. I am impressed daily by how quickly the grasp the things I talk about, how they remember everything I´ve ever told them, and continue to bravely ask intelligent, thoughtful questions that they´ve never had the resources to answer themselves. They are not stupid, but they are uneducated.

Until 2001, there was no school in town past sixth grade, and those who wanted to continue would have to pay a daily bus fare to Almirante, the nearby port town, to finish 7th through 12th grade. Few families can afford that. Consequently, most of the adults stopped formal learning in sixth grade, and took to the family finca. They know impossible amounts about farming, their products, and every plant that grows s around them. They can identify every animal, including all of the venemous snakes that Cati could get killed by. They have the sharpest eyes, spotting sloths in trees that are imperceptible to me, or noticing and fretting over every new bug bite that dots my ¨blanquita¨skin. They know alot; it´s just a completely different kind of knowledge.

Here is some of what they ask me most frequently, and in some cases, how I answer.

Q: Will you marry an indio? If so, when and who?
A: These conversations are always long. They really, really, really want me to marry a Ngobe and live forever among them (also a good option: taking him to the states so he can send money!). I always say that I am not looking for a boyfriend, American or indigenous and, ¨also, my mother would be really mad at me if I got married in Panama.¨Which is true, right Mom?!

Q: Why do you have blue eyes/Why do we have brown or black eyes/Are you sure you don´t want to marry an indio so we can have blue eyes too?
A: They call me ¨Ojos de muñeca,¨ meaning ¨doll eyes¨and are endless fascinated by the gringo baby blues. I have been asked by many if all gringos have blue eyes like me. Sometimes I go into the fair-skinned people with European heritage explanation about why more gringos have them, but most of the time, I try to turn their compliments back to them, and tell them how I´m jealous of their brown eyes and jet-black shiny hair. I point out that the sun hurts my eyes and I get sunburns, and they sort of smile proudly like they had it figured out all along. Silly gringita!

Q: What are the stars, and where are they? If the world is round (many people are still not convinced of this... Sorry Columbus), why don´t the people on the bottom fall out?
A: These explanations never go so well. I try to start at the beginning, but for many, the idea of space is a new one, and as I fumble in my dictionary for words like ¨axis¨or ¨lightyears¨, I know I´ve said too much. And gravity? Forget it.

Q: Does your mother remember you?
A: The first few times I was asked this, I thought I understood them wrong. Alas, no. For people who never leave each other for more than a day at a time, the thought of having been away from my family for four months and counting is unimaginable. If we haven´t seen each other, maybe she forgot me? But my dearest mummy still answers my phone calls and emails, so I think so far we´re good.

Q: Is there pobreza, poverty, in the United States?
A: Many can´t believe me when I say yes. Admittedly, I get a little tired of their ¨everything in hunkey-dory in the U.S.¨assumptions, but I have trouble likening the two kinds of poverty in the two countries. Here in Panama there is a program called Red de Opportunidades that is similar to the American welfare system. I often just say that we have a Red de Opportunidades too, and that people need help like they do in Panama, and that seems to be enough.

Q: How much did _____ cost?
A: They ask this about literally everything. For more information on this, read the Ngobe Culture Points post. Depending on what it is, sometimes I tell them the truth, sometimes I reduce the price by half, and if it´s something costly (like my mp3 player or camera), I say it was a gift. It´s just easier.

Q: What do you eat por alla?
A: I always begin my answer with a big grin and say, ¨First of all, we never eat green bananas or plantains, only ripe, yellow ones, and we eat them as snacks, not as meals.¨ Their brows furrow. They scan my face, pause, and say, ¨Then...what do you eat?¨ I usually talk about fresh vegetables, and emphasize that we eat rice sometimes but not every day and not in heaping portions. I leave out the frequency with which I eat chicken because here, it is a rarity and only for a special occasion. I don´t talk about dairy, because I am pretty sure no one has ever eaten yogurt or cheese, and even though they have cows, I have never seen the milk used for anything? Anyway, some things are sacred, and I like yogurt to be my special little secret.

Q: Can you read?
A: I am not sure why they ask me this. Could the answer really be no?
Q: Can you read in Spanish?
A: Yes. (This is always very impressive to them.)
Q: In English?
A: Again, could the answer really be no? Sometimes people even ask me if I know how to speak English. Whenever I ask them what else they think I would speak, I don´t get an answer. And no, my Spanish isn´t anywhere near that good, so they can´t think I´m a native speaker.

So there you have it. I have my hands full here some days.

Worth 1,000 words

Put up some new pictures in my Picasa album. This takes forever. You´re welcome, Mom.

View them by clicking on the picture below:

Panama

Culture points and catch phrases

During training, I wrote a post about culture in Panama. At the time, I lived with a Latino family and had little exposure to life with Ngobes. I´ve spent over a month in site now and would like to catch up up on some of what I´ve learned. I include catch phrases in this list because I hear each of these sayings many times a week, if not more, and I consider each a culture point in its own right.

¨No hay plata.¨ (There is no money). If Ngobe life was a song, this would be the chorus. People like to end a lot of stories with this sentence, and then look wistfully at me. Sometimes it´s innocent, but it can also be an indirect way of asking for money. Direct communication doesn´t exist in this country, and telling a long story and ending it with this common refrain is the way they know to ask. And they ask often because they think that I am...

The Gringa with money. Panama uses American currency, and everyone knows the U.S. as the place where the money is made. Many also think that its just handed out from the ¨factory¨to anyone who wants some. Everyone is rich, right?, they ask. I have tried to explain this, but in my efforts to explain the basics of inflation, deflastion, and other economic keywords, I often lose them and myself. (If everyone has $1,000, tomorrow when you go to the store, rice will cost $100´, I say). It feels futile anyway, because poverty in the United States is nothing like it is here.

