Drinkable water in 9 steps

1. Move to a rainy climate. Preferably Bocas del Toro in Panama.
2. Excavate a hole using a machete and shovel, as I did, or site another location for your tank.
3. Cut 3 or 4¨PVC tube lengthwise with hacksaw, place on roof with elbow at the end.
4. Remove tank top with hot matchete and hammer. (this takes hours)
5. Poke hole for faucet with heated peace of rebar.
6. Tap threads for faucet with metal-thread-tapper thingy.
7. Wrap faucet in teflon tape, screw in, and seal with caulk.
8. Place mesh over top to keep the creepy-crawlies out.
9. Place tank and enjoy the parasite-free fruits of your labor.
(fellow PCVs used as models)

I use my rain water for everything. In good, steady rain, this 55-gallon tank fills in 20 minutes. I still bleach it just to be safe (who knows what´s living on my roof?), but this is the cleanest water I can be drinking.

Note on water use: A lot of contamination in my site happens in the house when people are dipping their dirty hands into buckets of stored water to make drinks or food. I installed a faucet in one of the five-gallon buckets most families use for storage, filled it with juice, and brought it to a meeting to share. I discreetly called attention to it after a latrine charla, which included a lot of talk about water contamination, and would you guess? PEOPLE WENT WILD. They roared! They hollered! They could not believe my brilliance, and more importantly, that bucket is cool, they said. Everyone wanted one. I promised that if they buy the faucet and nut, I will happily do the work for them. I used their enthusiasm as an opportunity to continue discussion about disease transmission and contamination at the household level. It´s a cheap, easy solution for a big problem.


Total cost of rain-water catchment system: $60.
Total cost of installing faucet in a 5-gallon bucket: $1.65, if tape and caulk are provided.

Maestra Cati

I have been teaching English once or twice a week to a diminished but determined group of students since the end of January. While it´s not part of my official Peace Corps assignment, I told everyone that I would be happy to offer a class as long as people showed up, studied, and took it seriously. I am still en la lucha (in the fight) with the studying, but most of the group continues to impress me with their dedication and patience.

I say patience because most of them have been out of school for years, and as one remarked recently, ¨I haven´t written anything in 23 years.¨I struggle with trying to teach them because the only way I know to teach is grammatically--that is how I learned and understood Spanish, and drawing comparisons and explaining structure grammatically is what makes sense to me. But they don´t know what subjects, verbs, nouns, objects, or anything else are, and half of them didn´t make it past sixth grade. And pobrecitos (poor things), they sit there and listen to me trying to navigate my way through Spanish and English and never criticize, just copy, copy, copy. It´s a strange experience correcting their homework, because often their Spanish is wrong, and I am never sure whether to correct their conjugations and spellings in Spanish as well. I am unsure whether it affects their understanding of English. Despite all of that, they do rather well and I was impressed with the results of their first test.

In mid-May, we´ll have our last class of what I have named Ingles Basico I. Those who wish to continue will graduate and start Ingles Basico II in June. I plan to present them with certificates and a photo of the class as a reward. (Some students who have dropped-out heard about the picture-taking and certificate-earning, and they have become very jealous! I have been receiving petulant visitors to my house trying to find ways to bargain for a certificate. All denied!)

I´ve gone back and forth trying to decide whether I enjoy teaching. Some days I throw a lesson together right before class, and just go through the motions. Other days I feel a certain glee in seeing what they´ve learned and the smiles on their faces when we play the games I´ve prepared. I´ve always tried to keep the class lively-- participatory learning is of course the cornerstone of Peace Corps. We have plenty of activities, competitions, prizes, and games to keep them on their toes. I only wish I had more resources or time to prepare better classes, but lack of computer access makes things difficult.

A picture of the happy students, who really are happy, despite their straight-faced Ngobe picture-taking style:

Closing the book on the effluvium. The final chapter (God willing)

Good news for all of you who were very worried about My Foot Falling Off! The doctor was over the moon this morning and said my feet look very bonito. They have responded well to the three kinds of antibiotic pills I was given in the last few days, and this opportunity has provided me with ample time to practice my frontier medicine skills. All I need is a little office and unlimited amounts of chloroform and I will be Panama´s own Dr. Quinn.

