Pictures

1. R.I.P.
2. Getting a shave.
3. So much violence.
4. (Untitled)
5. Butcher stations.

Transition from Training

Last Thursday, our 36-person group was sworn-in at the ambassador´s residence in Panama City, and became the first in several years to have every trainee make it all the way through training. The ceremony was a formal affair, with speeches given by the Ambassador, the Peace Corps Panama Country Director, a representative from ANAM, a Panamanian environmental agency, and two trainees from our group.

(all of group 64, EH and Community Economic Development)

During the ceremony, we all had a chance to stand up, introduce ourselves and say where we would be serving. I was filled with an inappropriately maternal pride for all of our volunteers, with their much-improved Spanish, previously-unworn, fancy shirts, ties, dresses, and visible eagerness to see what the next two years will hold. We´ve grown so close over the last ten weeks that it´s hard to believe we´ve only been here since August. The intensity of this experience brings people together in a unique, unexpected way. When I signed up for Peace Corps, the process I imagined didn´t involve friends. But training has been an almost completely group experience, which is odd when you consider that it´s preparing us for one of the most solitary, self-directed jobs on the planet. Our environmental-health group spent this past weekend after swear-in together at a beach town, enjoying each other´s company for what will be the last time until February (for most of us). I feel lucky to have landed among group of exceptionally caring, thoughtful, intelligent people. But we all felt sad to be leaving each other. The reality is that many of us live at different ends of the country, or are difficult to get to, and we´ll never be able to keep in as close touch as we´d like. As we move on and into site tomorrow, it´s hard to imagine life without the immediate support system we became so used to.

(the five EH girls. Four of us lived up on the hill in Santa Clara, and spent many-a-walk debriefing, oversharing, and offering emotional support/reality checks as needed).

Most everyone is nervous, some borderline panicky, about returning to site. We arrive with nothing specific planned, no immediate assignment, and the responsiblity of directing ourselves, and eventually hundreds of strangers in a country, language, and circumstance that is foreign to us.

It is easy to become bogged down in all the anxiety. I came back from site visit feeling overwhelmed, underqualified, and uncertain about what I could offer my community. But, as I was reminded today, this is the part we all signed up for, to offer support to communities who want it, to live as the only gringo in rural communuties no one´s ever heard of, and to put ourselves in situations that we could only experience here. And I came to Panama partly to test my limits. Tomorrow, when I arrive in my community, it´s for good this time (but not forever, Mom!). I am ready to stop saying I´m going to live in Panama for two years when I explain and introduce myself. Going to live refers to the future. I live here now. Even though I felt intimidated by my responsiblity to my community, I also realize that there is no amount of training that can prepare you for what PC life is like. I know enough. The rest of it will come as needed.

We are encouraged to stay in-site for a few weeks at the beginning, so updates could be scarce. But stay tuned, and in the mean time, I´ll be taking notes and ready to assume a regular blogging schedule again. Comments, questions, and emails are of course always appreciated and encouraged.

Llega la gringa

My nervousness about my site visit started mounting when I realized how close I was to training´s finish line. Since I arrived in Panama, there was always a period of time stretching before me, during which I could improve my Spanish, learn about PC´s development approach, figure out everything I needed to know about aqueducts, latrines, and methods for community mobilization and organization.

The list was long, but I had time.

So as excited as I was to finally see my community, I also realized that it was time to pull everything I´d learned togethe, and with luck, convince over a thousand people I was up to the task. I would be all on my own (solita!) during the 5-day visit, and responsible for introducing myself and explaining my presence to as many people as possible. I would find housing, develop a sketchy outline of a work plan, and start gathering information for my community analysis due in January.

Last Monday, we headed to Farallon in the Cocle province to meet our community guides, who would travel with us to site. As our stretch on the Pan-American highway rolled by my window, I found myself wondering how I tricked so many people into thinking I was capable of taking on this assignment, what PC promises will be "the hardest job you´ll ever love."

We´ve been told over and over that the PC process is a roller coaster of emotions. Until now, I hadn´t really experienced it. I´ve been sick, encountered difficulties and frustrations, but overall I´ve been happy here. Things have gone smoothly, and I´ve been going little by little, poco a poco, through training. It´s funny to think that my application process for PC started almost a full year ago, and only now are the details coming into focus. Only when I met my community guide this week did the question marks really start fading away; an image of what life will be like here started coming coming in clearer.

And I´m realizing that some of my self-doubt and worry was well-placed.

Quebrada Pastor has many needs. The aqueduct, which only serves a small fraction of the community, works inconsistently , and the water committee doesn´t actively work to repair it. The vast majority of the community lives at great distance from the center, with some houses a two-hour hike from the road. No one out there (¨por alla arriba¨) is connected to the aqueduct. They hike through the monte to springs or the river to fill up their water buckets. The only latrines are at the school. People do their business in the river (the same one from which they get their water, also the one in which they bathe and wash their clothes.)