Anyway, needless to say, everyone assumes that because I´m a gringa, I have unlimited piles of money lying around. I´ve been moderately successful in my efforts to dispell this rumor, explaining that I came to live with them, and live like them, so PC only gives me enough for food, money, and transport. I still get asked for money a lot, which is irritating, and from my perspective, kind of hurtful. I left family, friends, and much more to help out here, and it feels like it still isn´t enough. But that´s the thing. I can´t look at it from my perspective. In a way, yes, they do ask me for money more frequently because they assume I have it (and even on my PC stipend, I do have a lot more money than families here), but they also ask because the idea of sharing and gift giving is ingrained in their culture. It isn´t a big deal. It happens all the time, and there isn´t so much of the ¨but this is mine!¨mentaility Americans have.

¨¿Regalame esto?¨- Gift me this? If someone hands me a bag of oranges from their finca, they often say ¨Te regalo,¨meaning ¨I gift this to you.¨Similarly, the idea of money lending and sharing in general much more accepted here. It is not rude to walk up to my bedroom door and say ¨Lend me a dollar.¨Even though it rubs me the wrong way (not even a please!), I remind myself that these are the same people who see me walking and ask worriedly if I´ve eaten yet, and if the answer is no, and they have food to spare, they always invite me in for dinner. Before I came to Panama, I would have said I was a good sharer, but I think these people have me beat.

The Ngobe Cookbook

One of the less satisfying aspects of the PC experience is the food. Living with host families means that I eat what they eat, which some days is more of a chore than others. I have a secret jar of peanut butter in my room, a crutch which I originally hoped to avoid. But with 8-10 hours between some meals, and plates filled with only carbs, I am often left with a taste for something homey. If you´d like to spend a day eating like a Ngobe, read on. I´ll fill you in on some of their favorite recipes.

Coffee: If you had told me back in August that I´d be living in a place where I am offered coffee 3-5 times a day, I might have hugged you, kissed your cheek, and stood grinning, hands clasped, unable to control my glee. Alas, the ¨coffee¨here is not quite what I´d imagined. Here´s how you make it:

Empty a 20 cent package (about 3-4 tbsp) of coffee into a large pot. Throw in no more than 2 cups of water. Place over fire or stove, stirring occasionally for 10-15 minutes. You should have a thick paste. (This is when the coffee smells really good, and I always get excited, even though I know what´s coming next.) Throw in 8-12 cups mugs of water, depending on how many family members or guests are present. Add enough sugar so that each cup has at least 5 tsp. Serve luke warm or cool and in giant portions.

This recipe usually results in a brownish liquid that tastes mostly like sugar water. Hummingbird food, if you will. Babies start drinking coffee as soon as they can hold a cup, as evidenced by the kids´unfortunately cavity-ridden teeth. I do know a few people who make a decent cup of coffee though, and I plan to ask them their secret. When the weather is ¨cold¨, many do let the coffee heat up a little bit after adding all the water. They are all adament that one must drink hot things when it is cold outside. And Lord knows, if the temperature dips below 75, one could catch a chill!

Boiled Green Bananas/Plantains, Verduras: I don´t have much to say about these because mostly they just make me sad. They´re flavorless, heavy, and always fail to absorb any of the flavor of what they are cooked with. I can eat more of them now than I used to be able to, but I´ll never be able to wolf down 8 or more in a row like my buddies here in QP. While their lackluster flavor is a downer, what´s worse is how they cook them.

To prepare: Peel and cut bananas lengthwise. (Peeling these suckers makes your hands splotchy and burny. Be careful!) Throw what seems like an impossible amount in the largest pot you have. Add water until bananas are covered. Lay a plastic bag over everything. Yes, a plastic bag. Boil for 45 minutes to two hours, depending on how much you feel like doddling, and how much of a mush factor you´d like.

I know. Cooking with a plastic bag. They insist this is the only way to get the bananas to cook through, and proudly explain the function of the bag when asked. I prefer not to consider what sort of chemicals could be leached into my food with this method, and frankly, I don´t care. Sometimes, in terms of harmful things that are introduced to my body on a daily basis, this is the least of my concerns.

Rice: Until recently, I thought white rice was one of the only foods that consistently escaped the snap-crackle-pop of the ubiquitous cooking oil. Then my host mom told me I was cooking it wrong. I left out an important first step. One must begin by frying the hard, uncooked rice in some left over oil, you see. Stir occasionally for 5 minutes and cook as normal.

I am not sure what effect this really has. The rice tastes the same to me, but I guess I have a lot to learn. My pallete isn´t yet fine-tuned to all the delicate flavor notes rice and other starches can have.

While there are some foods that I´ll never love (cold, ground sardines with coffee at 6:30 in the morning), my new diet has resulted in a new-found affection for the foods I do enjoy. For example, a plate of boiled yucca and a hard-boiled egg makes me absolutely giddy. A plate of fried rice with a spinachy plant they call callaloo is my new favorite comfort food. And lentils, of course, they will never know how much I love them.

I´ll move into my own house sometime in January, and I plan to plant my own vegetable garden. Dozens of veggies grow well here, it´s a shame more people don´t take advantage. Other volunteers have had some success in leading by example with their own vegetable gardens and encouraging others to do the same. They couple their efforts with some nutrition charlas, and some seed packets to get started, and many community members follow their lead. I also look forward to infusing some traditional dishes with some good flavor and nutrients when I live alone. Stay tuned because I expect you all to help me brainstorm recipes.