But anyway, my main goal for today is to announce THE WINNER OF THE RECIPE CONTEST. I received a total of three submittions (Mom, your 150-recipes-with Bacon email forwards don´count. I don´t have Bacon.), and after hours in the kitchen, the results are in. I bring you, the winning entry from James Ian Basham. He wrote:

Dear editors of Cooking with Gringa,

Please consider my submission for your recently published recipe contest. Stir fries are all about the sauce, and this is how I make my Teriyaki sauce for stir fries or similar dishes. I never really measure things so measurements are approximate. For a large stirfry:

1/2 cup orange or pineapple juice

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 small clove garlic or maybe 1/2 teaspoon dried

about the same amount of ginger, perhaps a bit more

1 tablespoon vinegar, you could probably also substitute lemon or lime juice

1-2 tablespoons honey or brown sugar, depending on how sweet you like it and how sweet or sour your juice is

its best to make it in a separate little pan and reduce it while you stir fry the veggies. It needs to be cooked down quite a bit due to the juice, and I have found that if you try to cook it down while simultaneously trying to cook the veggies, they end up getting overdone and soggy.

Enjoy!

How can you not love that? Even if he is a science nerd who works with dyes and solar cells and speaks DorkSpeak that no one else understands? It´s all okay because this recipe is amazing! It wins extra points because many of the ingredients are available in my community`s tienda (little store), and those that aren´t are shelf-stable and can be used for other things. I make this sauce at least twice a week if I have the veggies, and have made it for some other PCVs who also awarded it a seal of approval. Congratulations, James!

The second-place winner was submitted by my dear friend Ms. Ashley Connie Confetti Constituion. Which is her real name. Constitution wrote:

simple black bean burritos
1 can black beans
1 can corn
1 onion
1 pepper (any kind should do)cayenne pepper
salsa

sautee the onion in a pan
add in the pepper and continue to sautee
pour in the black beans and corn and simmer until warm
add cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper and any other spices you find appropriate
serve w/ warmed flour tortillas and salsa and voila! only takes about 10 minutes!

I have adapted this recipe by making the salsa from scratch, cooking bagged beans, and serving over rice instead of tortillas (less interesting, but cheaper!). I have no way to dispose of cans and glass jars, so I to avoid buying them if possible. But I make an exception here because the sweetness of the corn makes this recipe soar into divinity.

Thank you for your submissions. James won a week-long vacation with his best-looking sister here in sunny Panama! Ashley Connie Constance wins my lifelong friendship. Felictaciones to the winners!

As for me, I am heading back to site, and plan to stay there for a good, long while. With no more conferences or trainings to attend in the foreseeable future, I am looking forward picking up some momentum and getting some good things done in April and May. Til next time.

Notes from the Clinic...Again

In my last post, I briefly mentioned the raging infection that was waging war on my delicate, ballerina-like size 11 boat feet. It was maybe a little worse than I was willing to admit, but I really wanted to get to this conference I was attending with my community counterpart. I had taxi´d myself back to the bus terminal, where I ran into my friend Louis, another Bocas volunteer.

¨Good GOD WOMAN! What is that on your feet?¨

¨Oh, does it not look good? It´s just a little infected...¨

¨You need to go to the clinic. That is, um, well-- I just can´t believe you haven´t gone yet.¨

But...but... I already bought my bus ticket. I hobbled off to buy a sandwich and contemplate the value of my health when I received a call from my biological brother James, who told me had he had been to the hospital with a septic foot infection, caused by some kind of strep bacteria. (Which he got when we went snorkeling. I officially retract my approval of that activity. Snorkeling is a dangerous, deadly activity, and you should never do it. Who wants to see fish anyway? They are ugly creatures and coral deserves to be in danger of disappearing forever. Coral is a dummy.)

¨You really should go to the clinic,¨ bio bro James advised.

Well. Septic foot infections and strep bacteria sounds kind of dangerous, so I called my Peace Corps doctor, Lourdes, for her advice.

¨Catherine, now more than ever, please please please go to the clinic.¨ Lourdes doesn´t play around, so I hopped in a taxi and headed to David´s Clinica Cattan, and after a five-day stay, I bring you:

TOP FIVE LESSONS LEARNED WHILE HOSPITALIZED IN PANAMA

Because, while my Mom can´t laugh about it, why can´t we? (Seriously Mom, stop reading.)