On Saturday, we held a meeting as a way to introduce myself formally to the community. I gave a quick speech, explaining who I am, what environmental health is, and what we might work on. I stressed that I don´t have money, or projects in mind, and that we must work together to figure out what the community needs, and what they will use. My gung-ho counterpart, jumped right into talking about composting latrines, which was not what I would have done, but he seems to be a man with a mission. Many seemed interested, which was a pleasant surprise. For people who are used to using a river, storing excrement above ground for prolonged periods of time, and then using it on crops, is a big leap.

One of the greatest challenges I will face is involving the whole community in project development and plannning. My community guide asked for a PCV because of his interest in composting latrines, but it´s hard to say whether everyone´s interest is genuine, or simply at his urging. PCV have done plenty of latrine projects in Bocas. Many stand unused or unfinished. Additionally, weighing the needs for latrines against the need for running water is nearly impossible, especially when the most underserved parts of the community are unwilling or hesitant to participate in meetings and potential projects. We visited houses all day Thursday and Friday, hiking two and fro, and we still failed to make it to over 50 percent of Q.P.´s houses. I have to work to work to include them all. Let me just say I am going to be really skinny after two years of all that walking.

I am lucky to have landed in a community with established leaders, who understand the PC process. But their expectations are high, and their needs are urgent. I hope I can help keep them motivated and interested through what will surely be a long, arduous process. I am not here to march in, build lartrines, and march out. It is essential that PCVs assess the real needs of a community and equip them with the skills and knowledge to reach their own goals. It´s called "capacity building" in development lingo. It´s the cornerstone of ¨sustainabile development.¨

In many ways, this visit was an overwhelming one. I met sick people who couldn´t afford medical treatment. I saw children who seemed two or three years younger than they are, because a diet of boiled bananas and rice lacks some important nutrients, to put it mildly. When we were visiting house-to-house, my community partner had to explain to some people who I was very carefully, several times, because when they see a gringo, they assume s/he brings trouble. My host family asked me questions that I didn´t know how to begin to answer. After remarking about how many tourists come to Bocas Island, my host father soberly asked me if there are benefits to travel. He couldn´t see why people would go so far away from where they´re from. During my first few days in site, I had a cold. They told me when I came back, I had to bring sandals to wear in the house. They pointed to the cool cement floor and said "You have to protect your feet from the cold, Cati. It affects you." I just nodded, deciding to save my explanation of Germ Theory for another day.

Even though at times I have felt apprehensive by what this experience has in store, as always, there are are a multitude of quiet moments that remind me how rich this experience is. In so many ways, it´s possible for to feel more fulfilled here than I could ever be if I were doing something else. These reminders are everywhere. When my host dad grabs my hand to help the uncoordinated gringa cross one of the many creeks and rivers. Or when the vice-president of the water committee invites me to dinner, and having heard of my desire to learn some dialect, decides to start teaching me immediately. He asked me to read from a Spanish hymnal while he proudly sang the same lines in dialect. Or when I explained the idea of sustainability and could see they understood, and felt excited by the idea of empowerment. When I learned how to wash clothes on rocks by the river. When my host parents say they think they´ll cry when I leave in two years, and are already worried that I´ll forget them one day.

How could I ever forget? In five days, I felt sad, overhwhelmed, energized, welcomed, confused, relieved, intimidated, excited, and as far away from what I know as I´ve ever felt. Whatever these two years have in store, I´m sure it will be unforgettable.

Mail, etc.

A lot of people have asked about where mail can be sent. First, thanks for asking! As of now, my mother has sent several packages, and I haven´t seen a single one yet. They may still be on their way, as mail takes forever here, but I´m unsure. I am recommending no one sends me any mail until I can set up a PO-box like situation in Changionola. I´ve heard mail is more reliable there, and further, the address I have now (listed on the side) is only good through October. So thanks to everyone who offered to send me something, but if it´s anything more than a postcard or letter, I´d recommend waiting until I can set up a new address which will hopefully be more secure.

Also, while this blog is set to private, I´m happy to let anyone read. If anyone you know wants access, send me their email, and I´ll send an invite.

Photos and Culture Points

I hope you all appreciate that I am spending our first day off ever here in Panama blogging and uploading pictures at long last. You can view them here.

Today I´m looking to fill you in on the culture points that I haven´t had time to write about in my other exhaustive summaries.

TOP 10 THOUGHTS ON PANAMANIAN CULTURE

10. If you ever took a Spanish class, you learned that the word bastante means "enough." As in, I have enough food, or We have enough time to go shopping. In Panama, bastante is only used to mean a lot or too many. How many grandchildren to you have? BASTANTE. It is a word you usually have to yell. This takes some getting used to, but now I enjoy having a way to express myself in extreme a way as possible.

9. If you ever have to ask directions, make sure to ask at least three people, because they will all give you some vague answer that mostly consists of wild gesturing and pointing with their lips. There are no maps anywhere-- not for public transit, not in malls. Towns don´t have street names, and there are eight different Diablo Rojo buses that can take you to the same place. Speaking of Diablo Rojos, they make up the public bus system here, and they look like this. At first they´re quite intimidating, but they´re really not so bad, as long as you don´t think too closely about the fact that you are barreling down the street in an outdated American school bus with 100 other people packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

8. If they call you fat, it´s a good thing. Within minutes of arriving in Santa Clara, Nani was already on the phone with her friends, telling them a "gordita" gringa had arrived. By the afternoon, Greysi was rolling up my shirt and pointing to my stomach saying, "asi gordita." For Panamanians, this is a compliment; it doesn´t really mean you´re fat, more so that you´re the right weight. It is also acceptable and normal to ask people how old they are, no matter how old. Go for it. I will miss being able to do this later when I one day return to the U.S.

7. Another vocab twist. "Ahora", despite its dictionary definition, never means "now." If you ask when you should do something, and someone says "ahora," wait at least 20 minutes and ask again.

6. We have been told many times that Panamanian time in general is quite different from American time. When we´re in our sites, if we want to give a charla at 10, we tell people to get there at around 8:30, with the idea that by 10, most people should be trickling in. There is also no sense of urgency in restaurants, where you can sit for an hour before a waiter comes to greet you. If you´re going to eat out, give yourself a few hours. I´ve gotten good customer service in malls or large supermarkets, but everywhere else, not so much. Be assertive.

5. No one can believe that the gringas don´t have boyfriends or husbands, and because of this, they are constantly asking who you have crushes on, who you think is cute, and if there is a secret boyfriend somewhere you´re not telling them about. They also want you to find love in Panama and constantly tell stories of other Peace Corps volunteers falling in love here.

4. If someone unleashes a flurry of uncomprehensible (and sometimes toothless) Spanish at you, and you ask them to say it again, they will almost always repeat/emphatically gesture the only word you understood. Sometimes I am just too tired to ask them again.

4. Panamanian women can do everything better than you. The first weekend here, we went hiking, and I didn´t have boots yet. I hiked through a lot of mud with only sneakers on, and when I came home, Nani was horrified to see my dirt-laden shoes. One day, she set out a bucket of soapy water and instructed me to get to scrubbin´. I was in a rush to get to class, but I thought I did a decent job, but there was mud caked everywhere, and some parts of the shoe would simply never be clean again.

I was wrong.

When I came back, she laughed and told me I didn´t know how to clean anything. My shoes stood before me, sparkling white, right down to the shoelaces.

Similarly, during culture week, I got some sea urchin spines stuck in my foot. When I got home, my host mother noticed I was fussing over them, and once I told her what they were, she immediately ran into the house, came back with a needle, and began furiously digging them out.

There are problems that sometimes you think you can´t solve. Your Panmanian host mother will find a way.

2. The food. Panama is second only to China in terms of how much rice is consumed per capita. When I first arrived, there was a heaping mound of rice on my plate at almost every meal. Portion sizes have been adjusted accordingly now that we´ve realized I can´t actually consume a pound of rice in one sitting. Here are the good and bad about the food I´ve discovered here:

The Bad:
Everything is fried. I am typically served at least two hot dogs a day, and in the morning, it is cut lengthwise and dropped in oil in order to maximize its contact with the deep-fried goodness. These are getting harder and harder to eat. But I might miss them one day, depending on what sort of food I´ll be eating in site.

Ojaldre- This is essentially fried dough that is frequently served with my hot dog at breakfast. I wouldn´t be so opposed it if wasn´t frequently the first thing I eat in the morning.

Fried platanos- these are flavorlesss, starchy, and ubiquitous in Ngobe villages. I ate them every day during culture week. With ketchup, they´re not so bad. It is more the frequency with which I eat fried food that bothers me, rather than the individual foods. Panama´s flavors in general are pretty bland.

The good:

Duros- these are basically homemade popsicles frozen in sandwich bags, but they come in amazing flavors like pineapple, or nansey. Nansey is a small, bitter fruit that grows from trees everywhere here. It is sort of citrusy, but when combined with sugar in a duro, it is the perfect treat. My abuela sells duros for 10 cents a piece, and I am a regular customer.

Pifa- a golfball-sized fruit that also grows everywhere here. A lot of the trainees hate pifa, but I love it. Its starchy and has the consistency of squash. Delicious when dipped in a little salt, and I hear it´s packed with vitamins.

CocaCola- I now have a new appreciation for soda. It is still sold in glass bottles here, and Coca Cola would really be proud of how we flock to any small tienda with a fridge for our daily fix. Further, it´s made with real sugar unlike in the States, and that really makes all the difference.

1. Machetes can be used for everything. During tech week, we used red-hot machetes to cut into 55-gallon barrels for water-catchmen systems. They can also chop down trees, cut up fruit, mow lawns, you name it. I cannot wait to bring the machete back into vogue in the U.S.