5. Medical confidentiality does not exist. Every nurse who took care of me told me that my compañera, Mary, who I have never actually spoken to, was also admitted to the clinic. ¨ She has diarrhea,¨ they said, while making the Panama diarrhea gesture. No such things as HIPPA here, people. Good thing PCVs share this information with each other anyway. When Mary was released, I heard about that too, and the nurse gave me a sly smile and said, ¨ She beat you.¨ Thanks for rubbing my interminable stay in my face. *Mary´s name has been changed because no one needs to know about her diarrhea.*

4. Panamanians like to make you feel lonely. Everytime my phone rang or buzzed, they began:
¨ Is that your Mom?¨ No.
¨Is that your boyfriend? ¨ No.
¨Is that a friend? ¨ No. It is my cell phone provider, offering me a promotion, THANKS FOR ASKING.
"So, you are here all alone? No one is coming to see you?" Yes, for the hundredth time and I didn´t mind until you started pointing it out every hour on the hour. My friends, Tyra Banks, Chandler Bing, Bree Van de Kamp, Paris Hilton and Dr. Derek Shepard, are on the TV. I haven´t seen them in months, and could you just leave us alone?

3. When I arrived and showed the doctor my foot, the only thing he said about it before he admitted me was "That is ugly." I did not hear from him again until the next day when he announced that it was a little bit more pretty, but still not good. The next night, the Mean Nurse who cleaned the wounds with such vigor that I cried myself to sleep, announced the infection on one foot was pretty, but the other one was still feojito, the dimunitive form of the word feo, meaning ugly. Apparently this is the only means medical professionals here have of assessing illness. James joked around that all their medical charts consist of are boxes that say Ugly or Pretty, and you check one, and makes notes in the margin. I am afraid to say I think he might be right.

2. There is no need to check on you, ask if you are comfortable, and if they forget to bring you dinner, that is okay and no one will apologize or find you a suitable meal. They did manage to change my sheets every day, once waking me at 4am to do it. Florence Nightingale would be thrilled. But basics such as providing me with water or meals were forgotten. One night when they didn´t bring my dinner, I eventually asked for it, and a wash of guilt swept over the nurse´s face. She came back in 20 minutes with cold broth and a cup of jello. Not enough, people. Not enough.

1. There is absolutely no reason to provide a patient with a diagnosis, any information about the medicine you are giving them, how long you expect them to stay, or what progress they are making.

I hail from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, home of Mass General, Brigham and Women´s and some of the top physicians and specialists in the world. I am not used to this sort of neglect and ambiguity when it comes to medical care. Everytime they put something in my IV (and oh, in five days there was a lot going into that IV), I would ask what it was, and the nurses would look slightly annoyed with me for asking, and offer a vague answer like "for the pain" or "for the swelling" or "to make you stop asking questions, gringita." Okay, they didn´t say that last one, but I think they wanted to. One time, the nurse came in with a huge tray of about 8 syringes filled with medicine, and started shuffling through them before she asked, "What´s your name again?" Good grief. Needless to say, I tried to double check as much as possible.

As far as a diagnosis, the doctor did not tell me what was wrong with me until Wednesday, my fourth day in the hospital. And you know? When someone has a FLESH-EATING STREP INFECTION in both feet, it is something you might want to tell them. Just as a rule. I didn´t realize how serious it was until that moment, and I kept thinking each day might be the day they let me out. Thanks for the memo, doc.

So yesterday they released me with a bag of medical goodies and lots of instructions about how to take care of my wounds in site. They are almost all better now, no swelling or redness, and about half their original size. Despite this list, I think they did a good job overall of taking care of me (by Panama standards...) and providing me with an outstanding amount of antibiotics to kill the infection. But I will say the experience made me appreciate American medical care, flawed as it is. We are used to doctors telling us what´s going on and how they will treat us. Not so much here in Panamania, but that doesn´t mean I will stop asking for information. Gotta be your own advocate. I go back on Tuesday to make sure they are healing and to yet again revel in the world-class medical care they provide. Let´s hope I don´t come back from that experience with enough material for another Top 5 list.